Posted on 02/29/2012 3:01:53 PM PST by Smogger
Montana won’t reclaim its second seat (so long as we stay at 435 Representatives): it barely lost it after 1990, but has gotten further away from the goal in the past two censuses.
Before 1992, wasn’t the eastern CD in MT the Dem one and the western CD the GOP one? Are you saying that would switch now, DJ?
California is done. Get out if you haven’t already.
The 1st district was the Mountain West seat when they were formally divided starting in the 1918 elections. This was the district dominated by the unions/mineworkers. It began electing Democrats at its creation. It did elect Republicans in 1920 (though the Democrat who won in 1918 easily reclaimed it in 1922), 1938 (due to the ugly internecine battle that saw the Democrat Sen. Burton Wheeler endorse the colorful Dr. Jacob Thorkelson over the Dem incumbent), 1940 (where Thorkelson was deposed in the GOP primary for leftist pacifist Jeannette Rankin). Not until 1970 would it elect another Republican, Dick Shoup (who beat Dem incumbent Arnold Olsen), and Shoup became the first Republican reelected to the seat in 1972 (in a rematch with Olsen), but he was a casualty of Watergate in ‘74 and lost to none other than a young Max Baucus.
The 2nd district was always the more GOP-leaning plains district. From 1918-1969, only 3 Democrats would win the seat (due to the Depression, from 1933-45, and an odd situation in the GOP year of 1956 when the freshman incumbent, Orvin Fjare, lost by a heartbreakingly narrow margin, to be reclaimed again in 1960 when the Dem incumbent lost a Senate primary). Oddly again, when Pres. Nixon appointed that Republican winner, Jim Battin, to the federal bench, the Democrats won a 1970 special by just 2,000 votes, that being John Melcher (also the future Senator). When Melcher won the vacated seat of Sen. Mike Mansfield in 1976, Republican Ron Marlenee reclaimed it and would hold it for the next 16 years until he was forced to run against Democrat Pat Williams from the 1st (and lost by just 50-47%) for statewide. Had it been 1994 instead, Williams would’ve lost. Probably, too, had there been two seats up in 2010, the GOP might’ve swept both. Even absent the declining mining industry, the western part of the state is dominated by granola moonbats in places like Missoula.
I seem to remember an entry from the 1974 Almanac of American Politics where Barone remarked how unusual it was that the usually Democrat 1st had Dick Shoup representing it while the Conservative plains had liberal Democrat Melcher in the 2nd.
Something to do that Bill and Ted movie, they took Napoleon bowling right? Great movie.
Who knows about Dreier. Rumor is often reported as fact (he dated Bo Derek?). We may never be sure about James “Aunt Fancy” Buchanan.
If we did the drawing in MT we could try and draw districts with the same GOP strength.
Perfect. Just perfect.
Can you say "Nadia Lockyer?"
-PJ
Yes, in the movie, the water park in San Dimas was named Waterloo, and Napoleon indeed visits it. There was a great scene in which Bill and Ted are trying to figure out where Napoleon, who had disappeared, had wandered off to, and one of them asked “if you were a great French military leader, and got to spend a day in San Dimas, where would you go?”; they then answered, in unison, “WATERLOO!”
“If we did the drawing in MT we could try and draw districts with the same GOP strength.”
But we won’t have to worry about that, since MT won’t be getting its second CD back. Remember, it barely lost its second CD after 1990, and grew by 12.9% from 1990 to 2000, and still fell short of picking one up (and wasn’t one of the nearest misses, either). And after it grew by 9.7% from 2000 to 2010 it fell even further back. MT recently passed the 1 million mark in population in a Census estimate; the average CD will have like 800,000 people in it after the 2020 Census, and Rhode Island, which still has more population than MT, will drop to a single CD after that Census.
Sounds like the plot of a bad western.
I can but I’d rather not.
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