State Sen. Roy Brown, a veteran legislator from Billings, threw his hat in the ring last week and took a six-city fly-around. This week, he'll hit the road with a 10-day, 50-town tour to introduce himself to Montanans.
Brown appears to be a candidate who will put his full heart and soul into the race. He didn't sound like he was running as a token candidate or a sacrificial lamb for his party to put up against Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer.
Can Brown knock off Schweitzer?
Anything's possible, although it would appear at this stage to be an uphill battle for Brown. But that's why we have elections. And as Brown points out, he's never lost an election.
Brown, a holdover senator, has nothing to lose by running. If he's defeated, he can still serve in the Senate. If he runs a good race against Schweitzer but loses, it might give him a leg up for his party's nomination for an open governor's seat in 2012, although plenty of others will be lining up too.
Schweitzer, meanwhile, has been a popular governor from the start with high poll ratings, and Montana's economy is soaring.
Republicans argue that Schweitzer inherited that sound economy from them after they cut taxes and trimmed budgets. Democrats counter that Schweitzer with his aggressive salesmanship has put Montana on the map and attracted new businesses.
Schweitzer will be a most formidable candidate. He may be the best retail politician - meeting and greeting voters and pressing the flesh - that Montanans have seen in many decades.
“There's a lot of contrast in personalities,” Wilson said. “Schweitzer is more outgoing and more exuberant. Brown is very intelligent, but quieter in terms of getting his message out there.”
Brown, however, has demonstrated in four state House races and a fiercely contested state Senate contest in 2006 that he's a very strong campaigner in his own right. Brown's aggressive door-to-door campaigns are legendary in Billings, although as a statewide candidate, he won't have much time to ring many doorbells.
Wilson said Brown “faces the same difficulty challengers do when they run against relatively popular incumbents.” Even though Brown has held leadership posts in the House, he lacks statewide name recognition.
“He has to raise some money to basically build the name recognition to be able to talk about the issues,” Wilson said.
Brown hopes to raise $1.6 million with 16,000 people donating $100 apiece. Schweitzer, meanwhile, topped the $775,000 mark in his fund-raising through Sept. 30.
“Now that he has an opponent, it should make it easier for him (Schweitzer) to raise a lot more money,” Wilson said.
Brown's legislative voting record has been that of a traditional Republican businessman who supports cutting taxes and reducing state spending.
Scorecards compiled after the 2007 Legislature showed Brown received an “A” from the Montana Stockgrowers Association and a 95 percent score from the Montana Chamber of Commerce. However, the Montana Environmental Information Center gave Brown a zero, while the Montana AFL-CIO scored him at 34 percent.
In launching his candidacy, Brown criticized what some Republicans believe is Schweitzer's Achilles' heel - the hefty increases in state spending he has proposed and pushed through over the past two legislative sessions.
Democrats immediately returned fire, calling Brown “Red Ink Roy” for sponsoring the bill to take $23 million from the state workers' compensation old fund and put it into the state general fund to balance the budget in the waning days of the 2003 session. That old fund now faces a potential deficit of $32.6 million.
Both Schweitzer and Brown have detailed explanations for their decisions. These certainly will be explored in great detail by the Montana news media in the coming months.
A look at the Montana election statistics shows that voters have a mixed record when an incumbent governor faces re-election.
Eight sitting Montana governors have been re-elected: Joseph K. Toole, Sam Stewart, John Erickson (twice), Sam Ford, J. Hugo Aronson, Thomas L. Judge, Ted Schwinden and Marc Racicot. In 1964, voters retained Gov. Tim Babcock, who hadn't been elected governor, but ascended from the lieutenant governor's post after Gov. Don Nutter was killed in a 1962 plane crash.
But Montana voters weren't afraid to unseat six incumbent governors: Joseph Dixon, Roy Ayers, Ford, John Bonner, Babcock and Judge. Ford and Judge were seeking third terms.
Then there are the governors whose popularity plummeted and simply chose not to run again rather than face likely defeat. Some bowed out for health reasons.
We'll find out in exactly one year whether Montana voters want to keep Schweitzer for four more years or replace him with someone like Brown.
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