16 March 2023
After the 2020 Democratic debacle in Montana,
Brady Wiseman warned us the apocalypse had arrived
By James Conner
Writing in Medium after the Republican sweep in Montana in 2020, former Bozeman Democratic state representative Brady Wiseman said:
Oh, Montana. You’ve Stepped In It Now.
Last week Montana voters decided that our political status quo should be burned to the ground.
We tipped over the balance of power that has governed the state for sixteen years: Republican legislatures and Democratic governors. Tipped it over like an outhouse on Halloween. We will have a Republican governor and large Republican majorities in the Legislature starting the first week of January, 2021.
I believe a majority of us will regret it.
What would the freed from a Democratic governor’s veto Republicans do? Wiseman laid it out:
We just elected the most reactionary governor in 30 years. And the Legislature? Our Republican legislative caucuses have self-selected the most extremist, right-wing membership for two solid decades, driving out the moderates among them. These are not your Main Street, country club Republicans. This is an ideologically driven wrecking crew. They will interpret their victory as an undeniable mandate to bust out their sledgehammers and spark up their cutting torches.
Plainly speaking, we are about to be governed by the most extreme faction among Montanans at large.
We don’t have to speculate about what this crew is going to do. They’ve been telling us for a long time. For sixteen years they have trumpeted their rhetoric, and introduced and passed a large number of right-wing bills, only to have them vetoed by Democratic governors. That check and balance is now wiped out. Stand by for an onslaught.
The onslaught came in 2021, and it’s come again in 2023.
As reported in the Daily Montanan, the Montana Free Press, and Montana’s major dailies and weeklies, in the first half of the 2023 legislature, the Republican majority enacted sweeping income task and business property tax cuts, and voted to send to the taxpayers, including those not hurting financially, the lion’s share of the $2 billion budget surplus that could best used for infrastructure repair and improvement, health care, and solving problems like the state hospital at warm springs.
That was accompanied by the whooping through of bills, like SB-99, aimed at minorities despised by the religious right. The larger purpose of these bills is forcing Democrats to defend against them, to try to justify raunchy, disgusting, unpopular behavior, thereby establishing Republicans as the guardians of decency and public morality; as the men and women who will prevent weak children and teenagers from being ruined by drag shows
Only a few perennial right wing bills such as a right to work act, efforts to require a painful end of life, and an attempt to remove de facto obstacles to lethal injection capital punishment, failed.
But HB-755, which would have replaced elected public service commissioners with commissioners appointed on the basis of professional credentials, was shot down in committee by Republicans.
And HB-598, which would outlaw ranked choice voting (instant runoff) was passed by the house although Montana’s constitution needs to be amended before RCV can procede.
As I noted earlier this week, SB-458, an attempt to make the creation story in Genesis a part of Montana law by decreeing that there are only two sexes, male and female, the biological facts notwithstanding, is moving forward on a wave of moral panic and, frankly, misinformation and ignorance. A companion bill, SB-99, that would deny the best medical care to children with gender dysforia, also is moving forward on a wave of moral panic.
The goal of the radical Montana Republicans?. Whittling down government to a police force and a road repair department, and replacing everything else with private enterprises and charities that depend on donations from the willing, not on tax revenues collected by force of law from the selfish.
The Democratic Party’s response
Outnumbered and outgunned, Montana’s Democrats can do little except observe, object, and try to limit the damage. They’re doing a decent job of that thanks to (a) the kind of motivation provided when one’s back is against the wall, and (b) a fairly sophisticated system for generating testimony and comment supporting their programs and opposing the craziest bill. But they’re going to lose most battles because they don’t have the votes.
For the last decade, a large faction of the MDP pretty much gave up trying to win a majority. Instead,they believed they could win through a de facto coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans. And sometimes, that worked. But it should be clear now that worked mostly because Democratic governors Schweitzer and Bullock could, and would, veto the worst legislation. Greg Gianforte will not — and that unwillingness to rein in the wildest of his party has emboldened far right legislators to lose all restraint.
Unless Gianforte decides to run for the U.S.Senate seat now occupied by Jon Tester — I doubt he will; he has an executive’s personality, not a legislator’s — he’s likely to win a second term in 2024. Thus far, I’ve heard only one Democratic name that would make that election interesting.
Therefore, Montana’s Democrats must whittle down the Republican margins in the legislature. That has to start with running candidate in all legislative districts, even the districts where the odds of winning are next to zero. When Democrats run in those districts, their name on the ballot is the flag that reminds voters that there is a two party system, and Democrats, everywhere, not just in Montana’s urban areas.
There is, I think, an increasing awareness among Democrats that a candidate in every district is mandatory, but an accompanying confusion and uncertainty on how to do that. But how to do it is fairly simple. Democrats must recognize that in deep red district, Democratic candidates win simply by being on the ballot. Their presence on the ballot proves there’s political competition everywhere. Those candidates might not win the election, but by running they establish themselves as men and women of political courage — and that makes them winners.
Finally, Democrats must try to win the legislative seats now held by so-called moderate Republicans. I know of a couple of cases where a Democratic legislator asked his county’s central committee not to recruit a Democrat to run against a Republican. That’s a betrayal of a political party’s responsibility to do everything legal and moral to win a majority.
It will take several election before Montana’s Democrats win legislative majorities and win back the governor’s office. But if they keep hope alive, if they realize they cannot enact a Democratic agenda with a Democratic minority and a few so-called moderate Republican, they will begin whittling down that huge Republican majority.
And on this, I’m putting my money where my mouth is. If I survive my heart surgery and recover fully, I will file for my legislative district if no Democrat does. I might not win, but I’ll raise the right kind of ruckus.