Chuck Johnson wrote last week that the governor and Roy Brown both have an incentive to come up with primary challengers because otherwise they will have to give back money (more than $200,000 by the governor, about $17,000 by Roy Brown.)
In the piece, he wrote:
The law setting up this campaign finance limit was part of a well-intended, if at times impractical, voter initiative passed by Montana voters in 1994.
Since then, no candidate for governor from either political party has had to give back any money for the lack of a primary opponent. Both parties had contested primaries each election for governor in 1996, 2000 and 2004.
Earlier in the piece Johnson had implied that token challengers would be found in order to save that money:
You can’t help but wonder whether Democrats or Schweitzer will dredge up some sacrificial lamb to take one for the team by mounting a late campaign against him.
Or whether Republicans or Brown will find some nobody to give him a token primary challenge.
That may sound cynical, but it’s worth a lot of hard-raised cash to the two major candidates to have challengers.
Johnson perhaps had advance intelligence about at least one token challenge when he wrote that.
We don't think he meant to imply that the the last three elections had contested primaries in both parties as a way to circumvent campaign contribution limitations. But it could be taken that way by someone who doesn't follow elections closely or remember their details.
At least when it comes to Republicans, consider:
1996 -- a highly popular and undefeatable Gov. Marc Racicot was challenged from his right by Rob Natelson. Racicot certainly didn't need any help, and if he was going to get any, it wouldn't have come from Natelson, as anyone who remembers Natelson's criticisms of Racicot's policies will attest.
2000 -- Natelson again, this time taking on Lt. Gov. Judy Martz in an open race. He carries 43% of the vote. Serious primary.
2004 -- a serious and bruising 4-way primary on the Republican side, which Sec. State Bob Brown carried with a plurality of the vote.
We'll let the Dems speak for their own primaries in the last 3 elections. As we recall, the last one wasn't much of a primary, and the main "gripe" of the guys who lost was that Bohlinger was a Republican -- which only served to help the governor's eventual campaign. But it had the trappings of a serious primary.
But with regard to the current "challenge" to the governor, well, it seems that Johnson was, as is so often the case, spot-on. The question is whether he also knows something about the Republicans' plans.
The Republicans would be completely justified in responding in kind with their own token challenger to Brown, but they might do well simply to play this one straight, since we imagine that most Montanans are not amused by this kind of manipulation of Montana's campaign-finance laws.
