28 March 2018 — 1939 mdt
Assault on Montana’s Greens
Earlier this week, labor heavyweights Don Judge and Jim Larson, the latter a former chair of the Montana Democratic Party, obtained copies of the petitions that qualified the Montana Green Party for the 2018 ballot. Their mission? Protecting Jon Tester by challenging and disqualifying enough signatures to remove the Green Party from the ballot. Their concern is not without merit, but assuming that every vote cast for the Green Party candidate is a vote not cast for Tester would be unwise. After the Green Party qualified for the Montana ballot, I observed:
The conventional wisdom is that third party candidates take votes away from the major party candidate closest to them on the ideological continuum. Green Party candidates hurt Democrats, Libertarians hurt Republicans. The CW has some merit, but a voter who is inclined to vote for a third party has several choices when his preferred third party candidate is not on the ballot: (a) voting for the closest ideological match on the ballot, (b) voting for a third party or independent candidate that is on the ballot, (c) casting a write-in vote, or (d) not voting. The political science literature that I’ve consulted suggests that approximately half of the voters will choose option (a).
Greens and Libertarians in Montana
How to evaluate the impact of third party candidates on major party candidates has relevance for Montana, where both Greens and Libertarians will be on the ballot for the U.S. House and Senate. Libertarians will be on the ballot in 20 Montana legislative races, Greens in three.
New. In 2016, a vote for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was free vote for Montana Democrats unhappy with Hillary Clinton, as it was obvious Clinton had no chance of winning the state. Stein received 7,970 votes in Montana, 1.6 percent of the votes cast, less than half Tester’s margin of victory 2012 and not enough to qualify the Green Party for the 2018 ballot; hence the petitions that Judge and Larson hope to challenge.
The Green candidate may not have much impact on the federal races because Democrats want to win and are not likely to throw away their votes for the fleeting satisfaction of voting for a putatively more liberal candidate.
In 2012, Jon Tester defeated Dennis Rehberg 236,123 to 218,051, a margin of 18,072 votes. Libertarian Dan Cox received 31,892 votes (6.6 percent). The one-half rule of thumb suggests Cox may have depressed Rehberg’s total by 15,946 votes, not enough to have changed the election’s outcome. Whether 2018 U.S. Senate Libertarian Rick Breckenridge will do as well as Cox is open to question, but he could receive votes from Republicans unable to vote for Matt Rosendale, the likely GOP candidate, and unwilling to not vote or to vote for Tester.
Greens won’t make a difference in House Districts 15 and 85, but the Green candidate in Senate District 49 (Missoula) may be a problem for incumbent Democrat Diane Sands, who won 3,933 to 3,902 (I think that margin was narrowed to 14 votes after a recount).
Montana’s Greens argue that having their candidates on the ballot will increase turnout by providing an alternative to the Republican and Democratic Parties, thereby luring to the polls voters who were planning to not vote, or at least not to vote for a major party candidate or a right leaning candidate such as a Libertarian. That would not divert a vote from Tester.
Indeed, a voter angry at Tester for his timber friendly politics might decide to vote for the Green candidate instead of voting for the Republican (probably drone shooting Matt Rosendale) to punish Tester. If so, having the Green candidate on the senate ballot would help Tester by not increasing his Republican opponent’s tally. That’s an argument for not challenging the petitions, but it’s not an argument that Tester or his supporters are likely to accept.
As noted by Mike Jopek in his column in today’s Flathead Beacon, there’s considerable apprehension among Tester’s supporters that big spending right wing groups will hijack the Green Party’s message:
Here’s the thing. There are some activists that are pig-biting-mad at Tester because he is OK with working lands conservation. They’d rather fight Democrats to lose seats in Congress than hold the White House accountable.
This fall, expect out-of-state Republican surrogates to flood Montana airwaves on the Greens’ behalf telling us how bad Tester is on conservation attempting to drive away [the] youth vote.
That’s certainly a possibility. And it might divert some votes from Tester. He has solid support from most mainstream conservation organizations, but not from some more preservation oriented environmental groups, especially in Missoula and Bozeman. Some environmentalists are so angry at him they might vote for the Republican out of spite whether or not there’s a Green candidate on the ballot. But I think that most of Tester’s detractors in the environmental community will either hold their noses and vote for him, vote for the Green candidate, or not vote in the senate election.
Tester may be in trouble
According to Politico:
Tester is far from safe — he’s ultimately running for reelection in a state Trump won by 21 percentage points. But Democrats feel better about him than some of their other incumbents: He’s had more than a dozen pieces of legislation signed into law by the president, and Montanans have a strong and recent history of ticket-splitting. Tester also continues to fundraise well, although the GOP primary to face him — state Auditor Matt Rosendale, businessman and veteran Troy Downing and former judge Russell Fagg are the main contenders — has been peaceful.
If anything, that may be too rosy a view of Tester’s prospects. The conventional wisdom is that his seat is safe or strong leans Democratic. But he’s a Democrat in a state that’s becoming more Republican, running in a midterm in which turnout may be low, running in an economy that seems to be improving, and running in a state that loves Donald Trump and his rough and raffish ways. I think Tester may be in trouble. Given the stakes, it’s no wonder that Judge, Larson, and the Tester machine have launched an assault on the Greens.