This is the third and final installment of my blog series on wolves and the 2012 Montana Senate race. Stay tuned for more blogs in the near future....
The
dispute speaks volumes about the strategies pursued by both candidates and the
constituencies they wooed. From Rehberg’s perspective, Tester intruded on turf
long established to be his—turf that was rightfully his as a rancher, a defender
of property rights, and as a committed state’s rights advocate. All were causes
celebré among the
right wing of his party and rural voters—Rehberg’s primary constituency who was
essential to beating Tester. Furthermore, wolves was an issue on which Rehberg
believed he had expertise.[1]
It is not accidental that he called the wolf issue “his.” For Rehberg, this was
a personal slight and he believed Tester unfairly elbowed him out of the
picture.
The stakes appeared higher for
Tester, which is why he and the State Democratic Party aggressively accused
Rehberg of exaggerating his role in wolf delisting. Fundamental to Tester’s
argument was Rehberg’s ineffectiveness as a legislator. Tester’s bipartisan
approach had gotten more stuff done for the state in a shorter period of time
was the campaigns key assertion. In working with Congressman Simpson to push
for the inclusion of language in the budget bill, Tester hoped to demonstrate
that his legislative style made a difference on an issue highly salient to rural
Montanans. To be sure, part of the reason Tester could have a seat at the
negotiating table on the budget was simply because senators have more power
than individual congressmen. Rehberg, as a House member, had less clout because
although he was on the powerful appropriations committee—Simpson, not
Rehberg—was chairman of the Interior subcommittee overseeing the Fish and
Wildlife Service and wolves. And as Rehberg would admit, it is the subcommittee
chair that drives the appropriation process and gets the credit. Tester, as a
senator, could not only be more of an issue generalist (as he was
temperamentally), as one vote in a body of one hundred, he simply could apply
more leverage on final bill language as they moved to final passage.
More
important, however, is the fact that Tester—who was being painted as a liberal
Democrat out of touch with Montana by Rehberg and a number of outside interest
groups—needed credit on wolves to tamp down the impression that he was a
radical environmentalist in the Muir tradition. Although environmental groups
were part of Tester’s primary constituency, they were never thrilled with him
because of his support for the Keystone XL Pipeline and his efforts to log more
federal land. They likely supported him because he was less objectionable than
Rehberg. Ultimately, however, Tester could not be painted as an extreme
environmentalist and win reelection. His feet were firmly planted in the
Pinchot, commodification camp as a farmer, and wolves was the perfect issue
with which to cement those credentials. Furthermore, Tester’s approach to
wolves from the beginning was centrist: to delist the wolves in places where
they had recovered, but keep protections in place where they were not. For
Tester, wolves was another way he could demonstrate his commitment to a Montana
issue while finding some rare common ground and space on which to work out a
compromise solution between two apparently resolute and determined groups. Dennison’s
independent analysis, at the end of the day, suggests that both Rehberg and
Tester jointly deserve credit. We may never know who was truly responsible for
delisting wolves, but we do know how each campaign sought to frame the issue to
advance their distinctive representational arguments about who was closer to
and understood more the concerns of Montanans. Wolves mattered because it was
an emblematic Montana issue cutting across the election constituencies of both
Tester and Rehberg, which is exactly why both pushed so hard to be seen as the
issue’s champion.
[1] Rehberg would tell me that
running a ranch began with managing an ecosystem, and this meant thinking of
the land holistically. Where on the ranch would you devote to making a living?
Where did you need to protect important water or historic resources? Wolves and
other predators were a management problem best handled by the folks on the
ground according to the Congressman.
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