By Jonas Blank
Congressional Quarterly

Electoral votes: 3

Delegates: 24

Chairman: Bob Ream

Hotel: Kawada (213) 621-4455

1996 Election:
Dole – 44%
Clinton – 41%
Perot – 14%

Though their sprawling, sparsely populated state is conservative-leaning, Montana Democrats have a lot riding on the 2000 election.

Montana's lone House seat, left open by the retirement of incumbent GOP Rep. Rick Hill, is considered a key opportunity for a Democratic take-back; Hill won a 1996 election to succeed retired nine-term Democratic Rep. Pat Williams.

The state's race for governor also is up for grabs with the pending retirement of term-limited Republican Gov. Marc Racicot.

Farmer-rancher Brian Schweitzer has been running a colorful and aggressive longshot Senate challenge against Republican incumbent Conrad Burns.

"I came in three years ago when we were probably bottomed out," said state Democratic Party Chairman Bob Ream, who will be leading the delegation to the Democratic National Convention. "There was nowhere to go but up."

Ream is so bullish on his candidates' chances that he cracked a joke at the expense of the party's presidential candidate, Vice President Al Gore. "They ought to send him here so he can ride in on our coattails!" said Ream.

Ream said the popularity of the Clinton administration has been hurt in recent years, as elsewhere in the West, by land use policies such as the proposed Conservation and Reinvestment Act (CARA), which opponents contend would allow the federal government to set aside increasing proportions of Montana land for federal use. One-third of the state's land is already set aside as federal park, forest or grassland.

Gore's pro-gun control positions may also be problematic in this largely pro-hunting state.

Yet the history of labor union activism in Montana's mines, railroad towns and timber stands also provides the Democrats with enough of a base to hold at least outside hopes of competing for Montana's three electoral votes.

Democrat Bill Clinton carried the state with a 38 percent plurality in his three-way 1992 presidential race with President George Bush and independent Ross Perot. But the state in 1996 gave Republican Bob Dole a 44 percent to 41 percent win over President Clinton, returning the state to the GOP column - where it had been in all but one other election since 1952.

Democratic Sen. Max Baucus is the most prominent current officeholder in the delegation.

Holding a delegate slot, but not planning to attend the convention, is the elder statesman, 97-year-old Mike Mansfield, who served Montana in the U.S. Senate from 1953 to 1977, the longest-serving Senate majority leader in history (1961-77) and ambassador to Japan from 1977 to 1988.

The delegation includes six state legislators, including House Minority Whip Dan Harrington and Senate Minority Leader Steve Doherty. There is a strong organized labor presence: 14 of the 24 delegates belong to unions.

American Indians, at 6 percent of the population, make up the state's largest minority group. The Democratic contingent has four American Indians - three delegates and an alternate - twice the diversity goal set for the state by the national party.

MONTANA NOTABLES: Sen. Max Baucus; state Democratic Party Chairman Bob Ream, the delegation chairman; state Senate Minority Leader Steve Doherty; state House Minority Whip Dan Harrington.