Notes and thoughts on Montana's election results

MH will resume the usual cultural coverage next week, once the election results have been talked about.

Congratulations to the star of the night:

That is to say, Tim Fox, who became the first Republican elected Montana's Attorney General since Marc Racicot in 1988 (and really, since Racicot jumped parties to run as a Republican, we may have to dig back even further to find the last life-long Republican elected to that office.) As I have previously noted, Fox is to be commended for his tenacity in pursuing this position over two consecutive bruising election cycles. Sheer willpower is one of the most important traits that someone involved in politics can have, and Fox has proven he has it.

What goes around, comes around:

While things could still change as voting continues in Yellowstone County, Sen. Gary Branae appears to have been defeated by Elsie Arntzen in SD 27 here in Billings. I'm putting this particular Senate race right up front because some things deserve to be remembered, and the back story is one that probably won't get any mention in the mainstream press.

The Democratic Party richly deserves to lose Branae's seat, on a moral and ethical level. He won that seat quite narrowly in 2008, and only because some of the worst personal (and illegal) campaign attacks that Montana has seen in state legislative races.

His opponent, Jack Sands, who is as fine a man as one is likely to meet, had spent time as a public defender, and as such, had represented some unsavory characters in his day. That's the job of a public defender (I pointed this out when being critical of this particular line of attack on Supreme Court candidate Ed Sheehy this year.)

In the 2008 election, the Montana Democratic Party made extensive phone calls to homes in the district claiming that Sands was mixed up with drug dealing. It's not illegal to lie in political materials, of course -- the illegal part was that the callers wouldn't identify themselves, and the caller ID was routed through Romania (yes, that Romania.) Some detective work tracked it down. The hits kept coming, and Branae's weak-kneed and equivocating "protests" about the calls came very late and very timidly -- and only after the damage was fully done.

Control of the Senate was potentially at stake (Republicans gained control anyway, in spite of the huge Democratic wave in 2008 -- Montana was the only state in which the GOP flipped control of a legislative body that year), but more importantly, Democrats surely wanted to keep a talented, moderate Republican lawyer from getting his first toehold into Montana political life -- wouldn't want him to end up as Attorney General or on the state Supreme Court, would we? There are ways for candidates to get word quickly and unequivocally to state parties, telling them they want negative attacks to stop. The party doesn't have to listen, but if the party knows the candidate is going to make a public stink, they will stop. So Branae has absolutely no excuse for not having stopped these attacks, and the Democrats had no excuse for using such dirty tactics.

It is that sort of highly personal smear that discourages good people from running for office. It is sort of like standing there, slapping a tire iron into one's hand, saying -- "nice little reputation you have there... be a shame if anything were to happen to it. You really sure you want to run for office?" One hopes that Branae goes down to defeat in the final count, and that a take-home lesson will be learned -- it is indeed possible to go much too far in a campaign, and what goes around...

Anyway, it was a bit of delicious schadenfreude to see that Branae appears to be losing to one of the best retail politicians that Yellowstone County Republicans have: Elsie Arntzen.

Steve Daines comes through:

We knew he would, but it is still gratifying to see Steve Daines getting ready to head off to Washington as Montana's next U.S. Congressman. He will do us proud and will stay out of any serious trouble -- personally or politically -- leaving him in good position to make a run at either the governor's seat or a U.S. Senate seat in the future. He will be formidable. Right now, our front-line "bench" consists of Daines and Fox, and both have proven their political chops.

Predictions gone bad:

I only missed two calls in my predictions (unless Sandy Welch gets a recount and prevails against Denise Juneau in the State Superintendent race -- I hope I get to be wrong about that one.) Unfortunately, they were the two most high-profile races in Montana -- the U.S. Senate race and the governor's race. Two factors were key:

1. I overestimated Mitt Romney's margin of victory in Montana. While I didn't expect the kind of 40 point victory he got in Wyoming, I expected it to be closer to 20 than to 10. Instead, Romney barely got a double digit win in Montana. The anti-Obama undertow I had expected thus didn't materialize here in Montana, just as it didn't materialize anywhere else in the country. There were bold predictions that Obama would get less than 30% of the vote in Oklahoma and perhaps Arkansas this year, but he easily broke 30 percent in both places. Just an example. Nationally, Romney came up about 3 million votes less than what John McCain managed against Obama in 2008. Very sorry performance.

2. The Libertarian factor bit hard. Add up the Libertarian vote and the Republican vote in both the governor's race and the U.S. Senate race, and there would have been a narrow but clear victory for the Republican candidates. The Tester supporters knew exactly what they were doing, and how to do it. It was sleazy, but it was brilliantly played. The only thing that could have saved the day would have been a personal barn-storming tour by Ron or Rand Paul, urging Montana Libertarians not to be stupid. There is a saying in surgery -- "the enemy of good is better." In a surgical setting, it means that once you have done something right, you don't try to improve on it by cutting just a little more, throwing in just a few more sutures -- more often than not, you will end up with unintended consequences that you won't be happy with.

Libertarians and Constitution Party people are like that in many ways. What they advocate for can often be arguably better than what Republicans deliver, but what really happens is that one gets neither "better" nor "good," but rather, "bad." You don't often see Green Party people splitting the Democratic vote in close elections. They save their posturing for places where the Democrat is sure to win.

One wishes that conservative purists would learn that same lesson.

By no means would Rick Hill or Denny Rehberg have received all of those votes in a two way election. But they would have received the lion's share, and that might have made the difference.

Anyway, I was wrong about these two races, and I feel bad for both candidates. They gave it their all, and we were lucky to have them running.

Initiatives -- go figure...:

So the same Montana electorate that voted for pro-choice Jon Tester and Steve Bullock passed a parental notification initiative for abortion in minors by an overwhelming margin. They voted to uphold the legislature's restrictions on medical marijuana. They voted for pro-Obamacare Tester and Bullock, but also voted to prohibit an individual mandate in health insurance in Montana. They voted for the party of amnesty, and yet they also voted overwhelmingly to restrict state benefits going to illegal aliens. Of course, they also voted not to give constitutional rights to corporations, which leads to the conclusion that Montanans have a tendency simply to vote in favor of just about any ballot initiative that comes in front of them. Hm. Maybe we should collect signatures for a ballot measure banning the Democratic Party.... Just kidding!

Montana Supreme Court

It appears that Laurie McKinnon will win election to the state Supreme Court, for which I am glad, based on what I know. Just having a former District Court judge on the bench will help, as long as she doesn't drink the judicial Koolaid in Helena. Montana's Supreme Court is consistently at or near the top of the list when it comes to the rate of overturning lower court decisions. I remember chatting once with a former Supreme Court justice who had previously been a district court judge. He noted that the other justices who hadn't been lower court judges frequently need to be reminded that appellate courts cannot make new determinations of fact -- that they can only rule on legal and procedural matters and must accept the factual findings of the lower court as binding.

I hope that McKinnon will have the strength of character to stand up -- persuasively (since she will be only one vote) -- on the Supreme Court on behalf of her former fellow District Court judges.

It is critical not just that we have Supreme Court members who think fairly and sensibly. They must also be leaders and be persuasive. Those who don't lead end up following. Consider the other Supreme Court "race" this year, in which Justice Morris ran unopposed for re-election. There were great hopes for Morris, since he had clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist. His subsequent career on the Montana Supreme Court has, by all reports, indicated that he didn't learn anything substantive from Rehnquist -- or forgot it as soon as he arrived on Montana's high court. If there are any examples of Morris issuing stinging and intellectually persuasive dissents to controversial Montana Supreme Court decisions, I've not heard of them.

More on Monday, when we will talk about the Montana PSC situation as part of our energy coverage.

Montana Primary election results -- a preliminary roundup and branding

Image Courtesy of www.old-picture.com

Well, it’s Wednesday, and time for a little Montana politics...

Yesterday was the big day, and the results aren’t final (scroll to the bottom for any updates,) but we’ll make our comments based on the preliminary results. Let’s take it from the top.

U.S. President: As expected, both President Obama and Gov. Romney coasted to easy victories in the Montana primary. Both races are already long over, as they always are here with our June selection date, the exceptions being last year’s Democratic race between then Sens. Obama and Clinton, and the 1976 contest between Pres. Ford and Gov. Reagan.

The interesting points to note are that Gov Romney failed to outperform Sen. McCain’s 2008 performance and that Congressman Ron Paul failed to get as high a percentage as he did in that same election. To be fair, in 2008 it was a head-to-head race between just the two of them, so Paul got all of the non-McCain vote (and McCain got all of the non-Ron Paul vote,) whereas the 32% of Montana Republicans who wanted someone other than Romney had to split up their votes between 4 candidates.

All in all, a solid performance by Romney, one that leaves no doubt that he will have no problem carrying the state in the fall, barring some sort of unlikely meltdown. The real question that is left is whether Romney has his ground game lined up for the Montana GOP convention -- as with many GOP primaries around the country, this primary is a mere “beauty contest.” Even though Paul carried only 12% of the vote, if his forces are well-organized, they could still make a run at capturing the state convention and hence the delegates. We suspect that Romney, unlike the hapless McCain campaign of 4 years ago, has this matter long sewn up, but we shall see.

U.S. Senate: Also as expected, Sen. Tester and Congressman Rehberg won their respective primaries easily. Rehberg’s 75% exceeds Romney’s 68% comfortably, so if there are anything to read in the tea-leaves here, it is that the size of the GOP electorate that is in the mood to vote against the front runner is somewhere around 25-30% -- fairly typical for us cantankerous Republicans. RealClearPolitics has this race as a toss-up, and we have a long slog ahead of us before the contours of the race will become clear. The MH prediction is a narrow win for Rehberg -- he has campaigned and won multiple statewide elections to Tester’s one, and the state is leaning rightward again these days.

U.S. Congress: Steve Daines won the GOP nod easily, as expected, with a comfortable 70% of the vote, again, slightly outpacing Gov. Romney’s total. His opponent appears to be state Sen. Kim Gillan of Billings, who has won a 7-way Democratic primary. At the risk of jinxing the good man, this should be a win for Daines in the fall, assuming he stays the course and runs a solid campaign.

Governor: Former U.S. Congressman Rick Hill appears to have won a 7-way primary to win the GOP nomination. It is a familiar story out of the playbook from 8 years ago, when 3 conservative candidates from Yellowstone County split the vote, allowing Sec. State Bob Brown (a more moderate candidate) to win.

Like Brown in 2008, Rick Hill has been painted as the “moderate “ candidate in this race, even though his positions on the issues seem to be pretty conventionally conservative. His two major opponents (Ken Miller and Corey Stapleton) have been portrayed as the more conservative candidates -- their vote totals combined roughly equal Hill’s.

We have refrained from commenting on the GOP gubernatorial primary (as we generally do with primaries,) but as far as we’re concerned, Rick Hill is a great candidate to end up with. He is what is commonly referred to as a “high-quality candidate,” having won prior statewide races for U.S. Congress, having good name recognition, being well-spoken, and having the connections and organizational ability to raise significant sums of money. We’ll take him enthusiastically. His opponent will of course be Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock -- who is also a high-quality candidate for the Democrats, and for the same reasons.

Land board races: The value of name-recognition helps a lot. It is hard on one to lose statewide races, but even a losing campaign builds name recognition (cf. Gov. Schweitzer). Such is the case with the AG race, where the losing 2008 candidate, Tim Fox, appears to have won the race with Jim Shockley of open-container fame. On the Secretary of State race side, Brad Johnson has won the election comfortably, gaining the opportunity for a rematch of the 2008 race with Linda McCulloch.

PSC Commissioner:

Kirk Bushman is comfortably defeating Al Garver. Good for him. Former Billings Mayor Chuck Tooley will be challenging him. District 2 was designed as a safe GOP seat on the PSC, but this year it looks to be a doozey.

Elsewhere, the inimitable Roger Koopman looks to have won his 3-way primary. It is hard enough to win elections under the of best of circumstances -- and the nomination of Koopman does not create the best circumstances for the GOP.

State Supreme Court: As of this writing, Ed Sheehy and Judge Laurie McKinnon are the two who are likely to advance, but it is still too close to call, with all three candidates neck-and-neck. Certainily hope that McKinnon makes it. We had planned to run an update on the Supreme Court race and specifically the question of Best playing fast and loose with trying to hide her partisan political contributions, with a little help from the Helena IR. But if as it appears, Best will finish 3rd, then it will be irrelevant.

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And for the two greatest pieces of news of the night, Gov. Scott Walker easily defeated the forces of public-union darkness in Wisconsin, and the Boston Celtics held back the forces of basketball darkness in Miami to take a 3-2 lead in the series. The boys in green have the chance to close it out at home in the Garden Thursday night. As some blog-posting Celtics fans have been putting it -- it may be the home of the Heat in South Beach, but “Winter is Coming...”

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Update: Jesse Laslovich has conceded to Pam Bucy in the Democratic race for AG. A few years ago, we would have assumed that Laslovich, a rising star for the Democrats, would have won a race like this walking away. Based on what we’ve read of the two, we would rather have had the more moderate Laslovich than Bucy as AG, but Bucy’s more hard-line approach may be a harder sell to the center-right majority in Montana. It is always hard for a Republican to win the AG race, but it is possible that Tim Fox’s job just got a little easier.

Update: Judge Laurie McKinnon’s lead over Elizabeth Best has grown to more than 3000 votes, with only 5 precincts not reporting. This race is over, and Ed Sheehy and Judge McKinnon will be facing off in the fall for a seat on the Montana Supreme Court. Congratulations to them both, and good luck to Judge McKinnon.

Montana Supreme Court races and Democratic partisan connections -- a curious lack of curiosity from our press

It's Wednesday and time for a little (ostensibly nonpartisan) Montana politics.

Whether at the state level or the national level, our highest courts exert a tremendous influence on our public and private lives. Montana's Supreme Court members are chosen by direct election, and yet, voters tend to be particularly poorly informed about the choices available to them. What little makes its way out into the public consciousness tends, because of the nonpartisan nature of the campaigning, to be less than informative.

In order to get an idea of the judicial temperament and attitudes that a prospective justice will bring to the bench, one must look to peripheral and oblique cues.

In a recent article in the Billings Gazette (written originally for the Helena Independent Record,) the tedious process continues. One reads through the information in the article without gaining much in the way of enlightenment. How would each of the candidates -- Great Falls attorney Elizabeth Best, state public defender Ed Sheehy, and District Judge Laurie McKinnon (pictured above) -- tend to approach issues of jurisprudence that Montanans might be concerned about? Not much there to tell us one way or another.

No, as noted before, we must look to indirect clues.

For example, a letter supporting Elizabeth Best, filled with pleasant platitudes about upholding the Montana Constitution, recently appeared in the Gazette, but one needed to do a little looking to see that the writer is a board member of the Northern Plains Resource Council, an organization whose interests tend to coincide with those of the Democratic Party. Nothing wrong with any of that -- the point here is simply to illustrate the reading of tea-leaves that has to go on in order to figure out who to vote for.

We do learn from the article mentioned above that an organization of which GOP state Sen. Jason Priest of Red Lodge is an officer recently sent out an informational mailer, one that the MH household received, incidentally. From the contents of the mailer, one would gather that conservative types might tend to support Judge McKinnon over the other two candidates for reasons that will be discussed below. Based on the limited information available, she is indeed for now, the MH candidate of choice.

It is interesting that Sanjay Talwani's article for the Independent Record mentions that a GOP senator supports McKinnon, as well as the fact that the mailer in question criticized Sheehy for his work in defending the "Christmas Day Killer." ( Sheehy is of course quite right to defend himself on that particular charge, since a public defender by definition does that sort of thing.)

That is not the interesting point. What is interesting Talwani's failure to mention that the overwhelming thrust of the mailer was that both Elizabeth Best and Ed Sheehy have made numerous political contributions, almost all to Democratic candidates. Judge McKinnon, the mailer points out, has made no political contributions, and thus can justifiably be seen as the least partisan of the three -- something about which those who value the notion of nonpartisan judicial races might be interested.

Why, then, does the article imply a possible (indirect, no less) partisan connection, or at least affinity, between McKinnon and a Republican state senator but fail to mention at all the direct and documented Democratic partisan political connections of Best and Sheehy? It isn't like Talwani had to trust the mailer's accuracy -- political contributions are a matter of open record, and the homework isn't that hard to do. Failure to address any of this suggests an odd lack of curiosity on the part of a Lee newspaper reporter writing a piece destined to appear in most of the state's major newspapers. The question bespeaks imponderables.

Until and unless Montana laws change to a different method of choosing Supreme Court justices, Montanans will have to continue with the games of shadow-boxing, charades, and hidden agendas that characterize these elections. And for now, it appears that the person to vote for is McKinnon.

Montana legislative redistricting -- same song, second verse... ("Muskrat Love?")

It's Wednesday, and time for a little Montana politics.

It has been ten years in the brewing, but the kettle is beginning to boil a bit more briskly on that decennial exercise known as legislative redistricting. We have waxed eloquent on the subject before, here, here, and here.

Tom Lutey's article in today's Gazette peers into the process that is currently under way. Once again, just as a decade ago, the non-partisan staffers did their best in doing the legwork of drawing up reasonable boundaries that meet both the requirements of Montana law and the sniff-test of common sense. Once again, Republicans seem to be content with the results and once again, Joe Lamson (this time actually a member of the commission) has drawn up an alternative plan more favorable to Democrats.

While there has been no direct MH examination of the proposed districts or the details surrounding the process, one gets the impression that Democrats realized that they seriously over-reached ten years ago when they captured that redistricting commission, courtesy of the Montana Supreme Court's appointment of a supposedly neutral 5th member -- who wasn't. Back then, they completely threw out the primary working plan created by staffers (as well as all of the alternative plans) and substituted one drawn up by Lamson, one with gerrymandered districts. Take a look at the famous Senate District 22, that ranges from the Billings suburbs to the outskirts of Miles City, or the even more famous "Muskrat Love" Senate District 16. OK, so it was called the "Muskrat District" because of its shape, but the Democrats apparently did "love" it, so why not a little blast from the past? (No, the Captain and Tennille didn't record it first.)

The current working plan, which basically gets a "good enough" vote from Republicans, Lutey reports as being called the "urban-rural" plan. It mostly follows things like county lines, school district lines, and city council district lines. The clue that Democrats know that they aren't going to be able to get as much this time is provided by the fact that their proposed districts this time vary only by a few percentage points, whereas their plan 10 years ago was designed to get the maximum variation (5 percent either way, allowing Republican-leaning districts to be packed with 10% more voters than Democratic-leaning districts) when it was advantageous to do so.

Yellowstone County and Billings city officials spoke in favor of the urban-rural plan, which was similar to a plan the two governments drew up with help from the Billings Chamber of Commerce several months ago. That plan kept all legislative districts within county lines and generally kept Billings’s districts within Billings.

Let us hope that reason prevails and that the neutral 5th member this year is actually neutral. There is, no doubt, room to do some tweaking here and there to improve the working "urban-rural" plan, but if it is thrown out completely for Lamson's alternative plan...

The stakes are high, and not just for purposes of partisanship, since districts that reflect life as it actually is will provide better representation for the members of that district:

Connie Wardell, a School District 2 board member, said her school district, with a student population larger than the individual populations of 44 counties, needed lawmakers who weren’t serving constituents outside of the immediate Billings area.

“Rarely do schools weigh in, but part of the issue we have with funding now is that our delegation is pulled into other counties,” Wardell said. She supported the urban-rural plan for mostly keeping districts within county and city limits.

Workers' Comp -- more than you might like to know

To check out what would appear to be the rather sorry state of the Worker's Compensation Program in Montana when compared to, well, just about any other state, go to Montana Main Street Blog to take the quiz.

The last question is the kicker: our state Supreme Court, unless it fails to be true to form, will probably put us in an even worse position in the national rankings. Cheery thoughts in a week filled with cheery events.

Charles Johnson on the Dem convention

For some entertaining reading, try this week's "Horse Sense" column by Lee reporter Charles Johnson. As always, it is an understated piece of art, just telling the facts without any commentary -- often more damning to the officious, the sneaky, and the silly than is the editorializing that passes for journalism in much of the main-stream media today.

We read about Democratic Congressional candidate John Driscoll saying "You're looking at a guy that will absolutely end coal burning. I'd shut it down in a heartbeat" and suggesting that there are other uses for the coal. Sure. But how many parents still put coal in the Christmas stockings of their naughty children? The market may be limited for uses that don't involve burning it. It didn't go well with the lip-service that other Democrats, such as the governor, were trying to pay to the coal industry. At least Driscoll is honest about his obstructionism.

We have the chairman of the Montana Democratic Party -- Dennis McDonald -- a California trial lawyer who moved to Montana and bought some cows. Perhaps whoever sold him the cows had a sense of humor, and threw in a gigantic cowboy hat with the deal, just to see if McDonald would wear it. And he does, everywhere he goes.

Without commentary and with a straight face, Johnson reports that McDonald made bold to ridicule "pretend cowboys" in the Republican party, comparing them unfavorably with our Democratic governor, "the real cowboy, the third-generation cattle producer from Geyser." McDonald singled out Denny Rehberg (a "goat-herder") and Taylor Brown (a "disk jockey for the Northern Ag Network.) Did someone forget, by the way, to tell McDonald that this is not a good year for Democrats to be making fun of goat herders? Maybe he didn't get the memo -- but we suspect he will, since a certain Presidential campaign seems not to have a sense of humor.

Last we checked, Denny Rehberg is at least as much a rancher as McDonald is, and he grew up in an Montana agricultural family. Taylor Brown was working cattle on the family ranch in Montana at an age when McDonald was probably goofing off in California. Taylor was working to serve the Montana ag community when McDonald was making a living by filing lawsuits in California (and pocketing more than a third of the plaintiffs' awards.)

But of course, the real irony (which Johnson leaves out on the table, unspoken, for everyone to contemplate) is the idea of Dennis McDonald being some sort of arbiter of who is and isn't a "real cowboy."

Moving on from fake cowboys like Dennis McDonald, there were other goodies, like McDonald citing Linda McCulloch's presence on a powder-puff football team as a job qualification for Secretary of State. And the governor making sure that the governor's office staff turned out for the convention to boost its meager attendance. And the fact that few Democratic state legislators bothered to show up.

Perhaps most amusing was the fact that Democratic AG Mike McGrath, who is running for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, sanctimoniously said that it "violated the judicial ethics code for judicial candidates to attend political party conventions." His opponent, Ron Waterman (also a Democrat,) showed up and spoke at the Democratic convention, just as he had at the Republican convention (where he was warmly received, by the way.)

The amusement comes from the fact that the McGrath campaign had a huge banner sign up for him at the Democratic convention. Funny thing -- McGrath didn't have any presence at the Republican convention. It seems that Ron Waterman is the only one who is in a position to treat this non-partisan Supreme Court race with the dignity and, well, non-partisanship that it deserves.

Cotter's Supreme Court race coming into focus

The Hardliner did a nice job of summarizing Montana Supreme Court Justice Pat Cotter's record of voting overwhelmingly with the desires of the Montana Trial Lawyer's Association and the ACLU. Also pointed out is that the MTLA's PAC spent over $100,000 getting her elected in 2000 -- and as noted, that has been money well-spent.

And Hardliner also reminds us of the huge amounts of PAC money that Montana's trial lawyers dumped into Justice Jim Nelson's re-election in 2004.

We've noted this before, commenting on the ineptness of Republicans in this state when it comes to understanding the impact that judicial races have -- a lesson Democrats didn't need to be taught. Their superior grasp of what was at stake paid great dividends during the last legislative redistricting in Montana, as well as in winning a controversial and critical state House race in 2004.

We also noted, during the discussion over proposed state funding of judicial races, that Democrats may begin to realize that they have been perhaps a little too successful in working the judicial selection and election processes in this state, thus overplaying their hand.

Perhaps it is wishful thinking, but during the last legislative session, the representative of the MTLA admitted in his testimony before the state Senate Judiciary Committee that most Montanans would consider there to be a conflict of interest when lawyers give large amounts of money toward the elections of judges before whom they will hear cases. Might they decide to back off a bit in those contributions? Again, probably wishful thinking.

The MTLA and their PACs will, rather, doubtless be pouring whatever is necessary into getting Cotter re-elected -- she is perhaps the best friend the trial lawyers have on the Court. She has all of Jim Nelson's reliability in voting -- plus she is a whole lot smarter than Nelson, by all reports. In fact, she is reputed to be the sharpest mind on the Court, period.

As we have learned by watching at the national level, it is not just how a justice votes, it is how much clout a justice has in persuading the other justices and in crafting opinions, based on intelligence and articulateness -- of which, again, Cotter has plenty. Rest assured, the MTLA is going to do what they can to get her re-elected.

We hope that a smart and conservative-minded attorney or judge will rise to the occasion and give Cotter a challenge in this race. Cotter may be a fine legal mind, but her votes reflect a judicial philosophy that is anything but restrained, and that is at least as important as intelligence. Democrats agree, otherwise they would like the many brilliant conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Conservatives in Montana need to do several things:

1. Help educate Montanans on the importance of judicial races by illustrating the kinds of decisions that the Montana Supreme Court has made, by discussing the inordinately large percentage of lower court decisions that they overturn, and by pointing out the partisan role they have played -- both in redistricting and in the 2004 legislative race up in Flathead.

2. Educate Montanans on the sheer size of trial lawyer donations that get poured into these races via PACs, which circumvent the limitations on individual contributions to judicial races. We need to make sure that the public has this information, so voters can understand that only one judicial philosophy is getting the vast majority of the ad time in these campaigns -- and that a judicial philosophy is what is at stake.

3. Not attack Justice Cotter personally. From what we understand, Cotter simply believes most of the same things that trial lawyers believe, and did so before she was ever elected. The MTLA put their money on her (and will again) because they knew how she thought and would likely decide cases. This is very different from saying that she decides cases in a certain way because she got certain donations. It will take more than a listing of how she has voted to convince Montana Headlines that she votes the way she does because she is a "bought and paid for" tool of the MTLA. They may have financed her election, but they didn't buy her, in the sense that most people would understand that accusation.

4. Highlight those Supreme Court decisions Cotter played a role in that we feel go against the principles of a restrained and conservative judiciary. Again, this should be a matter of disagreeing with Cotter's judicial philosophy on these cases, not a matter of accusing her being a shill for the trial lawyers.

5. Contribute money and form PACs to help with advertising and education that will counterbalance -- at least somewhat -- what the trial lawyers put into Supreme Court and AG races. This is something we can do even if we don't have a candidate in the race.


Conservatives are way behind in many, many ways in the politics of this state, and the elected judiciary is just one of those areas where Democrats have run circles around us. A long road is ahead -- it's time to get started with this process of education and debate.

As the Hardliner points out, the Montana media isn't going to put the spotlight on the judicial philosophy, the judicial decisions, or even on the money that pours into these races.

That will be up to us.