| Just reading a bit of the Montana 'sphere while on a Thanksgiving vacation and just wanted to throw in some thoughts on a couple topics that have been thrown around in recent years.
First -- Scott Sales talked about this year's tie in the house as a mandate for Republicans. As I've said before, though, I ran the numbers on both the Montana House and Montana Senate and the Democrats in both chambers represent more votes than their GOP counterparts despite the House tie and the Senate 4-seat GOP advantage.
Second -- this means one of several things with the whole gerrymandering conversation, which is a dead horse that has still been beat repeatedly by the Montana Republicans. A few possibilities -- either the Democrats drew the districts as they'd always said or population changes are working in ways that will favor Dems next redistricting. Dems always said that they drew competitive districts and elections seem to have born that out, with large numbers of extremely close races cycle after cycle in the Montana legislature. But it is also possible that Dems drew a slightly favorable map but that population growth is now working against Dems and that Dem districts now just contain more people than Republican districts across the state.
In theory, the next redistricting of '14 should address this and Dems will be likely to hold narrow majorities, assuming things generally stay on the same course.
Third -- at this point, the only folks in Montana who can claim a genuine mandate are Max Baucus, Dennis Rehberg, Ed Smith, Mike McGrath, and Brian Schweitzer. And out of that list, I'm joking about McGrath (who won on the strength of name recognition) and Ed Smith (who campaigns for a race that no one watches).
Bullock, Juneau, and Lindeen can claim solid wins, but no real mandates yet. And McCulloch has a lot to prove in what was a very real win.
At the legislative level, the state is basically 51-49 Democratic, but the district-by-district fight played out for the GOP. Mandate? I think not -- and that's for either side.
So far, though, the Senate appears to understand this, as do House Dems. All of their leadership choices and rhetoric reflect a desire to work together to get things done. The exception so far has been (once again) the House GOP, which seems to think that they've been handed the keys to the castle.
My guess? Sales keeps running his mouth off and he sees some serious defections early on in his caucus.
Of course, I thought that last session. So who knows? |
