When members of Congress announce their retirement, there’s usually a simple and familiar process: Candidates from both parties launch campaigns to succeed the incumbent and prepare for primary races.
Occasionally, however, members retire in a more sneaky and underhanded way that short-circuits that process. Take Tuesday’s developments in Montana, for example. The Associated Press reported:
Republican U.S. Sen. Steve Daines of Montana dropped his bid for a third term on Wednesday in a surprise withdrawal just minutes before a filing deadline for candidates. […]
Montana U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme, also a Republican, entered the race shortly before the state’s deadline for major party candidates.
There’s no great mystery as to what happened here: By all appearances, an incumbent senator prepared to retire, he chose a successor, and he didn’t want his choice to have to worry about a pesky primary process. They then appear to have executed a scheme in which the senator waited until literally minutes remained before the filing deadline, at which point he ended his re-election bid and allowed his handpicked choice to file the paperwork to succeed him.
What if other Montana Republicans wanted to launch candidacies of their own? Well, too bad for them: Daines’ ploy didn’t give them the time to throw their hats in the ring — or give voters the opportunity to consider their prospective candidacies on the merits.
Indeed, the scope of the scheme quickly came into focus. As the filing deadline came and went, Daines endorsed Alme, who also quickly picked up support from the entirety of the party establishment, including President Donald Trump, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte and the state’s other Republican U.S. senator, Tim Sheehy.
It was a cynical process, in other words, that effectively gutted the whole idea behind primary campaigns: GOP leaders picked their candidate and told GOP voters who it would be.
When Democratic Rep. Chuy García of Illinois took a similar step last fall, a great many congressional Republicans denounced the move. Months later, Republicans on Capitol Hill appear far more comfortable watching one of their own pull the same stunt.
Seth Bodnar, the former president of the University of Montana, launched his long-anticipated independent Senate candidacy this week, and he wasted little time in denouncing the sitting senator’s ploy. “Steve Daines has so little respect for Montana Republicans that he withdrew at the last minute to coronate his handpicked successor instead of giving them a voice at the ballot box,” Bodnar said.
Whether Montanans resent the way GOP officials pulled the strings remains to be seen, but given the prevailing political winds, the party is taking a risk in a state that has elected some Democrats to statewide offices in recent memory. Watch this space.
