NRA And K Street Lose A Powerful Senator-- Max Baucus Won't Run For Reelection

Helping the GOP filibuster background checks for the NRA made his reelection untenable

Max Baucus was certainly planning to run for reelection. His Glacier PAC has been collecting money from the special interests he serves and his campaign warchest already had $3,594,923 on hand by January 1 this year. Known as the Senator from K Street, last time Baucus ran (2008), special interest PACs contributed $4,959,391. Since then, he's further ingratiated himself to the big money groups that give the most, particularly the Medical-Industrial Complex and the banksters, who have contributed, respectively, $3,837,102 and $5,715,734 towards Baucus' shady career in politics.

And then came the vote on Manchin-Toomey, the very mainstream, very moderate commonsense background checks bill opposed by the NRA but favored by 91% of Americans (and 79% of Montanans)-- as well as by most NRA members and most gun owners. Bachus slipped... or his mask did. He voted wrong and ended his career in politics. There's nothing left for him now but the disgrace of working as a paid whore on K Street.




The last polling in Montana had already shown him losing popularity-- and vulnerable.

PPP's newest Montana Senate poll finds that the seat could be competitive next year...but Republicans are probably going to need a stronger candidate than Corey Stapleton or Champ Edmunds.

Max Baucus has a 45/48 approval rating, upside down numbers that reflect what we've found for him over most of the last couple years. Nevertheless Baucus would start out with pretty large leads over both Stapleton (45/38) and Edmunds (47/37) who have shown the greatest interest in the race to date.

Baucus would be in trouble if a stronger Republican candidate got into the contest though. He would trail by 5 point margins to both Congressman Steve Daines (49/44) and former Governor Marc Racicot (47/42). He would have a small lead over Attorney General Tim Fox (46/43).

The biggest threat to Baucus might actually be in a primary. Former Governor Brian Schweitzer would lead him 54/35 in a face off. Democratic voters like Baucus (76/18 approval) but he can't match up to Schweitzer's popularity with the party base (86/9 favorability). Schweitzer's up across the ideological spectrum of the party, leading by 34 with 'very liberal' voters, 17 with 'somewhat liberal' ones, and 15 with moderates.

Schweitzer would be a stronger general candidate than Baucus. He leads Stapleton by 10 at 49/39 and Edmunds by 15 at 52/37. It would still be competitive even with Schweitzer as the nominee if a top tier Republican ran though- he would lead Daines only 48/45 and start out just behind Racicot at 46/45. He leads Fox by 6 points in a hypothetical match up at 49/43.

Baucus, the ConservaDem best known as the person who wrecked Obamacare by killing the public option, could have never faced Schweitzer-- a single-payer populist-- in a primary. Perhaps he was aware Schweitzer was going to run-- even if Schweitzer is being publicly coy right now and allowing Baucus to save face. The Missoulian ran a story Baucus couldn't have missed about how Montana voters overwhelmingly prefer Schweitzer to him. Schweitzer came out as the most popular political figure in the state and Baucus came out as the least popular figure.

Schweitzer is helping make it easier for Baucus to retire from the Senate. "Max has served in the U.S. Senate longer than any other Montanan in history," he said yesterday. "Every Montanan would like nothing more than to spend another day in Montana and the sacrifice he's made with all that time in Washington...  If someone said, 'Well, I want to spend more time in Alabama; I want to spend more time in the Bayou.' What are you crazy?' But if they say to you, 'I just want to spend more time in Montana,' they mean it. It's real... God bless him for all his years of service... I'm the kind of guy that, when I see a broke-down pickup, I'll get out with my tools and try to fix it, and I can tell you looking at Washington, D.C., from Montana, there is no bigger broke-down pickup than the Senate in Washington, D.C."

Those polled were asked to rate the job performance of top Montana politicians and President Barack Obama in one of four categories: "excellent," "pretty good," "only fair" or "poor." The "excellent" and "pretty good" scores generally are combined to provide a positive job-performance rating.

Schweitzer, a Democrat, had a 60 percent job performance rating, followed by Democratic Sen. Jon Tester at 50 percent and Republican U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg at 48 percent... Baucus was last at 38 percent. His job performance rating has plunged from 67 percent in the last Lee Newspapers poll in May 2009, when he led the pack.

Polls by other groups have shown that Baucus' job performance scores have fallen drastically since his role in passage of the federal health care reform law in 2009 and 2010. The Montana senator was a leading architect of that bill.

Republicans hate Baucus because, among other things, they view him as having helped pass Obamacare. Democrats dislike him because he ruined Obamacare at the behest of his corporate allies. He's widely seen as one of the Senate's most corrupt members, more like a Republican in that regard than a Democrat.