From about 2012-2015, when I lived in Missoula, MT, I devoted a considerable amount of energy to pressuring Steve Bullock (elected Montana Governor in 2012) on climate change and environmental issues. This week Bullock officially entered the race for the presidential nomination—and at a time when presidential candidates are being taken to task for their views on climate action as never before, I think it’s worth sharing what my interactions with Bullock suggest about how he’s likely to approach this crucial issue.
While in Montana I worked (well, volunteered mostly) with multiple organizations seeking to stop large fossil fuel projects and support clean energy in the state. If you’re wondering what that was like, here’s an article where you can read me being quoted on why peaceful protesters would risk arrest trying to stop toxic coal trains from coming through our community.
Anyway, one of the biggest environmental fights in Montana in those days was over the proposed Otter Creek Mine, a project Arch Coal wanted to build so it could ship more coal overseas. As Governor, Bullock would oversee the state Department of Environmental Quality’s review of the project. I helped organize several events in Missoula and at the State Capitol in Helena meant to encourage Bullock to do the right thing and say no to this climate-destroying mine.
I don’t claim personally to have affected Bullock’s actions in any big way. What I can say is we environmental activists put Bullock in a bind: as Democratic governor of a red coal state, he felt himself caught between the coal industry and rural conservatives on one side, and the Missoula progressives he desperately needed to turn out in force at election time on the other. I’m sure he was relieved when the Otter Creek Mine died a relatively quiet death in early 2016, after Arch Coal gave up on the project and withdrew its permit application.
So what do Bullock’s actions as governor tell us about how he’s likely to address climate change as a presidential candidate? First and foremost, I expect him to take a very hum-drum, middle-of-the-road approach. As governor he cooperated with implementation of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, but you wouldn’t find him cheering the plan in public. He also supported coal mining and oil drilling in principle, and as a member of the State Lands Board (an office he held automatically as governor and prior to that as attorney general) he seldom met a fossil fuel leasing proposal he wouldn’t embrace.
Of course, on a national stage Bullock would have more leeway to admit support for climate action than he ever had in Montana—but I don’t expect him to change tack in any major way. It wouldn’t fit his carefully cultivated image as a compromise-making moderate. Would Bullock support some updated iteration of the Clean Power Plan? Probably. Would he get behind the bolder ideas in the Green New Deal? I very much doubt it. Would he support a moratorium on new fossil fuel leases on federal lands? Almost certainly not. That makes him much less a climate hawk than candidates like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, Kristen Gillibrand, Jay Inslee, and Cory Booker.
Bullock’s main case for being taken seriously in the presidential pool is likely to be his admittedly impressive track record of winning statewide elections in a red state. He’s won three such elections (first for Montana attorney general, twice for governor). Most recently he won re-election in 2016 despite Trump carrying Montana’s presidential votes in a landslide. In the race for Democratic nominee Bullock is likely to pitch himself as the candidate who can best appeal to rural America and win over moderates and potentially even some erstwhile Trump supporters.
But while Bullock’s election history in Montana really is remarkable, I’m doubtful he’d be able to replicate that success on the national stage. Montana is a tiny state in terms of population, with fewer than a million people. In a place like that politics still involves a decidedly personal touch. Bullock was able to make a name for himself as attorney general—an office perceived as relatively apolitical—then win two terms as governor more on the basis of his no-nonsense personality and reputation as a pragmatist than his position on any hot-button political issues. Needless to say, as a contender for presidential nominee he’ll lack that same recognition with all but a tiny sliver of voters, and will be pressed to take public positions on contentious issues much more often.
That is, if he gets noticed at all. Like many others I’d hoped Bullock would run for the Senate; he’s probably the only Democrat who would have stood a chance at dislodging Montana’s incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Steve Daines. In that race Bullock would really have made waves. Now he’ll become just one more presidential wannabee with virtually no name recognition outside his small home state, who will fade quickly into the background of the Democratic nomination contest and may not even make the first debate.
In Montana’s U.S. Senate race Bullock could have dramatically improved Democrats’ chances of taking back the Senate and, by extension, our odds of enacting real progressive reforms post-2020. While he wouldn’t have been a champion for transformative progressive policies, Bullock would certainly have been a “yes” on many Senate votes where Daines will be a “no.” That includes plenty of things like EPA funding and incentives for clean energy that affect the fight against climate change.
In addition to lack of name recognition, Bullock will struggle in the race for Democratic nominee because his positions simply aren’t in line with what the national Democratic base craves. Take climate change as an example: progressives are demanding as never before that presidential hopefuls show they have proposals up to the scale of the challenge. Things like a Green New Deal and a freeze on leasing public lands to fossil fuel companies are what it will take for us to have a hope of avoiding climate catastrophe.
The simple fact is, we’re way past the point where Bullock’s middle-of-the-road approach to climate action will work. The Democratic base is increasingly aware of this and it’s a new political reality presidential hopefuls have to face. It’s one of multiple reasons Bullock’s presidential bid is almost certainly doomed for quick ignominy.
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