Money is the mother’s milk of politics — and in the race for Montana’s sole seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, we now know that Republican Steve Daines is well fed, and Democrats Franke Wilmer, Kim Gillan, and David Strohmaier are malnourished. Daines has raised 20 times as much money and has 20 times as much cash in the bank as any of the Democrats (Graph 1).
That could change if the district — the nation’s second largest in area — becomes competitive. But for now, the anemic Democratic fundraising continues a pattern established after Nancy Keenan’s narrow loss to Denny Rehberg in the open seat election of 2000. Keenan achieved functional parity in fundraising in that election, which Democrats expected to win.
After that, demoralized Democrats nominated a series of weak candidates who raised paltry sums (Graph 2) and lost by huge margins (Graph 3). With Rehberg’s decision to run for the Senate seat now occupied by Jon Tester, Montana’s U.S. House seat is open again — but while Daines is on track to raise the $1–2 million he needs to be competitive, Wilmer, Gillan, and Strohmaier are stuck on a siding, tin-cupping for nickles and dimes.
Wilmer and Strohmaier are mining their legislative and city council support bases, Gillan her legislative base plus significant out-of-state support, while Daines is mining the entire state and some out-of-state contributors. For Daines, Wilmer, and Strohmaier the median contribution was $250, with most of the money coming from Montana. Gillan’s medians were higher (Graph 4). Detailed information is online at the Federal Election Commission.
Wilmer has some support in the Flathead, numbering former State Senator Dan Weinberg ($250) and Jane Wheeler ($250) among her contributors.
Almost half of Gillan’s take from listed contributors was from outside Montana. Her contributors include Democratic pollster Celinda Lake ($500), Francis Cote of Blue Shield/Blue Cross ($250), Baucus Billings field rep James Corson (two $200), a Lockheed Martin program manager, and a Great Falls oil business owner. Judging from these contributions, I’d say she’s the choice of the big business interests who contribute heavily to Max Baucus and Blue Dog Democrats.
Strohmaier sports a $2,000 donation from former Democratic U.S. Senator John Melcher.
In this notched box plot, the box encompasses the two middle quartiles, the notch depicts the median, the diamond depicts the mean, the whiskers locate the the 5th and 95th percentiles, and the little circles locate the outliers. The widths of the boxes are proportional to the number of contributions.
Wilmer hired Christensen & Associates, Inc., a Washington, D.C. political consulting firm that numbers former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell among its clients, and NGP VAN, a campaign technology firm that helps candidates get the most out of campaign databases.
Strohmaier and Gillan also hired NGP VAN and I expect that all other serious Democrats that join the race will, too.
I was unable to identify Gillan’s political consultants. Episcopalian Strohmaier, however, appears to have retained the Eleison Group, Washington, D.C. based Democratic consultants who specialize in outreach to “faith based” voters. I suppose that’s not surprising given he earned a masters degree in religion and theology from the University of Montana.
Of the three announced Democrats (Rob Stutz and Diane Smith are considering running), I think Wilmer is the best match for Daines. She’s well educated, well traveled, and has the kind of spunk and easy wit that could leave Daines sputtering during a debate. I don’t yet know whether she possesses the steel and fire to instinctively go for the political kill; whether she’s willing, figuratively speaking, to leave the political battlefield soaked in blood if that’s what winning takes.
But I’m not sure Wilmer’s the best bet for the Democratic nomination, which will be decided in a low turnout primary dominated by traditional Democrats and party activists, and possibly influenced by Republicans bent on electoral mischief. In 2010 Democratic primary voters chose Dennis McDonald — with disastrous results (Graph 3). I suspect that among primary voters, Gillan has the edge.
Gillan strikes me as a conventional politician with close ties to the Baucus wing of the party. That will help during the primary campaign. But she has a lot of baggage — a long record of laws proposed, some passed — and being just another politician will hurt if she runs against Daines. Voters are not looking for another dose of politics as usual.
Strohmaier’s an enigma. His wordy statement announcing his candidacy praised stewardship, said “We have huge challenges facing our state and nation,” then elided specifics on those challenges. And in Missoula he’s earned a reputation for favoring harsh restrictions on personal behavior. He’s too refined for a comparison with William Jennings Bryan, but there is a whiff of Woodrow Wilson about him.
A year ago, reluctantly endorsing Tyler Gernant, I wrote:
We’re in major trouble in this country — in trouble on health care, energy, financial structures and practices, foreign misadventures, and our ability to make decisions — and it seems to me that Gernant either does not understand this, or lacks the courage to say so. We need broad reforms: a single-payer health care system, not Obamacare; an energy policy predicated on a recognition that Peak Oil is a reality; a break-up of the big banks and an end to credit default swaps and other financial nitroglycerin; immediate and full withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan; a U.S. Senate that operates by majority rule unless otherwise required by the Constitution — and we need politicians who understand this, and have the courage and wisdom to say so.
Today our predicament is worse. The Republican Party has degenerated into a cult of Ayn Rand worshipping nihilists hellbent on blowing up our economy in the belief that out of the wreckage a libertarian utopia will emerge. Our president, nominally a Democrat but increasingly a doppleganger for a Manchurian Candidate from Wall Street, is willing to undermine the nation’s three pillars of social insurance: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Stubbornly high unemployment requires a Keynesian remedy, but Congress and the President, in what amounts to an economic murder-sucide pact, are stiffarming Keynes and embracing Ludwig von Mises.
It’s no time for pussyfooters, prevaricators, pattycakers, or little picture politicians. To be successful, Montana’s Democratic candidates for Congress must convince voters that they know the big issues, that they know how to solve them, and then raise both millions of dollars and holy hell.
