Burns, Montana find unlikely Senate battle
BILLINGS – You wouldn’t know Republican Sen. Conrad Burns is in the toughest fight of his career as he shows off a new airport control tower he helped build with federal money.
The 71-year-old former cattle auctioneer is disparaged for his ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, plagued by headline-grabbing gaffes and, like all Republicans, hounded by the war in Iraq.
Democrats have targeted his seat as one of six they need to win the Senate. It’s a key domino in their strategy to take control of both chambers in Congress for the first time since 1994.
Yet Burns shows no signs of being a beleaguered politician today. Wearing a rumpled tweed coat and cowboy boots, the senator acts like he’s hanging out with friends, entertaining with cowboy tales and a patter of self-deprecating one-liners. About the requirement to remove shoes at airport security, he quips, “It cost me about six pairs of socks.”
It’s a disarming performance and may help explain why Montanans have voted to keep Burns in office for the past 18 years. But if pundits are right, he’s in danger of losing his seat.
“He’s in a great deal of trouble,” says Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
There’s a frenzied air about the race.
Herds of reporters from New York to London follow Burns and his Democratic challenger Jon Tester across this vast state. Boisterous televised debates have drawn overflow crowds. Attack ads from both parties saturate the airwaves.
Tester, a big, beefy wheat farmer with a flattop haircut, represents the type of “pickup-driving, gun-toting … take-responsibility Democrat” who can put Republicans on the run not only in Montana but the rest of the West, says Gov. Brian Schweitzer, the first Democrat to hold the governor’s office in Montana since 1989.
Democrats say defeating Burns would show their party is rapidly gaining ground in what used to be staunch Republican territory in the Intermountain West, a red swath stretching from Montana to Eastern Washington. Polls show the candidates neck and neck.
Former Republican U.S. Rep. Rick Hill, who represented Montana in Congress from 1997 to 2000, says he hasn’t given up on Burns.
“A lot of politicians in his situation lose because they either won’t work hard enough to win or they just don’t believe that they can win,” Hill says. “He’s working hard. He obviously wants to keep his seat.”
If Burns loses, Abramoff will likely be a big factor.
The once high-profile Washington lobbyist, who pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges, channeled $150,000 in contributions to Burns’ campaign, making Burns the top recipient in Congress of Abramoff’s largess.
A Vanity Fair article earlier this year quotes Abramoff as saying: “Every appropriation we wanted (from Burns’ committee) we got … Our staffs were as close as they could be … I mean, it’s a little difficult for him to run from that record.”
Burns gave all of Abramoff’s money away to tribal colleges in Montana, and the senator maintains he’s done nothing wrong and isn’t under investigation.
His campaign pounds the theme that as an incumbent Burns can bring home federal money for Montana and warns that voters shouldn’t change leadership in a time of war.
Still, Democratic TV ads make sure the Abramoff issue won’t go away. And Tester brings up the subject every chance he gets, especially during televised debates like the one held in Billings recently.
Craig Wilson, a Montana State University political-science professor, says the Abramoff controversy by itself probably isn’t enough to knock Burns out of office. Many Montanans, he says, view it as “more of a political mistake rather than a personal ethical issue.”
That’s true for Chuck Hauptman, 84, a Billings geologist.
“Conrad wouldn’t do something crooked, so how in the world this Abramoff slipped in some funny money, I don’t know,” he says, sipping a drink at the Montana Brewing Co. pub in Billings.
Supporters queried in diners and elsewhere around Billings talk about Burns like a member of the family, never referring to him by his last name or title. They simply call him Conrad.
That familiarity is one of his chief assets, and an Achilles’ heel.
Burns’ weathered looks and aw-shucks demeanor play well in Montana.
“He’s not the kind of guy who has been real guarded like a lot of political figures are,” says Hill, the former Montana congressman. “He’s kind of ‘what you see is what you get.’ And from time to time he’s expressed himself in not the most sensitive way.”
In July, Burns apologized after criticizing firefighters for their efforts battling local wildfires, saying they’d done a “piss-poor job.”
In 2000, he apologized for querying a woman about a nose ring and asking, “What tribe are you from?”
In 1999, he apologized for referring to Arabs as “ragheads” during a speech while commenting on oil prices.
And in 1994 he apologized for a remark about blacks in the nation’s capital.
Democrats have someone following him around this election season hoping to tape a faux pas.
Burns’ troubles don’t end with Abramoff, the gaffes and the war. Tester is a formidable challenger as well.
Tester, who is president of the state Senate, runs an 1,800-acre organic farm several miles west of Big Sandy. He produces wheat, millet and peas, among other crops, and farms the same land his grandfather homestea ed in 1916.
Like Burns, Tester talks in down-to-earth terms and stresses his rural roots. He’s also self-effacing and has a quick wit.
At the Billings debate, for example, the moderator asked both candidates about their biggest mistakes. Tester replied, “It happened at a very young age and it has a lot to do with this,” waving his left hand that’s missing three middle fingers. He lost them in a meat-grinder accident.
A lot of the Democrat’s television ads show Tester at the farm, driving around in a truck, or getting his flattop haircut.
“Tester is saying (to Burns), ‘You’re not going to out-yokel me. I’m more of an authentic Montanan than you are. I look like people from Big Sandy,’ ” says Jerry Calvert, a political science professor at Montana State University.