Though it may feel as if Election Day 2008 was just a few weeks ago, for those with their sights set on higher office, the game is just beginning. As he does every year, Dennis McDonald, Montana Democratic Party chairman, has been traveling the state to meet with local central committees. But he has also been gauging support for his plan to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg for his House seat in 2010.
While he hasn’t formally announced his candidacy, McDonald intends to decide by the Democrats’ annual Mansfield-Metcalf Dinner, March 21, and he admits that he is likely to run. Passing through Kalispell last week, McDonald met with the Beacon to explain why he thinks he can beat Rehberg, recently re-elected to serve his fifth term in Congress with 64 percent of the vote.
In the mold of recently victorious Montana Democrats like Gov. Brian Schweitzer and U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, McDonald comports himself like the rancher he is, with a weathered face and a wide, off-white cowboy hat. With 800 head of Angus cattle and several hundred registered quarter horses at his Melville ranch, McDonald is quick to turn a colloquialism into a dig at Rehberg. McDonald lambasted Rehberg, who opposed the federal stimulus package for, among other reasons, the amount it would increase the federal deficit. This, McDonald said, after Rehberg, “for eight years voted for Bush-Cheney economic policies that, in large part, have led to this crisis.”
“Him coming to the Flathead and talking about deficits is a lot like this guy in my neighborhood who wants to take credit for shoeing a stable of horses that, in fact, he’s never seen,” McDonald said. “What he does constantly is vote in favor of his cronies on Wall Street, and he’s not mindful of Main Street Montana.”
The alternatives on offer by McDonald are the key planks of the Democratic platform: focus on small businesses and agricultural producers, more jobs, health care reform, improving education, higher pay for teachers, and reducing international trade imbalances.
“There will be a day when we need to roll up our sleeves and pay down this national deficit,” he said. “As a Montanan, I’m prepared to do my share; most Montanans will do the same.”
Missoula attorney Tyler Gernant has also indicated he will challenge Rehberg. Should McDonald gain the party’s nomination, his tack, at this nascent stage of the campaign, appears fairly straightforward: Portray Rehberg as a wealthy Washington insider and millionaire real estate developer who has lost touch with everyday Montanans suffering under the current recession. But while that may not be the most original approach in the political playbook, McDonald is not to be underestimated.
In the nearly four years since McDonald has chaired the Montana Democrats, the party has elected Tester, re-elected Schweitzer, and won every statewide office in 2008, giving Democrats total control of the powerful state Land Board. A former president of the Montana Cattlemen’s Association, McDonald also served on an Agricultural Trade Policy Advisory committee under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
McDonald acknowledges the inherent imbalance of a political challenger against an incumbent, in that Rehberg must vote, while McDonald has the luxury of attacking those votes from the sidelines. But McDonald maintains that Rehberg and other House Republicans, in voting against the stimulus, offered nothing but their opposition.
“There’s always tough choices, but you didn’t hear an alternative; what you heard was ‘no,’ it’s the politics of ‘no,’” McDonald said. “His own political philosophy has trumped his humanity.”
Rehberg’s re-election campaign chairman, Tyler Matthews, however, was quick to debunk McDonald’s assertions that he is somehow a more authentic Montanan than the congressman. Signaling how the campaigns will characterize each other, should McDonald win the party’s nomination, Matthews questioned McDonald’s time as an attorney in California.
“It’s comical to hear a San Francisco trial lawyer refer to a fifth-generation Montana rancher as out-of-touch,” Matthews said. “(Rehberg) is a problem solver, and he’ll continue to work with Republicans and Democrats to eliminate wasteful spending and make government more accountable.”
McDonald, for his part, seems to be girding for the campaign.
“I’ve been ranching continuously in Montana since 1972,” he said. “I’ve been called a lot worse, and as a rancher, I’ve got pretty thick skin.”