Missoula News

News Analysis From the debate

Lobbying Questions Fire Up Butte Burns-Tester Senate Debate

By Paul Driscoll, 9-24-06

The latest Jon Tester-Conrad Burns debate in Butte, Montana on Saturday evening drew an increasing share of national media attention but offered up few new insights into either candidate. Still, the national spotlight will show a Reagan-era conservative and a populist progressive widely separated on key issues such as the war in Iraq, the war on terror, and taxation policy.

Burns, the three-term Republican incumbent, failed to address the most pointed question of the debate, predictably whether disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff influenced two of his votes in the U.S. Senate. Burns repeatedly called the charges “baseless allegations and untruths.”

Tester, who showed a fuller range of emotion in the course of the evening, probably found a sound bite moment in response to a Burns charge that he is “soft on terrorism.” Tester, Burns said, “doesn’t understand this enemy” and would weaken the Patriot Act. “Let me be clear,” Tester shot back sharply. “I don’t want to weaken the Patriot Act. I want to repeal it.”

The debate was held in the recently renovated Mother Lode Theater in the old mining town’s historic district. The theater seats about 1,200 and the door count was somewhat north of 700 at 10 minutes before show time. In this city once famous for union and Democratic solidarity, the crowd seemed to favor Tester. But in recent decades conservative local politicians have found a voice here, too, and Burns supporters were clearly evident. Many Tester supporters wore bright yellow T-shirts that read: Fire Burns. Still, partisan noisemaking was minimal with none of the heckling that marked the previous debate held in a high school gymnasium in Hamilton.

Local and regional affiliates of the major television networks were busy filming from the wings. Linda Wertheimer, National Public Radio 's senior national correspondent, was next to me in the media row. A political reporter from the online magazine Salon.com was a couple of seats down. Minor sound problems from the stage marred the initial exchanges, but the debate went over quite smoothly.

The debate was sponsored in part by The Montana Standard, Butte’s local daily newspaper, and questions were offered by a small panel of journalists that included veteran Lee Newspapers State Bureau Chief Chuck Johnson. He prefaced his first question by noting that Burns occupies the seat once held by the legendary Democratic Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. Mansfield, according to Johnson, said in 1972 that he would not “see any lobbyist at any time.”

“You seem a world of difference,” Johnson mused to general laughter from the audience. He then detailed two occasions where Burns evidently changed course following lobbying pressure from Abramoff and his associates. While Burns replied that he “never shortchanged Montanans,” Tester followed up the question during his allotted response. The Abramoff lobby “got everything they wanted,” he said. “Staff after staff left your office” only to return to lobby, Tester said.

“It’s all he has to run on,” Burns said in rebuttal.

“No one forced you to take the money,” Tester replied, referring to the roughly $150,000 that Burns initially accepted from the disgraced lobbyist and his associates. Burns has since donated the money to charities, but wide speculation centers on whether he will be further implicated in the slowly widening scandal, or even indicted on charges of corruption.

For his part, Tester fielded questions from the panel and from Burns that alluded to a weak stand on the war against terror. Tester said the war in Iraq has proven a distraction on the war against terror. “We’ve taken our eye off the ball,” he said. While U.S. troops have done a “marvelous job” in Iraq, Tester said he is interested in promoting “intelligence and special forces” to combat terror.

Tester said one of the first actions against terror by the Bush administration was to “take away freedoms from you” through enactment of the Patriot Act. “It’s ridiculous,” he said and called for repeal of the act.

Tester was almost laconic as he addressed his reputation as a tax-and-spend liberal. He countered that Burns is a “borrow-and-spender,” who doubled the national debt in five years. Tester claimed that the national debt constitutes a “birth tax” because it obligates future generations to pay for today’s excess spending. “I’m for tax equity,” he said.

“No doubt, we’ve got a spending problem,” Burns admitted. He blamed the recession following the attacks of September 11th and the costs of the war on terrorism for much of the spending. The solution is to “grow the economy and stem spending,” he said. “We are on the heels of Hurricane Katrina and the war on terror.”

In one of the more interesting exchanges, a panelist asked Tester about lawsuits filed by certain environmental groups to stop logging of beetle-killed and fire-killed forests. Tester replied unconvincingly that “leadership is the key.”

“They’re his supporters,” Burns countered quickly. “For the cost of a .39-cent stamp” these groups can shut down a proposed timber sale, Burns said. “They shut them down every day. That group endorses him. He will be beholden to them.”

Tester admitted that those groups probably endorse him. “But I don’t owe ‘em a dime,” he added.

As per custom, both sides immediately claimed a win and press releases were issued even as the debate was winding down.

The debate comes as a “key” race tightens and few pundits fail to qualify their predictions: “If Burns doesn’t make any more gaffes…”; “If Tester’s momentum continues…”

The “tale of the tape” may offer some clues.

The Tester campaign likes to tout the candidate’s roots in Montana and, indeed, he is the third-generation on the family farm. Burns is from Missouri and came to Montana as a young man, kind of like one of Montana’s favorite sons, Charlie Russell.

Tester runs a certified organic farm in an area of north-central Montana sometimes called the Golden Triangle. His state senate district is geographically huge and encompasses big chunks of three counties. Many of his constituents are conservatives from agricultural backgrounds, yet they vote him in as an unabashed liberal Democrat. The eastern Montana voting bloc is difficult to discern, but I suspect that many folks begrudgingly see Tester as a smart guy with an eye toward the future of agriculture and a foot firmly planted in good old-fashioned farm values.

For more than a decade in the late 1970s through the mid-80s, Conrad Burns was the first voice that people all over Montana and northern Wyoming heard to start their day. He launched the Northern Ag news network in 1976 and his morning radio reports were interesting, informative, and delivered in a trademark avuncular style. Mention the name “Conrad” almost anywhere in Montana, and people know who you are talking about. Burns’ radio and agriculture background helped him to topple Democrat John Melcher in 1988. Melcher, a former large animal veterinarian, was seen by many as having “gone Washington.” Burns launched his campaign with whatever political traction that being an elected Yellowstone County Commissioner might have offered.

While Tester cuts somewhat into the Burns conservative agriculture base, Burns has the ability to return the favor in the high-tech sector. Burns was touted by supporters during his third term as being the Senate’s main figure in telecommunications and internet matters. It played well in his 1990 close campaign against now-governor Brian Schweitzer. Oddly enough, it hasn’t surfaced much during this campaign and wasn’t even mentioned in Saturday evening’s debate. Political blogs on the internet out of Montana are very active this season and have garnered some national press themselves recently. These blogs are particularly adept at keeping alive issues that in earlier campaigns might have simply blown over. In a bit of political irony, the blogosphere that Burns helped to create has risen to bite the hand of the master.

Tester is 50 and seems, in spite of his girth, robust next to Burns, who is 71. Tester walked the entire Fourth of July Parade route through Butte this summer, tacking down Harrison Avenue shaking hands and kissing babies; Burns remained cloistered in an auto. The post-debate parties Saturday evening found the Burns campaign greeting well-wishers in a downstairs room of the theater, while Tester booked the swank and stylish Finlen Hotel several blocks away.

Burns was a Marine and points out that he qualifies for veterans benefits but doesn’t take them. Tester points to his brother’s long military service. Burns’ higher education includes some training in agriculture; Tester was a music major at the University of Great Falls.

Burns has a bevy of powerful friends to raise funds: Laura Bush; Dick Cheney; Karl Rove. The Seattle band Pearl Jam performed a fund raiser concert for Jon Tester this spring, but Eddy Vedder isn’t sporting a crew cut just yet.

The contest will probably continue to garner broader national coverage. Four more debates are slated before the general election: In Bozeman, Helena, Billings and Great Falls.

Contributing writer Paul Driscoll is an editor and cartoonist working out of southwest Montana.

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