Campaign Beat is MTPR's weekly political analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined by Rob Saldin of the University of Montana’s Mansfield Center and Political Science Department, and Seaborn Larson, Senior Reporter at Lee Newspapers’ Montana State News Bureau.
Sally Mauk Rob, Republican Senate candidate Kurt Alme, weeks after filing for the office, has finally surfaced with some interviews and a campaign ad. He has a little bit of catching up to do.
Rob Saldin Yeah, Sally. Let's just remember how this started. In the 10 minutes before the filing deadline, this guy went from a total unknown to somehow being the strong favorite to become Montana's next U.S. senator. And then he promptly disappeared for weeks. So, this certainly is a welcome proof of life. Obviously, whatever else might be said, this is a highly unusual campaign launch although they may think, with some reason, that they don't really need much of a campaign here. But it obviously hasn't tamped down any of the criticism of the way Daines and Alme orchestrated this thing. Of course, Alme doesn't face a serious primary challenge and there's a long time to the general election, so this may be long forgotten by November.
Sally Mauk His campaign ad, Rob, is well-produced, I think, and a good introduction to his biography. He mentions a life of service and faith, and he hints at his policies. Here's an excerpt.
Kurt Alme ad 'President Trump nominated me to serve as United States attorney twice because he knew I would stand for law and order. As state budget director, I helped balance the budget and deliver real tax relief for Montana families because I know that it's not the government's money, it's yours. Now I'm running for Senate to stand with President Trump to make our community safer, support our law enforcement, make life more affordable and protect our Montana way of life.'
Sally Mauk Rob, he mentions President Trump more than once.
Rob Saldin Yeah, Sally. Overall, it's a classic feel-good positive ad looking to introduce the candidate to voters. The visuals are all nice and everything like that. Overall, there's not much controversial here. The one exception, as you note, of course, is the unmistakable signal that Alme sends that he's a strong Trump supporter. But then again, that's certainly not surprising for someone selected by Daines.
Sally Mauk The Senate race came up at a forum in Helena last week, Seaborn, featuring former governors Steve Bullock and Mark Racicot and former Senator Jon Tester. And they were each asked who they will support in the Senate race, and only Racicot was outright endorsing independent Seth Bodnar. Bullock and Tester hedged, but Tester had this response to a question from MTPR's Shaylee Ragar about supporting Bodnar.
Jon Tester "I have not endorsed, at this moment in time, Seth Bodnar for the U.S. Senate. I want to see what he does. It takes a lot of work to win a U. S. Senate race, but I want to see he's doing. If he gets out there and busts his ass, I probably will."
Sally Mauk 'He probably will' endorse Bodnar, Seaborn.
Seaborn Larson Yeah, Sally, last week's event was, as my colleague Carly Graf put it, 'like a night lifted from a different era in Montana politics', with Tester and Bullock and Racicot leading the discussion there at Brothers Tap House, that's a bar Bullock owns with his brother in the Gulch in Helena. By all accounts, the crowd had a lot of energy at the event. Bodnar's campaign has been a really interesting question for folks in the center and in the left of Montana politics the last couple of months. The Democratic Party's candidates don't appear well positioned to win right now. So, would Democrats rather see a Democrat win or a Republican lose? Racicot was the most full-throated in his endorsement of Bodnar. He called him an 'exceptional candidate' as a veteran and a businessman. Tester is already sort of on record with a text that was leaked several months ago, talking about Bodnar as the best chance to win. That was when Daines was still in the race, but fast forward to this event, and Tester said, basically, come August, if you don't have momentum, you should get real and back out. And I read that as him telling Democrats to essentially coalesce the non-GOP vote behind Bodnar if their Democratic candidates don't get into some momentum here. Bullock was a lot less direct. He said people should get behind the best candidate for Montana and said there's a lot of time yet to see who that is.
Sally Mauk Switching to the western district House race, Seaborn, Republican candidate and current Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen continues to face criticism over some postcards she sent out to voters. What's latest on that?
Seaborn Larson Right. In the last week we learned that these mailers issued by the Montana Secretary of State's office were paid for using federal grant funding. There's still a lot of questions around that. So a quick recap here for listeners: in January, Montana Secretary of State, Christi Jacobsen sent about half-a-million mailers to registered voters in Montana. Jacobsen, a Republican, is on these postcards posing with President Donald Trump and the text talks about her office working with the feds to verify citizenship status for Montana voters. There's language on there about how her office will not tolerate non-citizens voting, and that's always been the case, by the way. The cost of these mailers was a little shy of $200,000, Her name and image next to Trump certainly gives these postcards a campaign vibe, although Jacobsen's office has said this is simply voter outreach. But since these mailers went out, Jacobsen is now running for Congress in Montana's western district.
So, with those things in mind, folks have been wondering how this all got paid for. And the Secretary of State's office has been less than eager to talk about that with reporters, with lawmakers, or with legislative auditors. At last, this last week, we learned through a records request that the Secretary of State's office finally paid that bill using federal grant funding from a program called the Help America Vote Act. People refer to it as HAVA. It's doled out every year to help states improve elections administration. You look at the strings attached to that money, and it can be used for voter education, but not electioneering. Legislative auditors took a look at the program this week and said in a memo obtained by our Victoria Eavis, that normally spending on this HAVA grant would not fall under the annual audit, but in this case it will be, because there are some questions around the cost exceeding $25,000 here, and because the auditor's office said 'the incomplete and untimely response', from the Secretary of State's office on this matter has inspired them to look further into it.
Sally Mauk Rob, Jacobsen has a campaign ad out that in a short one minute shows her running a chainsaw, shooting a gun, chopping wood, riding an ATV, riding a horse, and fishing. I got exhausted just watching it.
Rob Saldin Right Sally, she's ticking a lot of boxes in that spot. One that you didn't mention is she apparently felt the need to also get some exercise, so she went out for a jog. But beyond what seemed to be a very busy day, the theme that stands out here in this ad is that Jacobsen is presenting herself as the outsider candidate. In one sense that does seem like a bit of a stretch. After all, this very ad prominently features Trump himself endorsing Jacobsen two years ago, and it's a little hard to say that you're not part of the establishment, or not part of the political crowd when you've got the former president and the then-Republican presidential nominee endorsing you at one of his rallies.
Sally Mauk Jacobsen's ad, Rob, also references President Trump more than once. Here's an excerpt.
Jacobsen ad 'As Secretary of State, she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with President Trump, securing our elections and cleaning up Montana's voter rolls. Now, she's ready to take that fight to Washington and take on the establishment Republicans again.'
Sally Mauk But in the end, Rob, she did not get President Trump's endorsement.
Rob Saldin That's right, Sally. Aaron Flint is clearly the insider pick this time, everyone is lined up behind him, including President Trump, which does make this ad a little bit awkward for those who are following along at this level of detail and remember what was going on two years ago. But in any event, Jacobsen because of that, because the establishment has not lined up behind her this time, she does have a claim to be the outsider anti-establishment lane this time regardless of what happened two years ago. And there is always an audience for that outsider, anti-establishment candidate.
Sally Mauk Lastly, Seaborn, last week we talked about the Gianforte administration banning weekend protests at the Capitol, but they've since walked that back.
Seaborn Larson Right. The Montana Free Press has been really leading coverage on this and JoVonne Wagner reported earlier this week that Governor Greg Gianforte's Department of Administration has entirely reversed that controversial policy to terminate permits for weekend rallies at the Montana State Capitol. Last week here, we talked about how DOA Director, Misty Ann Giles, had sort of played footsie with the whole thing, acknowledging they had the wrong idea, but not really willing to say exactly what the administration's next steps would be. The initial decision to close down shop on the capitol complex over the weekend was described as a cost-saving measure because the administration didn't quite have the staff for things outside of the Monday through Friday 9-5. Montana has a history of citizenship that gets really involved in politics, and Giles said that the approach to these rallies on the capitol lawn on weekends was an outlier from other states. But after some pushback, DOA reversed its policy and the No Kings rally planned for this weekend is officially on.
Sally Mauk Well, Rob, it will be interesting to see what the turnout will be for this weekend's rallies, both in Montana and nationally, and what the impact of Trump administration policies like the Iran war will be on Montana's congressional races. Is it too soon to tell?
Rob Saldin Well, probably a little but here's the thing that stands out to me, Sally. It's all pushing in the same direction. It's all reinforcing the same dynamic that's in place in this election cycle. In addition to the standard midterm effect, we've got a shaky economy. We've got the president with low and declining approval numbers. We've now got an unpopular war. We’ve got noticeably higher gas prices and so on and so on. It's bad for Republicans and good for Democrats. And when everything is moving in the same direction like this, it can turn into a downward spiral and build a narrative that's just very hard to dislodge once it settles in. Additionally, while it is a long time to November, it might be a little closer than we think. There's an old adage among campaign pros that voters make up their minds by Labor Day. And there is some empirical evidence that backs that up. So there may be a bit less time for Republicans to right the ship here than it seems.
That said, Sally, there are a couple of red flags out there for Democrats right now. First, this is still Montana. Even if the election does end up being something we could reasonably characterize as a national landslide, it's not clear that that's going to trickle so far down that it makes races in places like Montana competitive. Second, just at the national level - usually when things are going as bad as they are right now for one of the parties, you'd expect the other party to see their approval ratings ticking up. But we aren't really seeing that for Democrats right now. So just because the Republicans are flailing, it doesn't mean that that support is transferring to the Democrats. And to go back to the Senate race that we were talking about at the beginning, that would, I think, have to be part of the theory of the case behind Bodnar running as an independent. This is a bad year for Republicans, yes, but it doesn't mean that Democrats just automatically pick up those voters who abandoned the GOP. There might be a lane here for an independent, I think that's at least part of a strategy at work.
Sally Mauk If there was a lane for independents, that would buck all historical trends in Montana.
Rob Saldin It sure would.
Sally Mauk Well, guys, we're out of time. Thank you, and I'll talk to you next week.
Campaign Beat is MTPR's weekly political analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined by Rob Saldin of the University of Montana’s Mansfield Center and Political Science Department, and Seaborn Larson, Senior Reporter at Lee Newspapers’ Montana State News Bureau.
