“There are six candidates who have come forward,” says Kirk Bushman, a Billings engineer and facility designer, and one of the six. “It is time for Republicans to choose and start supporting the one you want. I haven't been saying that until now.”
“Now” is the primary campaign, which began in earnest this weekend and will culminate just 65 days from now, on June 3.
Yet while Republicans aren't hurting for choices when it comes to challengers, beating Baucus is no easy task. He has at least
$6 million of campaign funds in the bank. Only one of the six potential Republican nominees has won an election in the past 30 years, and all are either little-known statewide or not known at all.
“It seems like a lot of people want to throw their hands in the air, because Baucus has all this money,” says Bushman. “The challenge right now is to overcome the mentality of giving up.”
The Republican primary field also features state Rep. Michael Lange of Billings, Missoula accountant Patty Lovaas, St. Regis truck driver and businessman Anton Pearson, attorney and perennial candidate Bob Kelleher of Butte, and truck driver Shay Joshua Garnett of Billings.
Lange has been campaigning since last summer and Bushman joined the fray late last year, hitting the local Republican Party dinner circuit and other political gatherings across the state.
This weekend, Republican faithful in several Montana cities and towns are getting their first up-close look at the other candidates, at county Lincoln-Reagan Day dinners that are a standard of primary campaigns.
“I'm just telling them who I am and what I've done,” says Pearson, who planned to attend the Bighorn County GOP dinner on Friday, a Carbon County event in Joliet Saturday afternoon and the Stillwater County Lincoln-Reagan Day dinner in Columbus on Sunday.
Lovaas said she'd be at the Yellowstone County dinner in Billings on Saturday night, as well as the Joliet and Columbus affairs this weekend.
“It's going to be an absolute grass-roots campaign,” she said last week. “I'm going to all of these (dinners) to introduce myself and hand a bunch of information out.”
Lovaas already has trademarked a campaign slogan that she plans to have on bumper stickers: “Give Max the Axe - Montana's Not for Sale.”
Kelleher, who turns 85 on Monday and has run as a Democrat and Green Party candidate, couldn't be reached about his plans.
As for Garnett, state GOP officials are hoping he'll withdraw from the race. The Associated Press reported last week he is wanted in Indiana on a warrant for failing to appear in court as part of his probation on charges of stalking, harassment and invasion of privacy involving two Purdue University students.
The candidates say they'll be raising some money, but not enough to run TV ads during the primary. Instead, they'll rely on word-of-mouth and shoe leather.
The best-known candidate among the bunch is probably Lange, but not necessarily in a positive way. Lange was House Republican majority leader at the 2007 Legislature when he unleashed a profane tirade against Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, calling him an SOB and telling fellow Republicans at a party caucus that the governor should take a budget proposal and “stick it up his a-.”
Two weeks later, at a special session of the Legislature called to finish work on the state budget, a majority of House Republicans voted to remove Lange as majority leader.
Lange says the tirade, seen by tens of thousands of people on the Web site YouTube, and his removal as majority leader haven't harmed his prospects as the nominee to challenge Baucus.
“In some circles it's made me a hero,” he said of his outburst. In fact, Lange has created a link on his campaign Web site that allows people to watch a TV news account of him lambasting Schweitzer.
Lange says the tirade rarely comes up on the campaign trail, and that he instead emphasizes that he's the only one of the six candidates who has actually run a campaign and defeated a Democratic candidate, in getting elected to the Legislature three times.
“It's going to boil down to, do (Republicans) want someone with a track record of getting things done and winning elections, or not?” Lange says. “I've proven that I've taken on the tough issues, and can get something done.”
Bushman, while largely unknown, appears to have the backing of at least some party stalwarts. Former Gov. Tim Babcock held a fundraiser at his Helena home for Bushman recently, and Bushman traveled to Washington, D.C., in February to meet with national Republican operatives.
“I sought out past (Republican) leaders in Montana to get advice from them,” he says. “I thought it would have been arrogant for me just to go file and say, ‘Here I am.' ”
Bushman says he's now turning his efforts toward raising money and marshaling the support to win the primary: “We certainly feel that our introductory tour is over.”
Bushman is emphasizing the need for fiscal restraint in Washington, arguing that Baucus is part of a culture that encourages profligate pork-barrel spending.
Lovaas, a self-employed accountant in Missoula since the mid-1980s, says the same, but has her own twist: Because she's from Missoula, she is best-positioned to cut into Baucus' support base in the traditionally Democratic city.
“If we have a shot at all of unseating Max, it's going to be over here,” she says.
Lovaas says she plans to attend as many GOP dinners as she can in the coming weeks, despite a heavy personal workload before the April 15 tax-filing deadline.
“I'm going to end up taking work with me and do some business tax returns on the road, in between (Republican) dinners,” she says.
Lovaas is emphasizing her financial background, her knowledge of the issues and her status as a fresh face and non-politician: “I'm pretty convincing. I'm honest, I'm straightforward. Straight talk is what's needed.”
There's also plenty of straight talk coming from Pearson, a strapping 64-year-old truck driver who has operated successful ranches, logging companies, mines and other businesses in Oregon and Montana.
“I think with my experience of being self-employed, I'm well-qualified to represent Montana in the (U.S.) Senate,” he says. “I know business. There's nothing I haven't tried and had a success at.”
Pearson's politics are a mix of trade protectionism, religion and pro-business policies, particularly on natural resources, as he says Montana needs to revitalize its timber, mining, agriculture and manufacturing roots.
“We're called the Treasure State and we keep all of our treasures buried,” he says.
Pearson, a deacon at the Assembly of God church in Superior, makes a direct appeal to religious conservatives in the party, saying taking prayer out of the public schools “is destroying the moral fabric of America.”
Yet he spends more of his time talking about the economy, making government smaller, and how he can do the job that every Republican wants done: Beat Baucus.
“I think Baucus can be beat,” he says. “I think Montanans are ready for a change.”
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