How Montana Went To Hell Politically

Montana’s newest member of Congress, Ryan Zinke is a crook. The first Montanan to ever be appointed to the Cabinet, Zinke served— mostly self-served— as Trump’s Secretary of the Interior for about a year and a half... until his shenanigans were even too much for Trump, the most corrupt president in American history. Trump fired him but much like Trump, everything Zinke’s ever done in politics is to distract from his endless political corruption.

On Tuesday, he was on the House floor spewing his MAGA nonsense about a deep state: “There is no doubt the federal government deep state coordinates with liberal activists and uses politicians and willing media to carry their water… In many cases, they want to wipe out the American cowboy completely, remove public access to our lands and turn Montana into a national park.” How does a lowlife and moron like Zinke end up in elected office— especially from a traditionally populist swing state like Montana. Well… for one thing, Montana isn’t really a swing state anymore— and if it’s a populist state, the populism is a much darker kind of populism than it was when Montana was a pro-worker bastion.

In 2020, Trump beat Biden 56.9% to 40.5%, even slightly better than Trump had done in 2016. McCain and Romney each beat Obama. George W Bush won both times he ran and although Ross Perot threw the 1992 election to Clinton (who won with 37.6%), Dole beat Clinton in 1996. Before the quirky Clinton win in 1992, you’d have to go all the way back to LBJ’s win over Barry Goldwater in 1964 to see a blue Montana. Right now Montana has a reactionary Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, 2 right wing congressmen— Zinke and dangerous Nazi Matt Rosendale— a conservative senator in Steve Daines and a conservative Democratic senator, Jon Tester, who is unlikely to be reelected in 2024. The state Senate has 31 Republicans and 19 Democrats and the state House consists of 67 Republicans and 33 Democrats. This is a red state, not a swing state. Montana is only 58% vaccinated and some of the counties are among the most backward hellholes in the country:

• McCone Co.- 18% fully vaccinated (84.7% Trump)

• Garfield Co.- 20% fully vaccinated (94.0% Trump)

• Powder River Co.- 23% fully vaccinated (85.4% Trump)

• Wibaux Co.- 29% fully vaccinated (86.3% Trump)

It wasn’t always like Wyoming and Idaho. It is now.

Yesterday, Abe Streep took a look at what has happened to Montana in recent decades and how a state once known for its political independence took a hard right turn toward Christian nationalism. “[I]n recent years, Republicans have managed to secure an ironclad grasp over state government,” he wrote, “and the religious right is ascendant. ‘We’re a country founded on Christian ideals,’ Austin Knudsen, the attorney general, told me. ‘That’s what’s made us the country that we are.’ In 2021, the Montana Legislature passed a bill banning transgender athletes on sports teams at public schools and universities, an increased tax credit benefiting private Christian schools and numerous anti-abortion laws. ‘They’re trying to convert the state,’ said Whitney Williams, who ran for governor as a Democrat in 2020. When the state GOP gathered in Billings last July to formalize its platform, Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, told those assembled that Montana was ‘a symbol for the nation.’”

And, worse yet, the dominant faction among Republicans is very much a neo-fascist strain. Recently the party’s treasurer, Derek Sees called Montana’s constitution a “socialist rag.” Rep. John Fuller declared that “democracy had failed as miserably as socialism.”

Anti-Jesus American evangelism has wrecked the Montana GOP and is taking the state down the sewer with it. The governor, Gianforte, belongs, wrote Streep, “to a church in Bozeman adhering to a literal interpretation of the Bible that rejects evolution and considers homosexuality a sin… In November, Montana defied the national trend of Republican disappointment. Because of its increased population, the state earned a second congressional seat, which went to Ryan Zinke, who previously served as a U.S. representative before becoming Trump’s secretary of the interior, a post from which he resigned while being investigated for using his office for personal gain. (He has rejected the allegations as ‘politically motivated.’) Republicans won a supermajority of seats in the State Legislature, which means the party has enough votes to put proposed amendments to the State Constitution on the ballot. Duane Ankney, a 76-year-old outgoing Republican state senator, told me last summer that he worried legislators might advance what he called ‘hate bills’ targeting the individual liberties of Montanans. ‘I don’t know why it’s become so extreme.’ he said. ‘What the hell happened?’”

For much of the 20th century, Montana reliably sent both Democrats and Republicans to Washington. Candidates across the political spectrum respected Montanans’ libertarian streak, which was born out of a deep suspicion of corporate power. Montana politics were defined by the period in the early 20th century when mining barons ruled the state, controlling legislators and the local newspapers. In response to the corruption of these “copper kings,” Montana passed a strict campaign-finance law in 1912; it also nurtured a powerful organized labor movement. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat who served as governor from 2005 to 2013, has said that the state’s motto should be: “None of your damn business.”

In 1972, Montanans approved a new State Constitution, updating the one that was ratified at statehood in 1889. Concerns about industrial pollution were peaking in the 1970s, and the new Constitution guaranteed citizens the right to “a clean and healthful environment,” as well as an individual right to privacy that the state Supreme Court later decided, in a 1999 ruling, protected access to abortion.

Though the new Constitution created mechanisms to dissuade partisanship, including an independent commission tasked with redrawing electoral maps every decade, Montana continued to foster strains of right-wing extremism, providing refuge to white nationalists and militias. Montana has the smallest percentage of Black residents in the country, and the largest minority group in the state, Native Americans, have faced entrenched disenfranchisement since securing the right to vote in 1924. The settlement of a 2012 lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act mandated the establishment of polling places on particular reservations, but it remains common for tribal citizens to have to drive vast distances to vote in statewide and national races.

In recent years, the rise of Montana’s Christian right has been enabled by the weakening of the state Democratic Party. It has become harder for Montana Democrats to separate themselves from the national party and, as a result, ticket-splitting has dropped. As the strength of timber and railroad unions has faded across much of the state, the state Democratic Party has refocused its organizing efforts on expanding cities and the growing Indigenous vote. But Ta’jin Perez, who is Totonac Indigenous and the deputy executive director of the organizing group Western Native Voice, told me that those efforts have been sporadic. “Both parties have a really lackluster track record in sustained connection and relationship-building in Indian Country,” he said.

… [In 2020,] Gianforte, after spending more than $7 million on his own campaign, finally emerged victorious in his quest to be governor.

Gianforte’s first months in office were occupied by Covid-related battles. News agencies circulated a photo of the governor receiving a vaccine, but he resisted closing any public institutions, leaving decisions about whether schools would remain open to individual districts. The state Department of Health and Human Services also issued an emergency order instructing schools to consider parents’ wishes about mask mandates, claiming that “the scientific literature is not conclusive” on their efficacy. In response, the Montana Nurses Association accused the state of pushing “junk science.” Infighting at school-board meetings became commonplace. In Montana, as in much of the country, the arguments centered on masks and the teaching of what critics called “critical race theory.” Knudsen, the attorney general, issued an opinion that described certain antiracist programming as “racial harassment,” and Gianforte would later oppose the addition of the word “equity” to a teachers’ code of ethics.

During the 2021 legislative session, Republicans introduced a conservative wish list of bills. Along with the ban on transgender athletes, which has been blocked by the courts, they passed a bill that abolished an independent judicial-nomination commission, allowing the governor to directly appoint judges to vacant positions. Another bill increased the tax-credit limit for a private scholarship fund for K-12 schools from $150 to $2 million by 2023 — a boon to faith-based institutions. A majority of private schools in the state are Christian, and in 2020 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a restriction on Montana religious schools’ receiving funding from such tax-credit programs. (The Alliance Defending Freedom, the religious-liberty nonprofit that the Gianfortes have supported, filed an amicus brief in support of the victorious plaintiffs.)

There were also bills banning same-day voter registration and paid ballot collection— measures that are considered essential for tribal communities because of the great distances between many reservations and polling places. After Gianforte signed the voting restrictions into law, Keaton Sunchild, a member of the Rocky Boy’s Chippewa-Cree Tribe and at the time the political director for Western Native Voice, called the laws “a coordinated, pretty overt way of trying to tamp down the enthusiasm and power of the Native vote.” Western Native Voice, along with other advocacy groups, filed suit, and a judge has since blocked the laws as unconstitutional.

…Montana’s new right-wing Montana’s new right-wing stridency, together with the Covid-era surge in remote work and the popularity of “Yellowstone,” has encouraged the influx of new residents. Data about their political leanings is difficult to come by, but in May, Knudsen pointed to the strong Republican showing in the 2020 elections as evidence that conservatives were seeking shelter in Montana. In 2021, Flathead County, which is deeply conservative, surpassed the majority Democratic Gallatin County, home to the tech hub of Bozeman, in its rate of population growth.

As the Montana Republican Party has strengthened its hold on power, the coalition’s existing fissures have widened. Over the course of the three-day platform convention in Billings this summer, numerous speakers appeared to be trying to outdo one another in their performative anger, and it was apparent that the enemies were not limited to the left. Even Skees, the provocative party treasurer, seemed to be watching his right flank. At the time of the convention, he was awaiting the results of a recount of a tight primary race for a seat on the public-service commission, which regulates utilities. “Derek Skees was always a hard-right guy,” said one state Republican official, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. “But now he’s being called a RINO!”

… Bill Lombardi, a longtime Democratic operative, said the party was “institutionalizing losing.” Jon Tester, the Democratic U.S. senator, said that candidates need to campaign harder: “It’s a matter of getting out and meeting people where they’re at.”

For some, a larger, existential question loomed: whether Montana itself had undergone a spiritual transformation. Schweitzer, the former governor, was one of those longtime party stalwarts who thought the pendulum would swing back toward moderation. “Montanans are still the same,” he said. “The Montana Democratic Party took the year off.” But Jason Small, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and a moderate Republican state senator, told me he sensed a more fundamental shift. “One of the Montana values is, if you’re neighbor’s not hurting you, you leave them alone,” he said. “Well, what I see is less of that and more of, ‘You’re just going to do it my way.’”

The Democratic Party sucks so bad that I have to wonder if this will just happen everywhere, the way it has in former Democratic Party bastions like Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Long Island...