Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
On paper, Frank Garner is the more impressive candidate in Kalispell’s new House District 7 (same boundaries as the present HD-8). A affable former police chief with wide experience in civic activities, he’s well known and well respected by both Democrats and Republicans. One doesn’t doubt he would hold his own as a legislator.
His opponent, Ronalee Skees, lacks as impressive a résumé. She’s best known as the wife of Derek Skees, the tea party Republican elected to HD-4 in Whitefish in 2010, and now running for Montana’s Public Service Commission in District 5. That doesn’t mean Ronalee wouldn’t cut the mustard in Helena, but it does mean that voters making their choice on the basis of the candidates’ experience accept more risk if they choose her.
But the better candidate according to the conventional wisdom doesn’t always win:
Delaware, 2010. Long time Republican Rep. Mike Castle lost his U.S. Senate primary to tea party glamour girl Christine “I am not a witch” O’Donnell. Democrat Chris Coons won the general election by 16.6 percent
Nevada, 2010. Republicans nominated tea partier Sharon Angle, who warned that threats to liberty could require a “Second Amendment Solution,” to run against incumbent Democrat Sen. Harry Reid. In November, Reid, reckoned a goner by some, won with a majority and a 5.6 percent margin.
Indiana, 2012. Long time incumbent U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, the 80-year-old dean of Republican foreign policy, lost his primary to Richard Murdock, who volunteered that pregnancy resulting from rape was God’s will. The voter’s will in November was Democrat Joe Donnelly, who won approximately 50 percent of the vote over Murdock and a Libertarian who received 5.7 percent of the vote.
Missouri, 2012. Early polls reported incumbent Democratic Sen. Clair McCaskill could lose her re-election bid. But the Republicans nominated Rep. Todd Akin, a tea tinted legislator who asserted that female biology prevented raped women from becoming pregnant. Akin’s ignorance of reproductive biology led to his losing to McCaskill by 15.8 percent in November.
In the Flathead, three primary elections illustrate how potent ideology is, and how it can trump the conventional credentials sections of the candidates’s résumés.
House District 10, 2006. Hard right Republican Mark Blasdel defeated 2-term incumbent moderate Republican Bernie Olson 1,446 to 765. Blasdel went on to serve four terms in the Montana House and now is challenging former Kalispell mayor Tammi Fisher in the Republican primary for new Senate District 4. As I noted on 10 January, Fisher, who works for the Kalispell Regional Medical Center, favors expanding Medicaid in Montana while Blasdel adamantly opposes Medicaid expansion.
Senate District 3, 2012. Incumbent Republican Bruce Tutvedt, a self-described, and generally considered, conservative, and member of a prominent Flathead Family barely survived a challenge from the right by well funded newcomer Rollan Roberts. Tutvedt won with a 45 percent plurality, receiving just 166 more votes than Roberts. Had 545 not voted for another far right challenger, Jason Priest (now chairman of the Flathead Valley’s Republicans), Roberts would now represent SD-3. Outside groups opposed to sex education in public school spent tens of thousands in an ugly campaign (story 1 — story 2) to defeat Tutvedt.
Senate District 6, 2012. Rep. Jana Taylor, a staunch and sometimes wacky conservative who fears assaults on liberty of the black helicopter genre, defeated appointed incumbent Carmine Mowbray (R-Polson) in the Republican primary. The same outside groups that attacked Tutvedt — groups expressly organized to defeat Tutvedt and Mowbray — campaigned against Mowbray with virtually identical literature and tactics. The Flathead’s HD-10 and Lake County’s HD-11 comprise SD-6. There was a large Democratic crossover vote for Mowbray in the primary.
Like their counterparts in Delaware, Indiana, Missouri, and Nevada, Republican primary voters in the Flathead consistently prefer the candidates with the most conservative ideology. That does not bode well for Garner, Fisher, and in new HD-11, Albert Olszewski, MD.
In the Garner-Ronalee Skees and Fisher-Blasdel match-ups, Democratic crossover votes could be a factor unless there are spirited Democratic primaries. How much of a factor is anyone’s guess. Some Democrats with whom I've spoken about HD-7 favor crossing over to help Skees, thinking she would be the weaker candidate. Other Democrats favor helping Garner, thinking he would be a better legislator.
I prefer that partisans stay home, that they vote in their own party’s primary.
I would be surprised, incidentally, if Garner were to endorse a Democrat if defeated by Ronalee. If he did that, he’d be drummed out of the Republican Party in a tar, feathers, and teabag parade down mainstreet at high noon.