The Daines Switcheroo

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Manu Raju at CNN:

GOP Sen. Steve Daines made the last-minute decision to abruptly pull out of his Senate race to prevent Democrats from fielding a top recruit for the open Montana seat, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Daines was aware that if he withdrew too soon then Democrats would have a chance at fielding one of several potential Democrats — namely former Sen. Jon Tester or former Govs. Brian Schweitzer or Steve Bullock. Any of those Democrats could have put the state on the map in the midterms and likely have sucked up enormous cash, as Democrats have done in red states like Alaska and Ohio, scrambling the race for the majority in the fall.

Instead, Daines withdrew from the race minutes before the Wednesday evening filing deadline. Kurt Alme, who was US attorney in Montana, filed to run eight minutes before the deadline. With the deadline closed, no top-tier Democrat can now jump in the race.

While Daines taped a video recently in Montana explaining his decision not to run, he didn’t know until after Alme resigned as US attorney Wednesday afternoon that he planned to run for the seat, the sources said. Daines planned to run for a third term if Alme had passed on a bid, according to the sources.

President Donald Trump was aware of the internal deliberations, as were Senate GOP leaders, and the president issued a Truth Social post praising Daines and endorsing Alme minutes after the filing deadline closed.

Trump said on social media that Daines had decided to “pass the torch” to Alme.

Democrats sharply criticized Daines and the GOP for engineering a move to anoint a successor and deny voters a chance to consider from an array of candidates, including in the primary. But it resembles a similar move made last year by Democratic Rep. Chuy Garcia in Illinois.

The timing of the announcement quickly drew criticism from another candidate in the race, independent Seth Bodnar, who said in a statement that Daines “has so little respect for Montana Republicans that he withdrew at the last minute to coronate his handpicked successor instead of giving them a voice at the ballot box.”

CNN reached out to Daines’ office for comment.

Tester and the Democrats' Rural Retreat

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Carl Hulse at NYT:

Just 20 years ago, two Democratic senators represented both North Dakota and South Dakota — including the party’s Senate leader. Each state also boasted a Democratic House member. Nebraska had a Democratic senator and only a few years earlier had two. Today, those states are represented in Congress entirely by Republicans.

...

“Democrats are increasingly perceived as elite and focused almost exclusively on urban matters,” said Tom Daschle, a former South Dakota senator who served as both minority and majority leader before being narrowly defeated in 2004. “Rarely do national Democratic candidates spend time in rural America, and that ‘flyover’ perception continues to increase the perception of this divide.”

The disconnect is as much cultural as political.

“These are interior states, and a lot of people in the interior don’t trust the elites on the coasts,” said Mr. Baucus, who served as the U.S. ambassador to China after leaving the Senate. “They feel kind of put upon and that nobody cares.”

...

Then there’s the fact that Mr. Tester is trying to win a fourth term in a state that has moved sharply to the right. Unlike other rural states, Montana’s evolution has been fueled not by an exodus of voters, but by a steady influx of new conservative residents who are much more aligned with the MAGA movement. Democrats worry that these voters are unflinching Republicans who are strongly supportive of Mr. Trump and are not familiar with or interested in Mr. Tester’s long history in the state or Montana’s tradition of political independence.

“They don’t know Jon, and they are Republicans,” Mr. Baucus said.

Native Americans in Montana

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Natalie Fertig at Politico:

Native Americans are always an important voting bloc in Montana, where they make up 6.5 percent of the population, per U.S. Census data. But this November, their involvement could potentially impact the entire nation.

Control of the Senate may hang on the outcome of the Montana Senate race, where Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is up for reelection in this reliably red state, likely facing off against Republican Tim Sheehy, whom former President Donald Trump has endorsed. Trump won Montana by nearly 17 percentage points in 2020, and Tester won by 3.5 percentage points — or nearly 18,000 votes — in 2018. Montana’s tribes comprise about five percent of the voting bloc, nearly twice the margin by which Tester won his last race.

Native voters are “hugely important to the Democratic base,” says Jim Messina, an Obama White House alum and former adviser to Tester with deep political roots in Montana. Tester ousted Republican Sen. Conrad Burns in 2006 in part by siphoning off some of Burns’ support among Native Americans. “Tester was able to cut into that bloc and really move them towards him,” Messina says.

But turnout could be a problem.

To rectify this, Montana Democrats are rolling out their largest-ever Native voting initiative, planning to invest more than $1 million over the next six months. That’s nearly double the $600,000 they had to target Native voters during the 2018 campaign. (The Montana GOP did not respond to multiple requests for an interview about their efforts to woo tribal voters.)

As a longtime advocate of Native Americans in politics, Blackfeet tribal member Michael DesRosier is a true believer in the power of the indigenous vote.“We have the numbers,” the former Glacier County commissioner says as he sits in the county office, one brown cowboy boot-clad foot propped up on the other knee. “That’s the quandary here: getting them out to vote.”

Problematic GOP Senate Candidates

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. Several Republican Senate candidates are having problems. 

Republican (Former Congressman Mike Rogers) hoping to represent Michigan in the U.S. Senate suffered a setback to his campaign this week after facing allegations that he lives in Florida.
https://t.co/gHgZi0jF5C

— Karol Cummins (@karolcummins) April 10, 2024

In Montana, GOP recruit Tim Sheehy is having trouble explaining what he had claimed was a war wound.

Sheehy apologized and asked for leniency after alleged 2015 gun incident https://t.co/hEahHtNnho

— Liz Goodwin (@lizcgoodwin) April 17, 2024

Former baseball star Steve Garvey, who is running against Adam Schiff for Senate, has owed millions in back taxes since the 1980s

Garvey has had more than 40 tax liens, federal and state, totaling nearly $4 million

He’s still trying to pay off the debthttps://t.co/wVkKgtvfGf pic.twitter.com/i5Sfc6OwJO

— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) April 17, 2024

In June 2022, Kari Lake praised the 1864 anti-abortion law as “great legislation already on the books” and said politicians should do the right thing despite polling and protests.

Lake: “Arizona will not be a state where abortions are happening.“ pic.twitter.com/usYACHCPUL

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) April 10, 2024

Arizona Senate hopeful Kari Lake (R) suggested that supporters “maybe strap on a Glock” after saying the “next six months is going to be intense” ahead of the 2024 election. https://t.co/hLDrY2Ng8R

— The Hill (@thehill) April 17, 2024

Montana and the Senate

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

Nate Moore at The Liberal Patriot:

Republicans are clear favorites to win the U.S. Senate in November. Practically guaranteed to flip Joe Manchin’s West Virginia seat, the GOP is turning west to Montana for their majority-making win. Despite a formidable Democratic incumbent in Jon Tester, Montana was a Trump +16 state four years ago and is the party’s best bet for that crucial 51st seat.

First, let’s look at the fundamentals. As recently as 2012, the Senate was littered with red-state Democrats. That year, Democrats won in Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Indiana, and West Virginia—all with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket. Twelve years later, these electoral over performers are a dying breed. Claire McCaskill, Heidi Heitkamp, and Joe Donnelly all lost in 2018, despite a blue wave. Red-state hopefuls in 2016—like Evan Bayh and Jason Kander—came up short, dragged down by the top of the ticket.

In 2020, Senate Democrats poured hundreds of millions into South Carolina, Kansas, and Iowa—only for star recruits to run even with Biden. This ever-increasing alignment between presidential and down-ballot results highlights just how steep a climb Tester faces this cycle.

Tester’s 2012 plurality win, while impressive, is no sure sign that he will again triumph in a presidential year. The 2020 Montana Senate race offers more recent evidence: popular two-term Governor Steve Bullock lost to Republican Steve Daines by double digits. Bullock did outrun Biden, but not by nearly enough.

+ 

#MTPol: "Jon Tester worked with Republicans, fighting to shut down the border...and he fought to stop President Biden from letting migrants stay in America."

Tester (D) is up with a new ad that distances himself from Biden. Tester has reserved $14.5M in ad spending for #MTSen. pic.twitter.com/tk0tMrZin9

— AdImpact Politics (@AdImpact_Pol) April 10, 2024

Roots of Rural Resentment

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  

Democrats have paid a steep price for their withdrawal from rural America.

Lloyd Green at The Guardian:

The fact is, residents of Republican-run states are more than 20% more likely to join the military and after Iraq and the great recession, the disconnect between white rural America and coastal and cognitive elites swiftly became a chasm.

In 2016, parts of the US that felt the effects of the 9/11 wars more as reality than abstract moved to the Republican column. According to Douglas Kriner of Boston University and Francis Shen of the University of Minnesota, “Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan could very well have been winners for [Hillary] Clinton if their war casualties were lower.”

Wisconsin is the 20th-most rural state. A quarter of Michigan is rural. Pennsylvania has been characterized as Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west and Alabama in the middle. As Trump prepares for his rematch with Joe Biden, all three states are toss-ups.

Schaller and Waldman also downplay the impact in rural areas of Democratic messaging on hot-button issues such as crime. It’s no longer just “the economy, stupid”. Culture wars pack an outsized punch. Outside New England, white rural Democrats are a relative rarity.

Inexplicably, Schaller and Waldman do not examine the case of Jon Tester, the three-term Democratic senator from deep-red, highly rural Montana who faces a stern fight to keep his seat this year. In 2020, in the aftermath of widespread protests for racial justice after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis officer, but also rioting and looting, Tester criticized his party.

See state data on the cost of post-9/11 wars. 

From CDC:

Drug overdoses are the leading cause of injury death in the United States, resulting in approximately 52,000 deaths in 2015. Rates of drug overdose deaths are rising in rural areas, surpassing rates in urban areas. Although the percentage of people reporting illicit drug use is lower in rural areas, the effects of use appear to be higher. The percentage of people with drug use disorders among those reporting past-year illicit drug use in rural areas was similar to that in urban areas.

Most overdose deaths occurred in homes, where rescue efforts may fall to relatives who have limited knowledge of or access to naloxone and overdose follow-up care. Understanding differences in illicit drug use, illicit drug use disorders, and drug overdose deaths in urban and rural areas can help public health professionals to identify, monitor, and prioritize responses

Senate GOP Recruitment

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

 Al Weaver at The Hill:

Senate Republicans’ string of major recruiting wins could soon be coming to an end as the party prepares for less-than-welcome entries in two races that could help decide the fate of the Senate majority next year.

Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) and former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake are widely expected to launch bids for the upper chamber in Montana and Arizona, respectively, in the coming months.

That’s creating headaches for GOP leaders in their quest to flip two seats and retake control of the Senate after four years in the minority.

Republican leaders in the Senate haven’t been shy about calling out “candidate quality” as a major issue for the party in 2022 and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines (R-Mont.) vowed to more aggressively recruit and back candidates with a better shot of winning a general election.

Thus far, those efforts have borne fruit in a number of key contests.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) is the leading contender to take on Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) next year (if Manchin runs), Tim Sheehy entered the race in Montana to unseat Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sam Brown launched a campaign in Nevada. Manchin and Tester, who represent states former President Trump carried by a wide margin, are at the top of Republicans’ target list.

The party also has a number of acceptable candidates in Ohio to take on Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), though none are considered to be sterling by GOP operatives.

But it’s the potential coming pair of Rosendale and Lake that has Republicans worried.

Democrats and Rural America

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  

Steve Bullock writes in NYT:

I was re-elected as Montana’s governor in 2016 at the same time Donald Trump took our state by more than 20 points. It’s never easy for Democrats to get elected in Montana, because Democrats here are running against not only the opponent on the ballot, but also against conservative media’s (and at times our own) typecast of the national Democratic brand: coastal, overly educated, elitist, judgmental, socialist — a bundle of identity groups and interests lacking any shared principles. The problem isn’t the candidates we nominate. It’s the perception of the party we belong to.

To overcome these obstacles, Democrats need to show up, listen, and respect voters in rural America by finding common ground instead of talking down to them. Eliminating student loans isn’t a top-of-mind matter for the two-thirds of Americans lacking a college degree. Being told that climate change is the most critical issue our nation faces rings hollow if you’re struggling to make it to the end of the month. And the most insulting thing is being told what your self-interest should be.

Get out of the cities and you will learn we have a libertarian streak, with a healthy distrust of government. We listen when folks talk about opportunity and fairness, not entitlements. We expect government to play a role in our having a fair shot at a better life, not solve all our problems.

We need to frame our policies, not in terms of grand ideological narratives, but around the material concerns of voters. Despite our differences and no matter where we live, we generally all want the same things: a decent job, a safe place to call home, good schools, clean air and water, and the promise of a better life for our kids and grandkids.

Democratic Fundraging

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. 

Fundraising is an important part of the story.

Julie Bykowicz at WSJ:

“ ‘Fundraging’ very neatly summarizes low-dollar donor behavior, the collision of emotion and giving,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster and digital strategist.

Across the 14 most-competitive Senate races, Democrats collectively raised nearly $200 million more than their Republican counterparts in the three-month period that ended Sept. 30, according to Federal Election Commission reports filed Thursday. Leading the pack was Mr. Harrison, who collected $58 million for the quarter, beating the previous quarterly Senate fundraising record by about $20 million. Mr. Graham, who has been vocal about his challenger’s formidable cash hauls, raised $28 million, the most ever for a Republican Senate candidate. Neither campaign responded to requests for comment.

From AP:

Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock raised more than twice as much money for his Senate campaign as incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Steve Daines did in the latest reporting period, according to numbers released by their campaigns on Thursday.

Bullock reported raising $26.8 million in the three months between July 1 and Sept. 30, while Daines reported raising $11.5 million.

Bullock’s fundraising total now stands at nearly $38 million since he filed as a candidate in March while Daines’ total is $24.5 million since he began his first term in 2014, Lee Newspapers of Montana reports.

Bullock’s quarterly contributions exceed the nearly $26.6 million in total fundraising for Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and his Republican challenger Matt Rosendale in their 2018 race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Tester raised $20.9 million.

Total spending in the 2018 U.S. Senate race in Montana was about $60 million. Spending by campaigns and outside groups in this year’s contest is expected to reach at least $146 million as the parties battle for control of the Senate.

 

 

Climate Politics

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. The update -- recently published -- looks at political and demographic trends through the 2018 midterm.

Climate change is an extremely important issue, but it has been a peripheral concern in presidential campaigns.  For most Americans, the impact has seemed abstract and speculative.  But the Western wildfires may be making it more visible and urgent.  The effects are not limited to coastal areas.  As of this week, the smoke had drifted as far east as Illinois.

Seung Min Kim and Brady Dennis at WP:

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden excoriated President Trump on Monday over his environmental record as wildfires continued to burn through much of the West and as the president used a trip to California to question the scientific consensus that climate change is a leading cause of the devastating blazes.

Biden said during a speech in Wilmington, Del., that the “undeniable, accelerating, punishing reality” of global warming was playing out in the wildfires and hurricanes that have marked the end of summer, arguing it is a problem that “requires action, not denial.”

Across the country in California, Trump sought to pin the blame for the fires on another culprit — forest management — while shrugging off warnings that human-caused climate warming will continue to make Western states a tinderbox with annual fires that destroy communities.

“It will start getting cooler. You just watch,” he said during a briefing with state and local leaders in McClellan Park, Calif.

California Natural Resources Secretary @WadeCrowfoot: "We've had temperatures explode this summer..."

President Trump: "It'll start getting cooler, you just watch."

Crowfoot: "I wish science agreed with you."

Trump: "I don't think science knows, actually." pic.twitter.com/xJPYoTjJBo

— CSPAN (@cspan) September 14, 2020

The issue is showing up in Senate races:

• Montana
• North Carolina
• Kentucky

Governorships

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

Louis Jacobson at US News:

JUST A FEW MONTHS AGO, governors seemed to be a declining force in American politics. Governorships were once a feeder for the presidency – that's how Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush got to the White House – but the governors and former governors who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 faded early in the contest.

However, with the emergence of the coronavirus, all of that changed. Suddenly, governors were on the front lines of the fight, and they attracted attention not just in their own state but in many cases nationwide. In New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo held closely watched daily press conferences as his state was experiencing the worst of the virus. His cool manner led some to suggest he be tapped as a vice presidential candidate for Joe Biden. Other governors who'd previously had little national profile, such as Republicans Mike DeWine of Ohio and Larry Hogan of Maryland and Democrats Jared Polis of Colorado and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, also received positive attention for their coronavirus responses.

For the most part, gubernatorial approval ratings soared, including those for many of the incumbents who are running for reelection in 2020.

This year, 11 gubernatorial offices are being contested. In nine of them, an incumbent is seeking another term: Delaware, Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia. The other two – Montana and Utah – have open seats.
...

In general, the party that currently controls the governorship has an edge, except in Montana, a red state that currently has a Democratic governor and that we are rating as a pure toss-up.

Beyond Montana, the only three states we see as competitive between the parties at this point are the Democratic-held seat in North Carolina, the Republican-held seat in New Hampshire and the Republican-held seat in Missouri, which is the only race we're moving to a different category since our previous update last October. In these new rankings, we're moving Missouri from likely Republican to lean Republican.

Montana Spoiler Alert

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

Major parties sometimes help third-party spoilers.  Governor Steve Bullock leads in the Montana Senate race, and Republicans are trying to use the Greens to siphon votes from him.

Mike Dennison reports at MTN News:
A recently formed political action committee that’s campaigning for a Green Party candidate in Montana’s high-profile U.S. Senate race is using a communications firm with ties to Montana Republicans, records show.

The Go Green Montana PAC paid $27,000 this month to Arena, a Salt Lake City firm, for digital ads, mailings and a website to support Green Party candidate Wendie Fredrickson.

Campaign-finance records also show that the Montana Republican Party and Republican candidates in Montana, including U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, have paid Arena $1.7 million for its services over the last decade.Sandi Luckey, the executive director of the Montana Democratic Party, said the Go Green Montana PAC is “just the latest escalation in the ongoing Republican effort to mislead Montanans and meddle in our elections.”

On March 25, Mike Dennison reported at MTN News:

The Montana Republican Party helped finance the effort to qualify the Green Party for the state’s 2020 elections, paying $100,000 to groups that hired or financed mostly out-of-state signature-gathers, MTN News has learned.

The party confirmed Tuesday that it was behind the effort, but had reported late last month, on documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, that it made an initial $50,000 payment in January to the Texas company that hired signature-gatherers.

Montana Republican Party Executive Director Spenser Merwin told MTN News in a statement that the GOP wanted to “provide more choice for Montanans this November,” and noted that state Democrats have worked to “limit ballot access” to minor political parties.

Trump Tax Cut Still Yields Benefits ... For Democrats

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the tax issue in the 2016 campaign.  The update  --  published last year --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. and explains why the Trump tax cut backfired on Republicans.

Thanks in part to the Reagan and Bush 43 tax laws, about 44 percent of Americans have no income-tax liability, though they do pay other taxes.  By definition, a cut in income taxes brought them no direct benefit at all.  Many others pay relatively little in income tax.  Most of the benefit of the tax cut went to the well-off.  Voters understood, which is why they disapproved of the tax cut by a significant margin.

Greg Sargent at The Washington Post:

In a sign that President Trump’s monumental failures on the novel coronavirus are helping to put the GOP’s Senate majority at risk, Republicans are planning to spend a startling $10 million on ads defending a GOP-held Senate seat in Montana, a state Trump carried by 20 points.

The Washington Examiner reports that the huge expenditure reflects how worried Republicans are about the seat held by GOP incumbent Steve Daines, who is facing a stiff challenge from Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock.

What’s interesting here is how Democrats are attacking Daines, and what that says about Trump and GOP vulnerability on the economy, now that we’re sliding into a depression partly created by Trump’s disastrous mismanagement of the federal response to the pandemic.

The Dem-aligned Senate Majority PAC is up with its own ad attacking Daines that’s backed by a $700,000 buy, according to the group:

Note the centrality of the 2017 Trump/GOP corporate tax cut, which lavished enormous benefits on the wealthiest earners while producing few of its promised effects on wages or growth. That was true even before the coronavirus depression, and this ad is all about the economic terrors of ordinary Americans right now amid the current crash, depicting soaring jobless claims and evaporating retirement holdings.

The Senate Is Up for Grabs

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. The update looks at political and demographic trends through the 2018 midterm.  Our next book will explain 2020. As of early May, the signs are negative for the GOP

E.J. Dionne at The Washington Post:

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) says that when he first announced he would run for the U.S. Senate, he “didn’t know what Montana and the country was going to look like in the short period thereafter.” With the covid-19 crisis, all his time has been taken up by being a governor, not a candidate. So far, that has only helped him in his campaign to unseat Republican Sen. Steve Daines.

In Maine, House Speaker Sara Gideon, a Democrat seeking to end the long career of Republican Sen. Susan Collins, says the pandemic has “laid bare the inequities that already existed” and underscored the need for a “vision of what it means to work together and for each other instead of trying to sow divisiveness.” This brings home Gideon’s case against Collins’s willingness to ally with President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), two of the most divisive figures in American politics.

Colorado’s former governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat with a good chance of ousting incumbent Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, expresses a sense of gravity about this campaign that he never felt in his races for mayor of Denver or governor.

“I will never forgive myself if I lose it,” Hickenlooper told me, “and I will do everything in my power, I will work as hard as humanly possible, to make sure that I win this, just because I feel in my bones that our democracy has been so weakened by this relentless partisanship, the constant division.”

And Democrat Cal Cunningham, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who is facing incumbent Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.), says that many North Carolinians today feel “an urgency that did not exist prior to March of this year” about “health coverage . . . about jobs, the economy.”

Issues that were once “percolating for many” are now “personal for everyone.”

If Bullock, Gideon, Hickenlooper and Cunningham all win, Democrats will likely take over the U.S. Senate and end McConnell’s days as majority leader.

Democrats Could Win the Senate

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. The update looks at political and demographic trends through the 2018 midterm.  Our next book will explain 2020. As of early May, the signs are negative for the GOP.

Neal Rothschild, Alexi McCammond at Axios:

Driving the news: Polls released Tuesday show Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) leading incumbent Sen. Steve Daines (R) by 7 points (sample size: 738) and North Carolina Democratic candidate Cal Cunningham beating Republican Sen. Thom Tillis by 9 points (sample size: 1,362).

Other recent numbers show an upward trend for Democrats:

• Arizona: Democratic frontrunner Mark Kelly leads Republican Sen. Martha McSally by 8 points in the Real Clear Politics polling average.
• Kansas: Democratic frontrunner Barbara Bollier led possible Republican nominee Kris Kobach by 2 points in a recent Public Policy Polling survey.
• Maine: Sara Gideon (D) has a 2.5-point lead over Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the Real Clear Politics average.
• Iowa: Sen. Joni Ernst (R) leads possible challenger Theresa Greenfield (D) by a point in a new Public Policy Polling survey.

Bullock Nears an Announcement

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.

pic.twitter.com/6JOe2tmDoz

— Steve Bullock (@GovernorBullock) May 11, 2019

Edward-Isaac Dovere at The Atlantic:

That’s Steve Bullock, the Democratic governor of Montana, who was elected to his second term in 2016 by four points on the same day Donald Trump won the state by 21 points. Bullock is not so subtly inching toward a presidential announcement expected for this week. On Friday afternoon, a Bullock aide and I rode in a slow-moving car while the likely 2020 candidate was literally running down the side of the highway as part of a charity race, a clip of which was then tweeted from his account with the caption “Feels like a good season to run.”

My kids are three of my biggest supporters, and there's no one whose judgement I trust more. pic.twitter.com/W9YyKYfqLH

— Steve Bullock (@GovernorBullock) May 12, 2019

Bullock Rising

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.

At Buzzfeed, Anne Helen Petersen writes on the presidential prospects of Montana Governor Steve Bullock (full disclosure:  he was my student).

Most people in the US don’t know much about Montana, and know even less about its governor. But from one perspective, Bullock’s anonymity is an advantage. Unlike Hillary Clinton, who battled four decades of accumulated narrative about who she was and what she stood for, the ignorance around Bullock allows him to write his own, unexpected, and — at least for the Democrats who saw him in Iowa — impressive story of how effective he’s been as a leader.

So how can a straight white man move forward amid an atmosphere, at least among Democrats, that’s resistant to, or even repelled by, the idea of more straight white men in power? By trying to reach voters, at least in pivotal primary states, the old-fashioned way: one-on-one, on the ground in Iowa, while other candidates are keeping their message national. Bullock is going for that Jimmy Carter, decent dad appeal. He’s the opposite of Trump, who is definitionally not nice, intentionally abrasive, purposefully uneducated. His strategy isn’t to eclipse Trump, but to offer an entirely different narrative — not to make America great again, but to make politics nontoxic, or at least less toxic, again.

If Bullock makes a serious run for president, it’ll be because what his candidacy represents — common civility, decency, and the fight against corruption — outweighs what “white male politician” has come to represent, especially for the women and people of color so crucial to the Democratic voting coalition. In our current cultural moment, that’s a big ask. The only way to do it: by speaking passionately and convincingly to the issues that Democratic voters care about. Bullock’s betting that if he can do that, it doesn’t matter if most people don’t know his name right now. There’s time. They will.

Body-Slam Guy Wins, Still Faces Jail Time

At CNN, Lauren Fox reports that the body-slam guy won the Montana special.

... Montana's election may be an unreliable arbiter of what's to come in races across the country. After all, the race here featured a banjo-playing, first-time Democratic candidate, and many of Montana's voters cast absentee ballots before the alleged assault even took place. The events that transpired here won't be easily replicated.

"All politics are local," said Art Wittich, a Gianforte supporter. "It comes down to two candidates."

Not only did the final hours of the campaign center around a bombshell assault allegation that took reporters to the sheriff's office rather than the polls, but throughout most of the campaign Quist and Gianforte weren't just talking about Trump.

Quist tried to make the health care debate in Washington a central component of his campaign, but Gianforte didn't fully embrace the Republican House-passed bill from the beginning, arguing it was rushed and not fully baked. His own campaign staff said Gianforte wouldn't have voted for it.

Many of the biggest issues in the Montana special were local.

A most useful spreadsheet on special elections.

Richard Wolffe at The Guardian:

You can trace back the decline in our politics to a single campaign and a single candidate, who riled up his crowds to turn on the press and hurl abuse in their direction.
That’s the same candidate who longed for the days when he could punch protesters in the face. Sure enough, his supporters ended up punching people in the face.

Fortunately the rule of law still endures in the courts, where a Kentucky judge recently denied the candidate’s claims that he was just exercising his rights to free speech and couldn’t be sued for inciting violence.

The candidate is of course now president of the United States, who calls the media “the enemy of the American people.”

This is not a small development in the long history of shocking Trumpisms.

You don’t need to take the Guardian’s word for it. Here’s the opinion of William McRaven, the former special ops commander and architect of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden: “This sentiment may be the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime,” he told journalism students at the University of Texas earlier this year.

Body Slam

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

Julia Carrie Wong and Sam Levin report at The Guardian:

The Republican candidate for Montana’s congressional seat has been charged with misdemeanor assault after he is alleged to have slammed a Guardian reporter to the floor on the eve of the state’s special election, breaking his glasses and shouting: “Get the hell out of here.”

Ben Jacobs, a Guardian political reporter, was asking Greg Gianforte, a tech millionaire endorsed by Donald Trump, about the Republican healthcare plan when the candidate allegedly “body-slammed” the reporter.

From DCCC:

 

Trump Flips Off Congressional GOP

At The New York Times, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns report that Mitch McConnell had been courting Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) to run against Senator Jon Tester.  But Trump had different ideas.

Mr. McConnell learned early this week that Mr. Trump had grown interested in Mr. Zinke to be secretary of the interior. Mr. McConnell quickly contacted both Vice President-elect Mike Pence and Reince Priebus, the incoming White House chief of staff, in an effort to head off the appointment, according to multiple Republican officials familiar with the calls.

Mr. Trump was not moved. He was so taken with Mr. Zinke during their meeting on Monday at Trump Tower that he offered him the position. Mr. Trump’s son Donald Jr. quashed a competing candidate, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington State, because of her support for selling off public land, a senior Republican official said.

. Mr. Trump’s defiant selection of Mr. Zinke, 55, dismayed Republicans in the capital and raised suspicions about how reliable an ally he will be for the party. Even as Mr. Trump has installed party stalwarts in a few cabinet departments, he has repeatedly shrugged off the requests of Republicans who have asked for help reinforcing their power in Congress.

Trump's camp had earlier floated the name of Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chair of the House GOP Conference.

With just one appointment, Mr. Trump snubbed the highest-ranking Republican woman in the House, Ms. McMorris Rodgers, imperiled the party’s chances in a key Senate race and likely triggered a special election for Mr. Zinke’s House seat.

...
House and Senate Republicans had little warning about the decision to select Mr. Zinke and pass over Ms. McMorris Rodgers. Indeed, some House Republican leadership aides believed that Ms. McMorris Rodgers already had the job in hand.

But Donald J. Trump has never been a party guy. In June, as CNN reported, he made his attitude clear:

Donald Trump slammed GOP leaders on Wednesday for not lining up behind him, implying that he's willing to go forward without their help.

"We have to have our Republicans either stick together or let me just do it by myself. I'll do very well. I'm going to do very well. OK? I'm going to do very well. A lot of people thought I should do that anyway, but I'll just do it very nicely by myself," Trump said, though he did not elaborate on what doing it "by myself" would mean.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also accused his party's leaders of being weak and told them to "please be quiet."