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(Great candidate diary. Glad to have you. I'm going to use this in a tip section on how to write candidate diaries. Lots of information not only about the candidate, but the district, the political lay of the land and the other candidates. - promoted by admin)
Hi, I'm an intern with the Tyler Gernant for Congress 2010 campaign, and I'd like to present our campaign and outline the general conditions of the race. The campaign hasn't pre-read this diary, the diary expresses only my own views and not those of the campaign, and if you're wondering how I got here: CornSyrupAwareness invited me here when I was diarying Tyler over on the Big Orange Satan.
The district
This is the Montana at-Large congressional district.
The largest district in the nation by population and the second-largest (behind AK-AL) by area covered.
Montana used to be a very red state, voting heavily for Bush twice in 2000 and 2004, but that changed. 2006, after the Abramoff scandal, Montanans decided to replace scandal-ridden Senator Conrad Burns with Jon Tester- in a very close election in which arguably the netroots made the difference. Also, former Senate Candidate Brian Schweitzer had been elected to the governorship in 2004 and cruised to reelection in 2008. The second senator besides Tester is, of course, Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus, who got national attention because of his central position in the health care debate.
The state legislature is as close as it gets, with the GOP having a 27-23 majority in the Senate and the House being a 50-50 tie- and the Party of the Governor gets the majority position if there is a tie, so we're in the House majority.
In the last Presidential Election, Montana was surprisingly close and went to McCain by only three points. The next time Obama will certainly focus more heavily on the state and make it once again a battleground.
Geographically-politically speaking, Montana is mainly divided into a very-conservative, rural East, which is more like the Dakotas, and a more moderate Western part, including the very liberal and/or Democratic cities of Butte, Missoula (college town) and Anaconda. The other main towns in the state, Billings, Bozeman, Great Falls and Helena are swing-areas, with Billings typically leaning Republican by a few points.
In the North, there are several Native American reservations, that also mostly allow Democratic candidates to rack up large margins there.
Dennis Rehberg, sitting in the seat since 2000.
Rehberg is a typical Republican, a
racist,
On the heels of the controversy over the Butte comment, the Sidney Herald publisher revealed in an editorial that several years ago Rehberg had commented that Indians just work until they get their first pay check.
On a congressional trip to the Middle East last month, Rehberg left an "Idaho Travel Package" on the airplane seat of Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho.
The contents included a stuffed sheep with gloves attached to it, a Village People CD, books on cross-dressing and sign language, and a T-shirt that reads, "My senator may not be gay, but my governor is Butch."
The shirt referred to Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who was caught in a men's airport bathroom sex sting, and Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter.
The problem with AIDS is you get it, you die, so why are we spending [money on] any people that get it?"
Has he made as much news with his job performance? Wait, what job performance? Read what his own Chief of Staff has to
say about Rehberg's outstanding legislative career:
"Time and again," Rehberg has backed legislation that matters to Montanans, Iverson says. He's sponsored bills to recognize Billings' 125th anniversary, push for a water project in Fort Peck, and congratulate Carroll College's football team for its 2007 league win.
But do we have any chance to unseat him? I think we do. Though Rehberg cruised to election every time since his tough first election in 2000, that's mostly because Democratic challengers have been absolutely uninspiring. The icing on the cake was the 2008 challenger, John Driscoll, who refused to campaign or fundraise and didn't even manage to pledge to vote for himself.
But Rehberg's favorability isn't rosy, according to an
August DailyKos/Research2000 poll: Rehberg comes in at 46% favorable, 45% unfavorable, including a net negative (44/46) with Independents and 25% unfavorability with Republicans (whereas 14% of Dems see him favorable).
There definitely is a chance that we beat him, we just need a serious challenger.
The challengers
There are two main Democrats running in the Democratic Primary. The third one, Melinda Gopher, a Native activist, has declared just two months ago and I don't know anything from her. She didn't file anything with the FEC yet, and doesn't get any press coverage, so it doesn't look like she's getting much grip in the race.
The two main Democrats are:
Tyler Gernant, who I'm working for. He's a 27 year old tax attorney from Missoula, MT, and a third-generation Montanan (something very important in the Western states- family tradition).
He is a progressive Democrat on every issue except gun control (and that is actually not an issue in Montana politics. Everyone owns a gun and hunts. Everyone.), supports for example a strong public option and the Employee Free Choice Act. His base in Missoula, MT, the most progressive city in the state, will certainly help him in the Primary.
When he was a child, his parents had to move to Idaho because there weren't any jobs in Montana. After law school, he was able to make it back to Missoula and has since then lived there. However, after having seen friends face the same situation in the current economic crisis, he decided to run for Congress to make a difference and bring new opportunities to Montanans- caring also about local issues like Rural Revitalization of Eastern Montana and the most promising national issue for Montana: Energy Reform, because Montana has a great chance to get a lot of money from being on the forefront on alternative energies.
Upsides: He's a clean sheet and it is hard to drag him into a mud fight with Rehberg, while he can hit Rehberg pretty hard himself. Also, he is young and has the energy to run a full campaign.
Downsides: He is certainly still very young to run for statewide office, but you shouldn't equate that with inexperience. He has worked in Sen. Baucus' DC office and done a Finance internship with fmr. Sen. Edwards' presidential campaign, for example.
Dennis McDonald, the former Chairman of the Montana Democratic State Party.
His 'base' is in rural Sweet Grass County with a few hundred inhabitants. He's mainly working as a rancher now, before that he was a trial attorney in California, where he was also born.
Upsides:
He probably has a higher profile within the Democratic State Party apparatus than Tyler does, and he doesn't have the age issue to deal with.
Downsides:
There is one double-edged sword to deal with first: His support of single-payer healthcare he was lauded for in the blogosphere. But wait, what did he actually say in an interview about his health care stance?
Expanding Medicare, the federal government's insurance for the elderly, to cover everyone is the way to go, McDonald said. It could be extended to anyone who wants to buy into the system, he said, creating a more cost-efficient system in the long run.
Anyone who wants to keep their current insurance could do so, he said.
";It doesn't take any great change," McDonald said. ";We have the system in place. ... My concern is that without a single-payer system, over the long run, I don't see anything that will result in lower costs."
That isn't single payer. Maybe he came out in favor of what he thinks single payer is, but the whole point of a single-payer system is that you DON'T have to buy into it. Buying into Medicare is not single-payer, providing everyone with Medicare is. He's essentially coming out in favor of a strong public option tied to Medicare rates, like Tyler, but the fact that he doesn't seem to understand the key terms of the Health Care debate is concerning.
He also has a muddy past, that can effectively be used against him by Republicans, and they already do so, even though right now only on the internet: (sorry for posting GOP attack ads here, but I think it's relevant):
Wait. You say this is a silly attack that he can easily deal with? Not so fast, because he obviously can't. In mid-october, he did something he called 'Mopping out Washington' or something like that- he went with three people with mops to Rep. Rehberg's office and tried to protest there. However, the MT College GOP got wind of his plan and caught him there, confronting him with the attack ad above.
And videotaped it. Watch it, it's like a trainwreck.
I don't think that McDonald is fit for a campaign. He obviously doesn't know how to react to a sudden problem and isn't flexible at all- otherwise he wouldn't have tried to hold a 'rally' with three people anyway when he recognized that not more would show up.
If you have any questions, I'd be glad to try to answer them, to submit those I can't answer to Tyler, and do a follow-up later on.
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