This very positive profile of Jon Tester is surprising in that it's the cover story of the very conservative Weekly Standard.
He was born in Havre, and grew up in Big Sandy, where his family had lived since his grandfather homesteaded there in 1919. Farming was the family business: As soon as you were able, you were put to work. At times it could be a difficult life. When he was a boy, Tester lost the index, middle, and ring fingers on his left hand in an encounter with a meat grinder. Tester brags that he can still play the piano.
He matriculated at the College of Great Falls, from which he graduated in 1978 with a bachelor's degree in music. When school was over, Tester returned to Big Sandy, where he worked on the farm and taught music to elementary school kids. In addition to piano, he played the trumpet and baritone. While he was teaching, Tester attended church one day and noticed "this great looking lady" and thought, "Wow, this is good." He wanted to get to know her, so he went to the church youth group. The group played softball. Tester let the pretty girl strike him out. She must have appreciated it. Within a year the two were married, and they have remained so for 28 years. The Testers have two children and one grandchild. Another grandchild is due in January. Following Tester last week, I never saw him more than thirty feet away from his wife.
For Tester, life is centered around the family farm, which, at 1,800 acres, is a little smaller than most of those around it. The Testers grow wheat, lentils, barley, and peas, among other things, depending on the current crop rotation. In 1987 they decided to grow only organic crops. It is a crunchy lifestyle, no doubt about it. Tester says on the farm he learned the value of communication and cooperation. "You don't do things alone in this world," he told the ladies at the Hilands Golf Club.
The author, Matthew Continetti, spends a great deal of time talking about the rise of the Western Democrat.
The Interior West--which includes Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming--is slowly embracing Democratic politicians and Democratic policies. And the roster of Western Democratic pols is impressive. In Arizona, there is Gov. Janet Napolitano, who is cruising to reelection. In Colorado, there is Democratic senator Ken Salazar and his brother John, who represents the state's Third Congressional District. In Montana, in addition to Tester, there is Gov. Brian Schweitzer. In New Mexico, there is Gov. Bill Richardson, a potential 2008 Democratic presidential candidate and the current chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. And in Wyoming, there is Gov. Dave Freudenthal, who is also likely to be reelected.
There are additional signs of Democratic growth in the West. Colorado, Montana, and New Mexico all have Democratic legislatures. Democrats command a majority in the Nevada house, though not in the state senate. In Colorado, Democrat Bill Ritter is leading Republican congressman Bob Beauprez in the race to succeed Republican governor Bill Owens. The Democratic leadership in Congress consists of a Mormon from the Interior West (Senate minority leader Harry Reid of Nevada) and a Catholic from the Pacific Coast (House minority leader Nancy Pelosi of California). On Election Day, Democrats are looking to gain U.S. House seats in Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona [...]
When Schweitzer won in 2004, Democrats had been out of the governor's office for 16 years. They had been in the minority in both chambers of the state legislature for 12 years. Today they are in the majority. As Ryan Sager points out in his new book The Elephant in the Room, in 2004 Democrats in Montana won races for four out of five state offices. As Thomas Schaller points out in his new book Whistling Past Dixie, no state in the Interior West had a Democratic governor as recently as 2001. Today four of those states have Demo crats in the governor's mansion, and Democrats are running strong campaigns for governor in Colorado and Nevada. And as Mark Sundeen pointed out in a recent profile of Schweitzer, a decade ago the Interior West was home to 24 congressional districts of which Democrats held 4. Today the region is home to 28 districts of which Demo crats hold 8. On Election Day they may pick up as many as 4 more.
And he didn't get snarky or partisan snide when discussing this site's (and my) great interest in the race.
"Say hello to the next senator from the great state of Montana," the nation's most influential liberal blogger, Markos Moulitsas, wrote on his website Daily Kos when Tester won the Democratic primary. Later that night, in another post, Moulitsas drew a lesson from the victory. "Tester didn't quit despite early fundraising woes," Moulitsas wrote. "He didn't quit when he was down in January 45-25 [percent] according to Morrison's polling. Be cause people-power matters. And that message will reverberate inside the D.C. political and media elite tonight."
It is difficult to quantify the role the Internet has played in Tester's campaign. When I asked one aide how important the Internet was, he immediately said, "It's huge." For his part, Moulitsas sees in Tester and other Western Democrats the beginnings of a new Democratic party, even a new ideology. In the end, Moulitsas wrote on June 7, John Morrison's advantages--his money, his connections, his experience--were ir rel evant. Instead, "people matter." To Moulitsas, this only showed that the centrist Democratic Leadership Council is "an irrelevant, dying organization" because
it has no people behind it. It has no natural constituency. No ability to mobilize anything more than corporate lobbyists for any cause. And in today's people-powered environment, it is an anachronism of a different era, built for a different political world, unable or unwilling to change or adapt. Its candidates are dropping like flies, unable to win contested primaries. More and more DLC-aligned incumbents are facing tough primaries. Its patron saint--Joe Lieberman--may not even be a Democrat for long. You know Tester's dramatic victory has to weigh on Joementum.
As it happens, Moulitsas turned out to be right about Lieberman, though the fate of the DLC is still unclear. What is clear, though, is that Moulitsas has done everything he can to champion Tester's candidacy. For their book Crashing the Gate, Moulitsas and coauthor Jerome Armstrong, a blogger and political consultant, visited the farm at Big Sandy and wrote an adoring passage on Tester. Reading the books and web posts, you see that the bloggers are attracted to Tester's populism, his antiwar politics, his criticisms of the Patriot Act, and his authenticity.
But Moulitsas also believes Tester and other Western Democrats represent the beginning of a new political animal--what he calls the Libertarian Democrat. In this analysis, traditional libertarians err in seeing the government as the greatest threat to individual freedom. Corporations also threaten personal liberty, Moulitsas writes on his website and in a recent essay for the Cato Institute.
The big omission in this piece is the work done by the Montana bloggers, which drove just about every bit of my coverage on this race. All successful Netroots efforts -- be they Montana, Connecticut, Virginia, or anywhere else start at home, with activists on the ground. This site was the megaphone, amplifying the real work being done in Big Sky Country.
And speaking of megaphones, I decided to go look for the first post I ever wrote about Tester. Can you believe that it was December 12, 2004?
[Montana] Democrats are bubbling with excitement at their sudden reemergence. They believe they can take Republican Conrad Burns in the 2006 Senate race, who just barely defeated current Democratic governor Brian Schweitzer in the 2000 contest. Dems are looking to John Tester, a bona fide Western farmer (complete with missing finger from farming accident) who is now Senate Majority Leader. He's literally from the middle of nowhere, and naturally speaks the language of rural America.
No wonder I feel like I've known Tester forever. It's been almost two long years to get to where we are today -- a neck and neck race with two weeks to go.
If Tester wins, and that's still an open question, but if he wins, he'll be a transformative figure in the Senate, a symbol of a new Western libertarian populism that the region's other Democratic senators don't share (like Salazar or Baucus). While the old-school Democrats from that region have succeeded by blurring the lines between them and Republicans, Tester hasn't been afraid to highlight them. He's not afraid of controversy and isn't afraid to fight for what he believes is right.
And with candidates in the region already looking to Schweitzer and Tester for inspiration (like Grant in ID-01), this is hopefully the start of something very beautiful indeed.