Moderates might not survive state politics in Montana

Democrat Can’t Win in the Eastern District Of Montana, and a Campaign to End Republican Extremism in the U.S.

Montana regained a seat in the House after the 2020 census. Here in the western mountains where I live, the First District could be competitive for Democrats if the college towns and Indian reservations can outflank clumps of Trumpists and armed Christian separatists. But when I asked Dorothy Bradley — a Democratic icon since she got elected to the state legislature as a 23-year-old in 1970 — about the Second District, she replied point blank, “A Democrat can’t win in eastern Montana.”

She is, however, floating a Plan B. In April, Ms. Bradley invited to the Capitol in Helena her opponent in the 1992 gubernatorial race, Marc Racicot, the two-term governor and former chair of the Republican National Committee. In the contest for the House seat in the eastern district, they endorsed an independent, Gary Buchanan, who is running against Montana’s current at-large representative, Republican Matt Rosendale. The Bradley-Racicot endorsement was a singular milestone in Montana politics, as if the C.E.O.s of Pepsi and Coke called a truce to sell some Dr. Pepper.

The president appealed to Republicans and independents to vote for Democrats in the election in order to root out Republican extremists. He did not win any of the popular or electoral votes in approximately 2,500 of the nation’s 3,000 or so counties. While the Republican Party spurns observable reality, the Democratic Party has alienated most of the continent (which is also unrealistic in a republic if governing is the goal). When Senator Conrad Burns was in eastern Montana, there was a lot of dirt between light bulbs. The bipartisan coalition backing Mr. Buchanan and his experiment in south of Utah could be similar to the Democrats allying with Republican defectors.

Rebuke of the Montana GOP: An Example of a Transgender Woman who Voted in Oregon to Defend Democratic Claims against the Bi-Term Limit

She says it boiled down to a few things — the high cost of housing and juggling school and work. She felt like her mental well-being had gone downhill.

When you try to serve in a way that is difficult and then throw on the challenges, it becomes a lot, the young Republican says.

Stromswold voted against her fellow Republicans’ efforts to limit the rights of transgender Montanans and for a Democrat’s bill aiming to protect the rights of minors. She says her style of serving wasn’t right with how people around her would want her to serve.

Stromswold decided to step down earlier this year, because it all became too much. I am a huge fan of principles more than anything. If you’re going to say, ‘it’s my body, my choice, it’s my body, my choice, it’s my body, choice with everything,’ ” she says.

Stromswold says that it makes it more difficult to make policies for the best interest of Montanans. It becomes a lot of political statement legislation.

The number of states under one party’s control is at an all time high, and the number of split legislatures is near a historic low.

In Oregon, a group of retirees formed a political action committee to help moderate Democrats in the state who are becoming harder and harder to find.

Moderate Republicans took a hit in the 2022 midterms in Colorado, a state where Democrats have grown their power in recent years. Colin Larson, a Republican who lost his reelection bid last year, told Colorado Public Radio not having a sane and relevant opposition party will have negative policy outcomes.

Bedey was booed at the Montana GOP convention for suggesting that Montana’s elections were secure. The party also adopted a platform requesting a record to be kept of Republican lawmakers’ votes and how often they deviated from the majority.

The rebuking of Racicot, and the broader trend of the GOP tightening its grip on its members, is not exclusive to Montana, or Republicans, says Montana State University Political Scientist Jessi Bennion.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/21/1164335984/moderates-republicans-gop-democrats-parties-montana-extreme-politics

The Political Party of Montana: Why Tester and Racicot fought in the Slavery and Implications of Extremism in the 1990s

“Separating people into factions and pitting them against one another, and trying to appeal to the worst side of our nature, is not the way to preserve a democracy.”

“More and more, both parties are calling for ideological conformity,” Bennion says. There aren’t a lot of room for a pro-life Democrat these days, compared to 20 years ago when both liberals and conservatives were in each party.

The party wants to expand control, and they want Jon Tester to remain in the U.S. Senate. In order to flip the Senate, Republicans are hoping to pick up a seat held by Tester. Racicot was able to stand in their way.

Racicot says that he’s not going to party over principle. He calls it a “happy coincidence” if someone in his own party “serves all of the interests of the people of Montana well, and if they proceed in a way that’s reasonable and lacks extremism,” but that’s not always the case.

In a Montana that’s growing deeper and deeper red, it’s not clear whether long-time political leaders like Tester and Racicot still have the pull they once did.