Montana: Governor

Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D)

Brian Schweitzer (D) Elected 2004, 1st term up Jan. 2009
Born:	09-04-1955, Havre
Home:	Whitefish
Education:	CO St. U., B.S. 1978; MT St. U., M.S. 1980
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Nancy)
Professional Career:	Farm developer, 1980-86; Farmer, rancher, 1986-present; Committee Member, Montana Farm Service Agency, 1993-99.
DC Office	P.O. Box 200801, State Capitol, Helena, 59620 406-444-3111 Fax: 406-444-4151 Website: www.state.mt.us/governor
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Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat elected governor of Montana in 2004, grew up on his family’s ranch in the Judith Basin, east of Great Falls; his Irish grandparents had homesteaded in Hill County, near the Great Northern rail line. He graduated from Colorado State and Montana State with degrees in soil science and in the early 1980s went off to the Middle East. He developed a 15,000-acre farm in the Sahara in Libya and dairy, grain and vegetable farms in Saudi Arabia on irrigated cropland. In 1986 he returned to Montana and bought two farms. He raised cattle and exported bull semen and, innovation-minded, grew mint and dill. In 1993, when the Clinton administration took office, he was appointed to the three-member, part-time Farm Service Agency that helps distribute federal payments to farmers.

With minimal political experience, he embarked on a race against two-term Senator Conrad Burns in 2000. In fall 1999, he organized the first busload of seniors to Canada to buy prescription drugs at lower prices. With armed guards, he strode into the Capitol in Helena and poured out $47,000 in cash—the amount, he said, of contributions to Burns from tobacco PACs. He attacked Burns for supporting a bill that would limit compensation to those with asbestos-related disease and shut down the giant asbestos tort cases. Burns, who had reneged on a 1988 promise to serve only two terms, outspent Schweitzer by 2–1 but won by only a 51%-47% margin.

The Senate race made Schweitzer a formidable political figure and an obvious candidate for governor in 2004. The incumbent, Republican Judy Martz, elected in 2000 by only a 51%-47% margin, had a rocky tenure. In August 2001 the state House majority leader was killed in the crash of a car driven by Martz’s chief policy advisor, who was intoxicated; Martz took him from the hospital at 4 a.m. and washed his bloodstained clothes. She endured months of unfavorable publicity over a personal land purchase from a company involved in a lawsuit with the state until she was exonerated. Her job rating plunged in 2002 and in August 2003, one month after Republican Secretary of State Bob Brown entered the race, she announced she would not run for a second term.

Schweitzer entered the race for governor as the clear frontrunner in the Democratic primary. He campaigned against one-party rule—Montana had had Republican governors since 1988—and championed small businesses against out-of-state corporations. He said Montana had a “salmon economy” (“all our young leave the state and then they come home to die”) and that Republicans were to blame for high property taxes and for the state’s low wage levels. He made common cause with both environmental advocates and hunters and fishermen by championing hunting and fishing rights on private lands and opposing sale of public lands. He called for low-tuition technical colleges to provide training so young people can qualify for jobs in Montana and for a pharmacy purchasing pools to buy prescription drugs in Canada. He named Republican state Senator John Bohlinger as his lieutenant governor candidate and named him head of a Corps of Recovery (echoing Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery) to come up with $60 million of spending cuts without cutting services. He won the June 2004 Democratic primary 73%-27%.

Republicans, long the dominant party, had a four-candidate primary. The winner, with 39% of the vote, was Bob Brown, a Helena veteran: he had been elected to the legislature in 1970, at 23, and served 26 years; for four years he was a lobbyist for USWest, Columbia Falls Aluminum Company and the state university system. Brown’s three opponents were all more conservative and all from Yellowstone County (Billings); Brown, like Schweitzer, declined to take the Americans for Tax Reform pledge not to raise taxes. Brown favored limited oil and gas exploration on the Rocky Mountain Front and the ballot proposition to repeal the state’s ban on cyanide mining; Schweitzer took the opposite stand on both issues.

Schweitzer raised more money than Brown, some of it from out-of-state contributors to his 2000 Senate race. With his flair for promoting new ideas and his invocation of his homesteader Montana roots, he seemed a more vibrant candidate than the reserved Brown. A self-described “pickup-driving, God-fearing, gun-toting, red-meat-eating, take-responsibility-for-my-actions, invest-in-education kind of Democrat,” he showed shrewd political instincts. Like Brown, he backed the referendum banning same-sex marriage (it passed with 67% of the vote). Schweitzer won by a 50%-46% margin, and Democrats swept to a 27–23 majority in the state Senate and a 50–50 tie in the state House (thus giving them control because state law requires that, in the case of a tie, the speaker must come from the governor's party). Schweitzer carried not only the usual Democratic areas (Butte, the Indian reservations, Missoula) but also Billings, the state’s largest city, and Helena, the capital.

Schweitzer announced an open door policy in the governor’s office, and brought his border collie Jag there every day. In early 2005 he faced a rosy fiscal situation, with a projected $300 million surplus. He and the legislature froze the business equipment tax at 3% and eliminated it for 13,000 businesses that own $20,000 worth of equipment or less. But the legislature refused to pass Schweitzer’s proposal for capturing unpaid taxes on business and property sales. He signed a bill requiring country of origin meat labeling. On energy, Schweitzer proposed a bill to require 10% of motor fuel to be a certain form of ethanol after state ethanol production reaches 55 million gallons a year; most Republicans preferred tax incentives for the ethanol industry. The Senate passed Schweitzer’s bill 34–16 in March 2005, but there was resistance in the House, where with three Republican votes it passed 52–48 in April. Schweitzer predicted new ethanol plants would be built, with 10,000 jobs. He promoted more coal mining and proposed a coal liquefaction plant, although he admitted that any synfuels production would require federal subsidy. He also promoted wind power and required a minimum percentage of renewable energy to be produced by utilities. His goals include energy independence. And he wants to deliver Montana electricity to Las Vegas and Los Angeles. On environmental issues, he took some risks. When the Bush administration opened up national forest land to new logging roads, Schweitzer pressed local officials to request that none be built. He proposed to buy up grazing rights near Yellowstone National Park to prevent the spread of brucellosis from the local buffalo to cattle.

In March 2005 the state Supreme Court ruled that Montana’s school funding laws were “constitutionally deficient.” The legislature did not come up with a new formula in its regular session, and Schweitzer called a short special session in December 2005. He unveiled a plan to spend some $31 million on building maintenance, energy costs and the Indian Education for All program. It passed the two chambers by 54–42 and 31–19. In addition, Schweitzer and the legislature put $125 million into the teacher and state employee pension funds, which were figured to be $1.4 billion short because of investment losses and benefit increases.

Schweitzer has had very high job ratings, although he says, “They like my dog better than me, but in politics you kind of ride the wave.” He traveled widely to promote investment in Montana. He set up a Montana Ambassadors program, getting Montana natives in Seattle and other big cities to sing the state’s praises. He campaigned for Senate candidate Jon Tester, who won, and for two ballot initiatives, an ethics measure that got 76% of the vote and a minimum wage increase that got 73%. But Democrats, contrary to the national trend, lost seats in both houses: the Senate went from 27–23 Democratic to 25–25, after which a Republican switched parties and made it 26–24; the House, after all the votes were counted went from 50–50 to 49–50 (with one Constitution party member caucusing with Republicans), and Republican Scott Sales became Speaker. Still, Schweitzer seems in a strong position to win reelection in 2008. And there has been talk that he might have national potential. “I am just a Montana farmer,” he has said. “I don’t know if what I say or do is exportable. It is a long way from the Little League to playing for the Yankees.” But he did go to New York to campaign for successful governor candidate Eliot Spitzer, and he did come out early in opposition to U.S. military action in Iraq. Some Democratic bloggers have argued that a plain-spoken Montana rancher may be just what the party needs to balance its ticket.