Letter from Montana
Letter from Montana
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In winning 40 of Montana’s 56 counties in the June 3 primary, Barack Obama showed what he can do in a predominantly white red state with the right kind of campaign. His victory is an important omen for the presidential election.
When Obama’s offices opened their doors in Montana in the beginning of 2008, he seemed like a long shot to win the Democratic primary. Montana has a black population of just four-tenths of one percent, and its largest city has only about 100,000 residents. The median income is far below the national average. There were no automatic votes for Obama in Montana. He had to work hard, and that is what he did. He visited half a dozen towns, including Crow Agency on the Crow Reservation. It was the first reservation visit by a presidential-hopeful since Robert Kennedy’s campaign 40 years ago.
As a longtime resident of Montana and the founding editor of The New West, a quarterly magazine about growth and change in the region, I wasn’t surprised by Obama’s victory. Despite its appearance as a Republican stronghold, Montana is anything but a state that can be safely put into McCain’s column in November. With the exception of the 1990s, Montana has been solidly Democratic for generations. What Obama did was tap into the state’s progressive, populist core.
One example of Obama’s effectiveness was in Big Horn County. The number of Democratic votes there jumped by a whopping 326 percent. Big Horn County is the home of the Crow Reservation, and Obama captured 79 percent of its primary vote. But it wasn’t just the Native American vote that helped Obama win Montana. He dominated the college towns and the wealthier western portion of the state. He even did well in small rural counties, too.
His campaign pursued the votes of the hook-and-bullet crowd by scheduling a Sportsmen for Obama week in early May. Although the national guns rights lobby leans heavily toward reactionary Republicans, Obama won endorsements from the Hellgate Hunters and Anglers, the head of the Montana Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus, and the chair of the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Commission.
This November, Obama could win Montana if he campaigns the way he did during the primaries. He just has to put in the time and ignore the clichés—for instance, that the hunters are sure to vote Republican. As a gun owner and avid big-game hunter, I can assure him that I have my eyes open. We are as concerned about jobs and the economy as anybody, and when it comes to access to public land, we want a government that isn’t beholden to the special interests and land developers.
Robert Struckman is editor of The New West and has a decade’s experience covering business, culture, and crime in the West. Photo Credit: Barack Obama in Crow Agency, Montana on May 19, 2008 (Courtesy of Barack Obama / Creative Commons).
