#MTGov Daily Rundown: Bullock's Bad Decision Helps Cost His Party a Senate Seat

"I wanted to appoint someone who I believed would represent the values Montanans hold important." -Governor Steve Bullock, 2/7/2014

Two years ago this week, in the thick of the 2014 race for Montana's open U.S. Senate seat, the Montana Democratic Party found itself in a major bind after Gov. Steve Bullock's pick for Lt. Gov. and then U.S. Senator had to withdraw from the race.

"One of those second in commands was John Walsh, Bullock’s original running mate, who in 2014 the governor appointed to replace former Sen. Max Baucus in the U.S. Senate and eventually endorsed as the candidate to replace Baucus.

Daines challenged Walsh for the seat in the 2014 general election, but Walsh was exposed by the New York Times for plagiarizing the final research paper behind his master's degree at the Army War College. The War College rescinded Walsh’s degree." -Billings Gazette, 8/4/2016

Walsh then made things worse for himself by attempting to blame Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) tied to his military service without an official diagnosis, drawing the ire of veterans.

"Sen. John Walsh of Montana said Wednesday his failure to attribute conclusions and verbatim passages lifted from other scholars' work in his thesis to earn a master's degree from the U.S. Army War College was an unintentional mistake caused in part by post-traumatic stress disorder." -Associated Press, 7/24/2016

"Retired Montana National Guard Sgt. Maj. Timothy Pentecost fought in Vietnam and Iraq, and according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, is 100 percent disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder. He also worked with Walsh.

'It’s totally bogus,' an outraged Pentecost told the Chronicle. 'I can’t believe he’s using the PTSD as a reason for what he has done in plagiarizing the paper, and that weak response he had was terrible.'” -Bozeman Daily Chronicle, 7/24/2016


After Walsh was forced to drop out of the race the desperate Democrats selected radical leftist State Rep. Amanda Curtis to run for the seat.

Democrats scrambled to replace Walsh as a candidate, selecting Amanda Curtis, a school teacher from Butte who had been a state legislator." -Billings Gazette, 8/4/2016

Curtis past ties to radical leftist organizations, as well as her bizarre video blog from the 2013 legislative session, gave her party no shot of holding on to then U.S. Sen. Max Baucus' senate seat.

Curtis' husband is part of a group that wants to "end the capitalist sytem."

"Mr. Curtis is the Butte delegate for IWW’s Montana affiliate, the Two Rivers General Membership Branch.

According to that group’s website, it is “working to organize the people of Montana into the One Big Union to end wage slavery and eventually end the capitalist system.” -Washington Free Beacon, 8/21/2014

"Curtis has said some unflattering things about gun rights, and Christians, and her desire to punch other lawmakers in the face—all of them in YouTube diaries she broadcast as commentaries on the Montana legislative session. Nothing terribly far-out there. The far-out part is her association with the Wobblies.

The Wobblies are the Industrial Workers of the World, a hard-left union of historical vintage that let the 20th century pass it by. “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common,” the group proclaims. “Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.” -Reason Magazine, 9/3/2014

After the fiasco involving Walsh and Curtis, Bullock's next Lt. Gov., Angela McLean resigned as her post after she and, the governor, and the governor's staff clashed, leading commentators and newspapers to raise larger questions about how the governor's office is being mananged.

"“What’s more important is it looks odd the governor is going to have a third lieutenant governor in a four-year term. That then raises questions I don’t think the governor wants raised. It brings back the Walsh story, it goes to the fundamental question of, 'Is the governor competent?'” -MSU political science professor David Parker in the Billings Gazette, 12/1/2016

"There’s a gap there. There’s obviously a gap between her account of what took place and the fact that you felt her frustration was disruptive. I mean, there’s something else there.” -Montana Standard editor David McCumber, 12/16/2016