Three Republican legislators with strong wills and personalities to match will be gone. Not running for re-election are Reps. Michael Lange of Billings, John Sinrud of Bozeman and Roger Koopman of Bozeman.
Lange's departure was no surprise, but decisions by Sinrud and Koopman not to file Thursday shocked Montana's political observers.
As Montanans may recall, it was a House out of order last year. There was a near stalemate, with 50 Republicans, 49 Democrats and a Constitution Party member who usually voted with Republicans.
The House was an unusually raucous place, where tempers on both sides boiled over more than usual, as representatives fought bitterly over issues and politics. They struggled to complete their work on time, and, like the Senate, failed to pass a budget as the Montana Constitution requires. The failures by the House and Senate forced a special session in May where lawmakers finally completed their work.
Lange, the former House majority leader last year, already announced last summer he is running for the U.S. Senate instead of for the Legislature again.
He, unfortunately, is best known for his embarrassing expletive-filled tirade at Schweitzer in the waning days of the 2007 Legislature. A television reporter taped Lange's tantrum in a GOP caucus and it was seen across Montana. House Republicans later stripped Lange of his command post after the May special session, but it was more for other reasons.
Sinrud, in a surprise move Thursday, withdrew as a candidate for re-election shortly before the deadline. Sinrud said he must provide for his family after his architectural drafting business was shut down last fall by the state Board of Architecture.
Sinrud has been one of the governor's toughest critics. That's an essential and important job for the party out of power. When other Republicans seemed afraid to criticize the administration, Sinrud took on the role fearlessly. Among other things, he's criticized Schweitzer for cronyism, such as his administration's hiring legislators for unadvertised state jobs.
The Bozeman legislator believes he paid the price for it. Sinrud has accused the Schweitzer administration of shutting down his business in retaliation. Schweitzer denies it.
Sinrud was the architect of the controversial Republican plan last year to break up the usual single state budget bill that came out of joint subcommittees into six, eight or however many parts. It varied by the day. He rewrote the budgets to his liking in his basement office and rammed them through the Appropriations Committee.
It proved to be a questionable strategy. Instead of Republicans being able to turn the public spotlight on the large budget increases sought by Schweitzer, the debate for days turned into one of how many budget bills there should be. It was inside baseball at its worst.
Then there is Koopman, who surprised people by not filing again. He isn't returning phone calls to explain why.
Koopman irked many of his fellow Republicans recently when he launched an effort to recruit primary opponents against those 14 GOP representatives and senators he considered to be “socialist.” He and his allies found challengers for four House Republican targets.
The socialist charge was laughable on its face. Believe me, there are no socialists nor communists among the ranks of Republican legislators here.
Koopman targeted those Republicans “who have consistently sold out the cause of liberty in the Montana Legislature.” These among the large number of legislators who scored poorly in an odd voter scorecard issued by Rob Natelson and the Montana Conservatives.
During the past two sessions, Koopman kept a plant on his desktop that he called the liberty tree. Whenever certain bills he favored were defeated, Koopman would stand up and tell his colleagues that they had voted against the cause of liberty. Then he would ceremoniously rip off a branch.
There will be no more liberty tree in the House. But out of the ashes from the disaster that was the 2007 Legislature, some seedlings of hope have sprouted.
Legislators returned for another special session in September to deal with firefighting budgets. Through some bipartisan give-and-take, they agreed on a solution and finished in a day.
Then the Legislature's two presiding officers, House Speaker Scott Sales, R-Bozeman, and Senate President Mike Cooney, D-Helena, who barely spoke in the 90-day regular session, have since forged what seems to be a friendship. While they certainly don't agree on most issues, they have learned to respect each other's opinions and why they feel that way. That is a promising development.
Out of fires and ashes come some seeds of hope.
Johnson is chief of the Lee Newspapers State Bureau in Helena. He can be reached at (800) 525-4920 or (406) 443-4920. His e-mail address is chuck.johnson@lee.net.
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