A8 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2020
Steve Bullock (D) and incumbent
Sen. Steve Daines (R) has turned
into one of the closest and big-
gest-money Senate races in the
country.
That has meant less attention
to the governor’s race, which is
arguably more important to the
state’s future. Democrats have oc-
cupied the governor’s office for
the past 16 years, yet with a Re-
publican-controlled legislature
likely to hold, a Republican gover-
nor could undo more moderate
policies on health care, public
schools funding and labor protec-
tions.
Gianforte was defeated in his
initial run four years ago. The
next year, he attracted national
attention when he assaulted a
reporter while campaigning for a
special House election and initial-
ly denied the incident before apol-ogizing. He was elected to Mon-
tana’s lone congressional seat
with barely 50 percent of the vote
and was reelected by almost the
same margin in 2018.
His job approval ratings con-
tinue to lag. Despite a statewide
mask mandate, he has been pho-
tographed at political events
wearing no mask — most notably
at a “Let Freedom Ring” concert
in early October that has been
linked to confirmed coronavirus
infections. In a debate around the
same time, as Montana’s cases
started to spike, he said he would
rely on personal responsibility to
combat the coronavirus. Cooney
said he would be guided by “sci-
ence and the best medical practic-
es.”
Gianforte’s campaign declined
multiple requests for an inter-
view with the candidate. “As ageneral rule,” it responded via
email, “our campaign has chosen
to dedicate our time and attention
exclusively to Montana press.”
Montana reporters, however,
say their own a ccess to him have
been limited.
Sally Mauk, a veteran state pol-
itics reporter and analyst with
Montana Public Radio in Missou-
la, said skirting the press and
general public has allowed Gian-
forte to present himself as more of
a moderate Republican than his
past statements and voting rec-
ord in Washington indicate.
“His popularity in Montana, if
you can call it that, is that he
comes off as ‘I’m going to be your
economic messiah,’ and that mes-
sage really resonates right now
because of the pandemic,” Mauk
said. But if he is elected governor,
she said she expects a far differentadministration. “He will do it in a
way the state has never experi-
enced,” Mauk said. “He’ll be very
conservative on social and cultur-
al issues.”
Cooney is hammering away at a
traditional Montana Democratic
message that has worked for oth-
ers — a slate of issues topped by
opposition to any privatization of
public lands, greater funding for
public education and more pro-
tections for labor. He stresses that
the governor’s office will be criti-
cal to managing the pandemic in
months to come and in sending
clear messages about basic pro-
tections such as masks.
“We need to basically set an
example, so that Montanans who
are getting tired of this under-
stand that we have to continue to
fight this thing and it is serious,
and people will get sick and peo-ple will continue to die,” he said in
an interview. “The economy will
not recover if we don’t keep Mon-
tana healthy.”
Cooney isn’t a flashy candidate,
and despite his statewide office, a
survey this summer found that
48 percent of voters weren’t sure
what they thought of him. Mauk
calls him “a bit of an enigma.”
“He’s someone who has been in
public life in Montana for over
four decades, and I still have peo-
ple ask me what he’s really like.
That’s telling, isn’t it?” she said.
Gianforte’s campaign raised
$6.9 million through September,
$3 million from his own pockets.
That was more than double the
$2.5 million Cooney raised with
no self-funding. Some big names
have gotten involved of late. Vice
President Pence visited in Sep-
tember to stump for Gianforte
and other Republicans, and part-
time Montana resident David
Letterman and Montana-born ac-
tors Michelle Williams and Jesse
Tyler Ferguson hosted a virtual
fundraiser for Cooney on Monday.
For some Republicans here, the
GOP’s veer to the right has gone
too far. Bob Brown, a former state
legislator, secretary of state and
2004 nominee for governor, says
the politics of Trump, Gianforte
and Daines have left his party
unrecognizable.
“The Republican Party in Mon-
tana has become part of the na-
tional trend,” he said. “It’s been
moving in that direction for a long
time.”
Brown decided this year that it
left him little choice; he declared
himself an independent. He voted
Friday for more Democrats than
in any previous election, he said —
including the Democrat for gover-
nor.
[email protected]election 2020BY KATHLEEN MCLAUGHLINhelena, mont. — Mike Cooney
has been on the grassy trail only a
few minutes, his face partly ob-
scured by an “I ♥ public lands”
pandemic mask, when a couple
approaches to tell him they’ve
donated to his campaign and
need him to win the race for
governor.
“I swear I didn’t set that up,” he
says with a laugh.
It’s a typical moment in Mon-
tana politics: people randomly
recognizing a candidate and
walking up to wish him or her
well. But this race, perhaps the
clearest case in decades of ideo-
logical opposites running for the
top job, is anything but typical.
In a state where voters routine-
ly split the ticket and vote across
party lines, retail politics and per-
sonal connections have long mat-
tered. The 2020 gubernatorial
contest has morphed into some-
thing different, led by ad spend-
ing and partisan identity cen-
tered on President Trump. It is a
reflection of the polarization grip-
ping the nation, which now
threatens this traditionally bipar-
tisan state.
T he two opponents epitomize
old vs. new Montana politics.
Cooney, 66, is a well-liked Demo-
crat, a sitting lieutenant governor
and grandson of a 1930s Montana
governor, with decades of public
service experience. His opponent
is two-term Rep. Greg Gianforte,
59, a Trump-aligned Republican
running largely on his credentials
as a self-made multimillionaire
tech businessman.
In their virtual debates — the
coronavirus pandemic derailed
actual faceoffs — Gianforte has
derided Cooney’s years in govern-
ment, while Cooney centered his
attacks on Gianforte’s sharply
conservative positions.
The Cook Political Report con-
siders theirs the only toss-up gov-
ernor’s race this fall, and with
early voting already underway,
Gianforte maintains a slight edge
in the few polls that have assessed
the race. The most recent showed
him with 47 percent support over
Cooney’s 42 percent, just inside
the margin of error. Seven percent
of voters were still undecided,
more than in the state’s other big
contests.
Political scientist David Parker
of Montana State University, who
ran that Treasure State poll, said
he doesn’t think Montana is head-
ing hard right despite Trump win-
ning here by more than 20 points
in 2016. “The real question is, how
much is Montana’s vaunted inde-
pendence real?” he said.
These days, the answer is com-
plicated. The state has been gen-
trifying and growing more strati-
fied, with the balance of power
and issues shifting significantly —
from traditional labor concerns to
more emphasis on recreation and
public lands, as well as conserva-
tion. There are pressures to ad-
dress the increasing income gap
and an affordable housing crisis.
Though Montana is often de-
scribed as politically red, that
mostly applies to how it votes for
president. In other statewide rac-
es, the truth is more nuanced.
Political attitudes often vary
starkly by location, sometimes
heightened by the influx of new-
comers. Bozeman, for instance,
has become more liberal as it has
grown, while Kalispell’s conserva-
tive bent has intensified.
The two U.S. Senate seats are
frequently split by party. Sen. Jon
Tester (D) comfortably won re-
election in 2018, but this year’s
matchup between two-term Gov.
Montana governor’s race reflects political shift
TOMMY MARTINO/ASSOCIATED PRESSTHOM BRIDGE/ASSOCIATED PRESS LOUISE JOHNS FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTTOP: Supporters wait for Vice President Pence at a rally in Belgrade, Mont. ABOVE: R epublican R ep. Greg Gianforte, left, is
running a gainst Democratic Lt. Gov. M ike Cooney, right, to replace Gov. Steve Bullock. In presidential p olitics, Montana is reliably
red, but in other races, there’s always been some b lue in the Big Sky. Gianforte is a successful businessman cut from the same cloth
as President Trump, while Cooney runs on preserving public lands and strengthening public education and labor protections.While the U.S. Supreme Court
is often skeptical of federal judg-
es changing rules during an
election, it would have been rare
for the court to intervene when a
state court was interpreting the
state’s constitution and laws.
That makes the tie vote surpris-
ing, considering it was the
court’s conservatives who were
ready to stop the state court.
A coalition of Republican law-
yers and officials from previous
administrations had warned the
court in an amicus brief that
would be a mistake.
They said that a denial of the
stay request “by the broadest
majority possible will benefit
this court, our country, and its
precious tradition of the peaceful
retention or transfer of power.”
Former Pennsylvania governor
Tom Ridge (R) was among those
who signed the brief.
The cases are Scarnati v.
Boockvar and Republican Party
v. Boockvar.
[email protected]“The Pennsylvania Supreme
Court’s decision protected that
right and brought much needed
clarity to the exigent circum-
stances surrounding a global
pandemic,” Shapiro wrote. “In
doing so, that court ensured that
Pennsylvanians would not be
forced to choose between exer-
cising their right to vote and
protecting their health.”
He rejected Republicans’
claim that the decision essential-
ly extended voting beyond Elec-
tion Day and said it was a key
aspect of federalism that states
decide how to run their elec-
tions.
Pennsylvania lawmakers said
the decision takes away the pow-
er of legislatures to set election
rules. The changes are tied to
challenges of the pandemic, they
said, but “the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania’s own special mas-
ter found that COVID-19 is not
likely to disrupt the November
General Election ballot receipt
deadline.”counted if they are postmarked
by Nov. 3 — and even if no
postmark is discernible, “unless
a preponderance of the evi-
dence” shows that the ballots
were mailed after Election Day.
“In a year where there is a very
real possibility that the final
presidential election result hing-
es on Pennsylvania, the new
rules imposed by the decision of
the Supreme Court of Pennsylva-
nia (a body elected in partisan
elections) could destroy the
American public’s confidence in
the electoral system as a whole,”
said the stay request filed by the
Republican leaders.
The state Supreme Court deci-
sion was based on a clause in the
commonwealth’s constitution
mandating that “all aspects of
the electoral process in Pennsyl-
vania be open and unrestricted
so as not to disenfranchise Penn-
sylvania voters,” the state’s Dem-
ocratic attorney general, Josh
Shapiro, said in defending the
state court decision.seemingly small details — but
ones that could make a differ-
ence in close races.
Pennsylvania has particular
significance because it is crucial
to Trump’s reelection fortunes.
He defeated Hillary Clinton
there in 2016 by 44,000 votes, or
less than one percentage point.
The Pennsylvania Supreme
Court ruled in Democrats’ favor
last month on a number of
mail-voting rules: permitting
voters to turn in ballots via
dropbox in addition to using the
U.S. Postal Service; allowing bal-
lots to be returned up to three
days after Election Day; and
blocking a Republican effort to
allow partisan poll watchers to
be stationed in counties where
they do not live.
Pennsylvania’s Republican
legislators and the state GOP
asked the U.S. Supreme Court to
weigh in only on the ruling
pushing back the deadline for
mail ballots to arrive. The state
court said such ballots must bewants his nominee on the court
in case it is split on litigation
arising from the election.
That, in turn, has prompted
calls from Democrats that Bar-
rett pledge to recuse herself from
election cases. She declined to
say at her confirmation hearings
last week what she would do so if
faced with such a decision.
The Supreme Court had con-
sidered the Republican request
for nearly two weeks, indicating
that an attempt at compromise
might have failed.
Monday’s order was the latest
in a string of election procedure
battles waged in the states be-
tween Democrats and Republi-
cans.
Previously, the court sided
with South Carolina Republicans
and said most mail-in ballots
there must contain a witness’s
signature, something federal
courts had said should be waived
because of the coronavirus pan-
demic.
The litigation is often overBader Ginsburg, and the poten-
tial importance of President
Trump’s nominee to replace her,
Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
The court was tied on the
Republican request, which
means the effort failed.
The court’s four most con-
servative justices — Clarence
Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil
M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Ka-
vanaugh — said they would have
granted the stay.
But that takes five votes,
which means Chief Justice John
G. Roberts Jr. sided with liberal
Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia
Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Neither side explained its rea-
soning, which often is the case
with emergency requests. But
the outcome underscored the
decisive role Barrett could play if
she is confirmed by the Republi-
can-controlled Senate — with a
vote there expected as soon as
next week. Trump has said he
BALLOTS FROM A
Supreme Court’s ruling on Pa. ballots could have pivotal impact in key state