Among other thoughts from Lamnidae today on yesterday's primary was this:
Although I'm an Obama supporter, I thought it was particularly irresponsible for the Associated Press to go nationwide with their stories of the Illinois Senator clinching the nomination early in the day yesterday.
L. quotes this Missoulian report that speculates AP's rush to report Obama's clinch of the nomination slowed down voting yesterday afternoon.
Personally I was a little annoyed by a similar move from CNN - their declaration of Obama's nomination stole the thunder from our primary's results. Michael Moore noticed this, too, along with Wolf Blitzer mangling the name of our state repeatedly:
...CNN's Wolf Blitzer, intoning Obama's historic win, kept referring to Montana as Michigan, one of two states that ran outlaw primaries earlier this year.
So listen up, Wolf. Maybe we didn't decide the race like it appeared we might for a while, but we're still Montanans. Get yourself a map. We're the big ol' state next to Canada. We know it's easy for you Least Coasters to think the world ends just outside the Beltway, but hey, you got South Dakota right. So give us our due.
* * *
The final posting of Missoula county returns shows the County Commissioner race to be absolutely deadlocked:
Daneke 6,818
Landquist 6,814
Patterson 4,191
There's still about 500 provisional ballots to count.
* * *
Yesterday, I mentioned a couple of incidents where CI-100 petitioners ran afoul of elections officials because of placement of their tables. Today, the Billings Gazette reports of a CI-100 group that had to be moved outside of the polling place - which doubled as a school - because the display they used was found to be too controversial to be inside the school.
Here's the reason why:
Students were able to see the display, which included plastic models of fetuses at six, eight, 10 and 20 weeks of gestation.
Will James Principal Troy Zickefoose said the display was taken down because the students were asking questions about it.
"It's stuff we can't even talk about in our curriculum," he said. "If they only had clipboards and were only talking to adults, they could stand in the hall."
This is pure speculation, but is this the result of social conservatives pressuring schools to drop sex-ed from the curriculum? If so, what lovely irony...
* * *
Yesterday, Obama beat Clinton handily here in the state. CNN shows Obama with 102,373 votes and 57 percent of the total, and Clinton with 74,792 votes and 41 percent.
Missoula's results were even more lopsided. Obama won 16,423 votes and 66.1% of the total; Clinton won 8,084 votes and 32.5% of the total.
Other counties that went 60%+ for Obama include Flathead (60%); Lewis & Clark (60%); Madison (63%); Beaverhead (65%); Park (66%); Gallatin (71%); and Big Horn (78%). Clinton won a number of smaller, eastern Montana counties, but by relatively slim margins. She did win Deer Lodge with 59% of the vote, her biggest margin of victory in the state.
The Gazette attributes Obama's victory to his campaign's grassroots effort.
All of Montana's superdelegates pledged to support Barack Obama.
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James Conner weighs in on Driscoll/Kelleher:
Eighty-five-year-old Bob Kelleher defeated Michael Lange and Kirk Bushman for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. More than anything else, I think this indicates disgust and exasperation with the Republican establishment. Kelleher's name recognition helped, but I doubt it was any higher than Lange's name recognition, so it's clear that Lange was not helped by the publicity he received during the last session of the legislature....
The biggest shocker, or at least disappointment, was John Driscoll's defeat of Jim Hunt for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House seat now held by Dennis Rehberg. Driscoll filed at almost the last minute. A former Public Service Commission member, Driscoll, according to the Billings Gazette, "...said he didn't intend to campaign at all and was offering himself as a choice to voters who wanted someone without financial ties to any interest."
Hunt, an attorney and member of the distinguished family headed by former Montana Supreme Court justice William Hunt, wanted the job, but began his campaign late by political standards (Bill Kennedy, who campaigned for the job through most of 2007, withdrew last fall citing personal reasons, whatever those were). Therefore, Driscoll had higher name recognition and that made the difference.
Driscoll's "victory" ensures that Dennis Rehberg will win re-election easily. I find myself wondering whether Driscoll had a beef with Jim Hunt or the Hunt family, or a grudge against attorneys. His candidacy was a spoiler candidacy, and he succeeded in spoiling the best chance Democrats may ever have of defeating Rehberg. Frankly, the Democrats who voted for Driscoll were ignorant fools who just flunked real world civics. The Republicans who voted for Kelleher were a lot smarter. |
