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PERFECT PLACE FOR BLUE TIDE TO QUICKLY MAKE ITS MARK

On January 5, 2001, with George W. Bush's moving van parked at the back door of the White House, President Bill Clinton signed his now-infamous Roadless Rule. With a stroke of his pen and without the approval of Congress, Clinton protected almost one-third of our national forests, 58.5 million acres, from road building.

The incoming Bush administration immediately reversed the rule, but a judge rapidly reversed the reversal. Ever since, the Roadless Rule has been a tennis ball, back and forth, on and off, mired in a ridiculous succession of administrative rules and court cases, making it hard to decide who's ahead in the game. As I write this, to emphasize the folly, two judges have made opposing rulings, one spiking the Roadless Rule, one re-affirming its validity.

So I say, let's end the tennis match and make the Roadless Rule the law of the land. [more]

All Three Wyoming D.C. Spots Stay With GOP

Bolstered by a last minute appearance by Vice President Dick Cheney, Former Wyoming treasurer Cynthia Lummis handily defeated Democrat Gary Trauner Tuesday in the most expensive U.S. House race in Wyoming history.

By 10 p.m. Tuesday with more than 98 percent of the ballots counted, Lummis held an insurmountable 20,000 vote lead, 50 percent compared 43 percent for Trauner.

Not even the 10,000 votes gained by Libertarian David Herbert, a potential spoiler, could have changed the fate of the two-time Democratic candidate.

Lummis joined GOP U.S. Senate candidates Mike Enzi, the incumbent seeking his third term, and John Barrasso, an interim appointee vying to replace the late Sen. Craig Thomas, in a clean sweep of the state’s three Congressional seats. The election marked the first time in more than a century that both Wyoming U.S. Senate seats and its single U.S. House seat have been up for grabs.

And true to recent form, all three remained in GOP hands. [more]

photos

Missoula Democrats celebrated Obama's victory with hugs, laughter, cheers and beers. NewWest.Net photographer Graham Coppes documented the night at the Union Club and beyond. [more]

President-Elect Obama

It took a while, but Democrats in Colorado got almost everything they wanted in today's election results.

For more than an hour after the polls closed around the state neither the national nor local news organizations had called the presidential race in Colorado. Finally, at about 8:30 – moments before CNN called the national race – and with 32% of the precincts reporting, The Denver Post reported, "Colorado, a traditionally red state, swung blue tonight as voters chose Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president and Congressman Mark Udall for the state's open Senate seat."
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Here in Montana, and across the Rocky Mountain West, the election of Barack Obama represents the startling culmination of social, cultural and political changes that have been underway in this region for many years. You've heard a lot of this by now: the Mountain West, increasingly populated by amenity-seeking coastal migrants and Latino immigrants, and with an independent-minded electorate that's resistant to Republican over-reaching on social issues, is no longer solid red, but rather "in play." And if the breadth of Obama's victory ultimately rendered the electoral votes of Colorado and New Mexico and Montana and Nevada superfluous, the deeper significance of the changes remain.

It certainly didn't play out the way any pundit might have predicted a couple of years ago. Obama, for starters, is hardly the "Western" candidate that many Western Democrats imagined would be the standard-bearer for the inevitable breakthrough. "You guys have a nice deal around here," Obama said in Missoula last spring, with all the wonder of a first-time tourist. He joked about going fly fishing (a river runs through it, after all!), but it's hard to picture him in waders.
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FIRST AND ONLY ON NEWWEST.NET

Anybody who has been following the cyber-firestorm over pro-Obama statements and campaign contributions made by Dan Cooper, president and co-founder of Cooper Firearms of Stevensville, Montana, knows that as part of the collateral damage, life has gotten hectic at Sportsman's Warehouse.

After the story broke on October 28 in USA TODAY and became the subject of my column on NewWest.Net five days later, gun owners angry with Cooper besieged Sportsman's Warehouse's 66 superstores and corporate headquarters with threats of a boycott if the company didn't stop selling Cooper's products. Then, gun owners angry with gun rights activists calling for the boycott went into those same stores threatening their own boycott if America's Premier Outfitter didn't continue selling Cooper products.

You got to feel for Sportsman's Warehouse, obviously caught in the middle of a controversy they didn't create, so I called CEO Stuart Utgaard. He was anxious to clear it up for us. [more]

Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter

Election Day for politicos is like Christmas Eve for a five-year old. You've tried all year to be the best you could, to do everything right so that you get your reward on the big day. But on that day, there's nothing left to do but wait for the capricious hand of an outside force to determine your fate. Since you're past the point of altering the outcome, you speculate about what the day might bring. We do know that tomorrow morning we're going to wake up to a vastly different national political landscape. Here's what it might look like closer to home. [more]

While Montana's Republican Party has scaled back expectations over the course of this political season and Democrats seem primed to win big -- both parties have a lot to lose on Election Day.

If Barack Obama beats John McCain in Big Sky Country, and a blue wave washes over Montana's statewide offices and the legislature, it could well be interpreted that the state's voters granted a resounding endorsement to Democrats and thumped the state's modern Republican Party.

"If we lose both of those, that will obviously be a very hard blow to the Republican Party in the state, no doubt about it," said Brad Anderson, head of Yellowstone County GOP. [more]

On the eve of Tuesday's general election, it appears that a Libertarian may again be poised to play the spoiler's role in 2008.

No stranger to running for office, W. David Herbert, of Riverton, ran against Michael Enzi and Kathy Karpan in 1996, competing to fill the seat of retiring Senator Alan Simpson. That means Herbert is also no stranger to defeat.

This year, too, Herbert concedes that his chances of winning outright on November 4 are "not realistic at all." Herbert says his main reason for running is "to keep my party on the ballot." [more]

THE SCARIEST THING THAT HAPPENED ON HALLOWEEN

Something extremely scary happened last Friday on Halloween. Dan Cooper, President and Founder of Cooper Firearms of Stevensville, Montana, resigned.

Not so scary, you say. Well, wait until you hear why. If you believe in freedom and that there's a reason why the right to free speech is the First Amendment, prepare to be terrified.

Editor's note: Links to three updates at the end of the story.--Bill Schneider [more]

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