Brian Schweitzer campaigned hard for Jon Tester in 2006. And Tester needed the help, defeating incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Conrad Burns by just 3,562 votes.
Last week Tester returned the favor with dirty dealings — rumors of dark money sins by Schweitzer and allegations that Schweitzer wasn’t a team player — that persuaded Schweitzer to suddenly decide against running for the U.S. Senate next year.
Tester’s official response is, of course, “Who? Me?” But I no longer consider his denials credible. The pieces of the puzzle are coming together, and the emerging picture is of a frightened politician who loves being senator so much he’s willing to sacrifice Democratic control of the U.S. Senate to improve his own chances for re-election in 2018.
Unlike Schweitzer, a strong campaigner and candidate who won his 2004 and 2008 gubernatorial campaigns with majorities, Tester is a weak candidate whose victories by plurality resulted from Libertarians’ peeling off conservative votes from the Republican candidate (see Table 1 below). Under an instant runoff voting system, Conrad Burns would have won in 2006, and Denny Rehberg in 2012. That’s why Montana’s Republicans put a top two primary referendum on the general election ballot for 2014. A top two primary would keep third party conservatives off the general election ballot, imperiling Steve Bullock in 2016 and Tester in 2018.
| Election | Tester | Libertarian | Republican | Tester % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 199,845 |
Stan Jones 10,377 |
Conrad Burns 196,283 |
49.2 |
| 2012 (updated) | 236,123 |
Dan Cox 31,892 |
Denny Rehberg 218,051 |
48.5 |
Tester and his top political operatives, my sources report, both like and fear Steve Daines; like him for support on some environmental matters, fear him as the Republican nominee for the senate in 2018. Therefore, Tester’s top objective is preventing Daines from accumulating seniority, power, and experience, in the U.S. House of Representatives. The best way of doing that? Ensuring that Daines is the GOP nominee for the senate next year. If Daines won a senate seat, he wouldn’t challenge Tester in 2018. That’s probably the best scenario for Tester. But if Daines lost, he’d be an unemployed politician and much less a threat to Tester in 2018.
But Daines wasn’t going to give up his house seat to run against Brian Schweitzer, the only Democrat he feared (and rightly so). Therefore, Tester’s plans for Daines required knocking Schweitzer out of the campaign, which he apparently proceeded to do with a Machiavellian efficiency that must have sent an icy shudder down Karl Rove’s spine. There are people who admire that kind of cold-bloodedness, but I’m not one of them.
Schweitzer, I noted two days ago, refused to defend himself. He just quit, leaving Democrats wondering whether he was guilty as charged. No longer hungry, no longer feisty, he rode back to his ranch without wave or warning, leaving his supporters demoralized and angry. It was an exit neither elegant nor gracious nor deserved.
Meanwhile, Tester is betting that by 2018, Democrats will have forgotten or forgiven his treachery in 2013; that he’ll escape retribution for sticking his shiv in Schweitzer; for costing Democrats a senate seat, and conceivably costing them control of the U.S. Senate; for disheartening Democrats to the extent that legislative losses in Montana are heavier than they would be with Schweitzer atop the ticket.
In an era when primaries, not party conventions, decide almost all nominations, Presidents, governors, and U.S. Senators are de facto political warlords, the functional equivalents of feudal barons, who dominate state parties and joust with each other for political supremacy, surrounded by sycophants whose highest reason for doing anything is keeping their lords in office. Some warlords wisely share the wealth, supporting state parties and local candidates. Others only seek the wealth, developing the souls of assassins. It now appears that Jon Tester, a ruthless man in constant fear of defeat, is the latter sort of warlord.