Seventy-one-year-old Sen. Max Baucus announced today that he will retire from the senate instead of seeking a seventh term next year. His official retirement statement didn’t really give a reason for his decision, but he faced a potentially rough road to re-election thanks to his growing unpopularity with Democrats and low approval ratings in Montana. In addition, my sources report his wife was all but demanding that he retire.
Former two-term Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, should he decide to run, is the likely Democratic nominee to replace Baucus. Many a Republican legislator will be looking in the mirror today and seeing a U.S. Senator. So, too, I expect, will U.S. Representative Steve Daines, who should be considered the GOP favorite for the nomination.
Baucus’ role in health care (remember how he had single-payer advocates forcibly removed from a senate hearing?) eroded his support among Democrats, as did his views on taxation (remember how he helped pass George W. Bush’s tax cuts?), but his almost comical, fear tinged, pussyfooting on firearms safety legislation may have been the final straw for many Democratic activists (I'm told his name was booed at the Flathead Democrats’ 19 April 2013 spring dinner).
Last week, Baucus joined the GOP filibuster on expanded background checks for purchasers of firearms, but earned gratitude from neither the right nor the left for doing so.
On Sunday, 21 April 2013, the Bold Progressives placed in seven Montana newspapers, including the InterLake, a full-page advertisement (PDF) featuring gun owning Montanans scolding Baucus for joining the filibuster.
And on the internet, the National Association for Gun Rights has been running an ad linking to a page accusing Baucus of being double-faced on the issue:
And your Senator Max Baucus tried to play both sides of the issue...
You see, while he voted against the draconian Toomey-Manchin gun control bill, he voted FOR Sen. Leahy’s so-called “anti-gun-trafficking” amendment.
Designed to sound more “reasonable” to everyday Americans, Sen. Leahy’s “anti-gun-trafficking” bill is more of Barack Obama’s anti-gun agenda.
It would put ordinary gun sellers on par with members of drug cartels and street gangs and would empower Eric Holder’s ATF to harass gun owners for minor oversights.
And years from now, if a gun you sold or traded ends up in the wrong hands, you could be facing 15 years in prison.
Baucus had already raised $4 million plus for the 2014 campaign. I still think he would have won, but the election would have been close. He would have had to work for it, and to work very hard. He appears to have decided, suddenly, that the effort just wasn’t worth it anymore, that it was better to leave while still hale, like Paul Sarbanes, rather than die as another Senator Who Served Too Long, like Carl Hayden, Strom Thurmond, and Robert Byrd, Jr. For that, I salute him.