As we near the publication date, I've decided to tease you with material that didn't make it into the final cut. I'm calling this my "director's cut" of Battle for the Big Sky and hope it will keep you coming back for more....
When writing a book, you have to make tough choices
editorially. My initial manuscript weighed in at 136,000 words and I was directed
to shrink it to 100,000 words or less. This meant that a wonderful chapter I
had written on the 2006 race between Conrad Burns and Jon Tester had to be
dumped.
It also meant that a discussion about wolves—and what the dispute
between Tester and Rehberg on the issue said about representation, Montana, and
the larger American West—had to go from chapter six. In anticipation of the
book coming out this fall, I’ve decided to make available this credit claiming
battle between the two concerning the delisting of the gray wolf on this
website. It will give you a sense of my perspective on the race and, I hope,
show the value of examining this campaign for understanding congressional
representation more broadly.
Part I: Authenticity and the Land: The Case
of Wolves
In
many respects, the Tester-Rehberg campaign exhibited a number of similarities
with other congressional campaigns unfolding during the 2012 cycle. The Rehberg
game plan was to nationalize the election, and in that respect, was no
different than the Senate campaigns of Republican challengers in Ohio,
Missouri, or Pennsylvania. The Tester campaign’s contrasting Tester’s character
with Rehberg’s echoed Democratic strategy not only in other congressional
races, but in the presidential campaign as well. The most effective
advertisements for the Obama campaign blasted Mitt Romney’s career at Bain
Capital, his investments in companies that shipped American jobs overseas, and
his lack of empathy as epitomized by remarks made at a closed door fundraiser.
Romney claimed that “47 percent [of Americans], who are dependent upon
government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a
responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health
care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it . . . [T]hey will vote for this
president no matter what.”[1]
Mitt Romney does not care about you was the message from the Obama campaign.
Neither does “Dennis” Rehberg was the constant refrain from Tester and the
Montana Democratic Party.[2]
Given
that the Montana Senate campaign primed a set of issues (healthcare reform,
spending, and the debt) and established frames (party versus personality) indicative
of other races in other states, in some ways it is surprising that a
particularly Montana issue elicited one of the biggest tussles between Tester
and Rehberg during the summer of 2011. Specifically, the issue concerned
efforts to remove the gray wolf from federal protection under the Endangered
Species Act and handing species management over to the states. Other states
wrestled with wolf recovery and management, but to think that two U.S. Senate
candidates would grapple fiercely over the issue is probably unfathomable to
voters elsewhere. And it was an issue on which the two candidates essentially
agreed: The wolf should be removed from federal protection and Montana given
management responsibilities. The controversy over who rightly deserved credit
for wolf delisting is emblematic of not only the broader conflict between
preservationists and extractionists ongoing throughout the American West.[3]
It is emblematic of the representational styles and relationships crafted by
both candidates centering on their relationship to Montana, the land, and rural
values. It was about who had the right to claim rural Montana as their own and
demonstrate who was more genuinely reflective of the state’s core cultural
values. It was also about legislative effectiveness in support of those values.
In Richard Fenno’s language, the gray wolf represented all three
representational styles rolled into one: policy expert, constituent servant,
and “one of us”.[4]
The
gray wolf “long the most despised predator in North America” had been rendered
virtually extinct in the lower 48 states by the 1950s.[5]
In the West, the gray wolf had been eradicated by the 1930s and wolves had not
been seen in Yellowstone Park since 1924. Montana played a direct hand in the
species’ elimination by providing a taxpayer-funded bounty for wolf pelts.[6]
The species received the protection of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, and
in the mid-1990s, a program reintroduced the gray wolf to Yellowstone National
Park. This proved controversial as the animal engenders “a deeply-seated
animosity . . . among a minority of Americans.”[7]
That
animosity is particularly acute in the West and Montana specifically.
Ecologically, the reintroduction succeeded: According to a recent estimate from
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 6,100 gray wolves roam the contiguous
United States, most residing within the Northern Rocky Mountains in Idaho,
Montana, and Wyoming.[8]
Given population recovery, Western politicians spearheaded an effort to remove
the wolf from the list of species afforded protections under the Endangered
Species Act and return management to the states. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service complied with the issuance of a rule returning management of the
Northern Rocky Mountain Gray wolf populations to Idaho and Montana in 2009.
In
the American West, wolf reintroduction pits contradictory visions against each
other: “[P]reservation versus use of resources, recreation-based economies
versus extraction-dependent economies, urban versus rural values, and states’
rights versus federalism.”[9]
University of Montana Professor of Natural Resource Policy Martin Nie writes
that “some see the wolf, and the danger it poses to livestock, as yet another
assault on rural communities.”[10]
Worse, it is an attempt by the remote and faceless federal government to impose
urban values on rural communities, urban values eroding the distinctive rural
culture of the West. “Wolf restoration” continues Nie, “will be seen as yet one
more example—from the move towards corporate agriculture to falling beef
prices—of what little regard the government has for a quickly disintegrating
culture. As one rancher informed me, while international markets and
corporatization can be quite complex, wolves are relatively simple and can fit
straight into the scope of a rifle.”[11]
As self-avowed defenders of Montana’s rural culture, Tester the farmer and
Rehberg the rancher together viewed the wolf as a threat. And, as they both saw
their primary constituencies as rooted in rural America, each wanted to claim
exclusive credit for protecting the interests of agriculturalists against
Washington bureaucrats bent on ruining livelihoods already suffering under the
weight of unpredictable weather, fickle crop and commodity prices, and
increased taxes.[12]
To
be continued….
[1] Gregory Korte. “Romney:
Obama Voters ‘Believe they are Victims.” USA
Today, September 17, 2012.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012/09/17/romneys-47-remark/57797246/1
[2] The Tester campaign
pointedly referred to Denny as “Dennis” throughout the campaign. I explain why
in the book.
[3] This is discussed in
detail in chapter 2 of Battle for the Big
Sky.
[4] See Fenno’s book Home
Style.
[5] Knowing Yellowstone: Science in America’s First National Park. Jerry
Johnson, editor. Taylor Trade Publishing, 2010.
[6] Chronology of the Gray
Wolf in Montana. Billings Gazette.
January 16, 2002.
[7] Martin A. Nie. “The
Sociopolitical Dimensions of Wolf Management and Restoration in the United
States.” Human Ecology Review
8(2000): 1-12.
[8] Lenny Bernstein. “Gray
Wolf to Lose Endangered Species Protection as Numbers Rise.” Washington Post, June 7, 2013.
[9] Nie, “The Sociopolitical
Dimensions”, 1.
[10] Ibid., 7.
[11] Ibid., 8.
[12] Ibid.
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