Montana’s Native American voters crucial in Tester’s victory

November 17, 2006 in Jon Tester, Montana

by Jay Stevens 

We’ve heard a lot of talk about where and how Jon Tester won the Senate seat in Montana. John Adams of the Missoula Independent identified Missoula as the hot-spot in the election — Tester did, after all, earn a 12,000-vote advantage over Burns in the county. Courtney Lowery of New West points to Jon’s advantage in rural counties over Schweitzer’s tallies in his 2000 Senate bid. Matt Singer crunches the numbers and concludes that both are true – after all, the guy won by just over 2,000 votes.

The reason everybody’s scrambling for answers is that Jon Tester lost the state’s largest county – Yellowstone – and just about every rural county by a significant margin and still won the election. That’s just not…logical? Normal?

In all the explanations though, one significant block of support that hasn’t been mentioned is the state’s Native American vote.

Consider. The rural counties that Tester did win have a significant Native population: Big Horn, Blaine, Hill, Roosevelt, and Rosebud. Add those totals to Glacier county, and you have a sizeable swing for Tester based on Native American votes:

The negative perception [of Conrad Burns] showed up in places like Big Horn County, home to the Crow Reservation, voters chose Tester over Burns by a nearly 2-1 margin. Tester won 64 percent of a vote in a county that is 60 percent Native American, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.The results were similar in Glacier County, home to the Blackfeet Reservation. There, 62 percent of voters chose Tester in a county with a 62 percent Native population.

In Roosevelt County, home to the Fort Peck Reservation, 58 percent of voters went with Tester. The county is 56 percent Native.

Even in places where Native Americans are not the majority, the election results showed the power of their vote. In Blaine County, where Natives make up 45 percent of the population, 51 percent picked Tester over Burns.

Four other counties with sizable, double-digit percentage Native populations — Choteau, Hill, Lake and Rosebud — saw some rather tight margins between Tester and Burns. In all but one of these counties, Tester carried the vote.

If the percentage of Missoula voters pulling for Tester astounded pundits, consider the percentage of pro-Tester Indians:

”We worked very hard on the ‘Get Out the Indian Vote,”’ [MT state senator from Browning, Carol] Juneau said. ”It had a big impact on the U.S. Senate race. I looked at data here in Browning on the Blackfeet Reservation. In the precincts on the reservation we had 2,461 people vote, and 83 percent voted for Jon Tester. If you add all the Indian votes from throughout Montana’s seven reservations and figure that about 80 percent voted for Tester, that made a huge impact on the senatorial election.” That election, in which the Republican incumbent was defeated, was very close and the Indian vote certainly had a big impact.

So why all the love for Jon Tester on Montana’s reservations? Again, Conrad Burns was his own worst enemy:

Burns supported Senator Slade Gorton’s 1997 bill to restrict tribal jurisdiction and drafted legislation to eliminate tribal jurisdiction in Montana over non-Indians. Funding for Indian programs has not increased under Burns.

Gorton’s bill was a direct attack on Native American tribal authority:

In 1998, Gorton introduced CERA’s dream bill, the cynically titled “American Indian Justice Act.” It was offered as a kind of political extortion: surrender self-rule or lose millions in federal money. Gorton’s bill, which passed the Senate but was rejected by the House, would have required all tribes to surrender their tribal sovereignty in order to receive federal funds and for all tribes getting federal money to be means tested. Ada Deer, a member of the Menominee Tribe and former assistant secretary of Interior for Indian Affairs, called the measure “termination by appropriation.”

I’m sure Burns support of Michigan tribes over Montana’s rankled some Native American voters as well.

Montana’s Native Americans must be thrilled at having been instrumental in Burns’ downfall.