When Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat and political fixture in Montana, was re-elected to a sixth term in 2008, all of the statewide offices down the ballot — governor, attorney general, secretary of state, state auditor and school superintendent — were won by fellow Democrats. A sole Republican took the state’s single seat in the House of Representatives.
Things are much different today.
“If Tester loses, all those will be Republicans,” Mr. Baucus said, referring to Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat who is battling to hold on to his seat there in one of the country’s most pivotal contests, “That’s a dramatic shift.”
It is not just Montana. Other states on the Great Plains — once bastions of progressive prairie populism — have experienced stark partisan upheaval in their congressional delegations over the past two decades, shifting almost completely out of reach for Democrats.
Just 20 years ago, two Democratic senators represented both North Dakota and South Dakota — including the party’s Senate leader. Each state also boasted a Democratic House member. Nebraska had a Democratic senator and only a few years earlier had two. Today, those states are represented in Congress entirely by Republicans.
“It is a constituency I don’t even recognize in some cases,” said Byron Dorgan, a former Democratic senator from North Dakota who retired in 2010 after three terms in the Senate and 11 statewide election wins. “The people elected me for 30 years to the House and Senate, and I don’t think that constituency would have ever considered someone like Donald Trump to be elevated to the White House.”
While Democrats have been able to offset the loss of those once competitive seats by tightening their grip on Senate seats in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona — where they are fighting to hold a seat this year — the prospect of being locked out on the Great Plains presents a significant long-term obstacle for Democrats in securing and preserving congressional majorities.
They see the race involving Mr. Tester, a third-generation farmer with deep roots in Montana, as a test of whether Democrats can still bridge the yawning urban-rural divide. Democrats who once held the now-Republican seats attribute the shift to a variety of factors, including the exodus of younger residents to more populous areas. They also point to a deeply ingrained sense among the older voters who remain that the federal government and the liberal powers they see as running it are not on their side and not acting in their interests.
“Democrats are increasingly perceived as elite and focused almost exclusively on urban matters,” said Tom Daschle, a former South Dakota senator who served as both minority and majority leader before being narrowly defeated in 2004. “Rarely do national Democratic candidates spend time in rural America, and that ‘flyover’ perception continues to increase the perception of this divide.”
The disconnect is as much cultural as political.
“These are interior states, and a lot of people in the interior don’t trust the elites on the coasts,” said Mr. Baucus, who served as the U.S. ambassador to China after leaving the Senate. “They feel kind of put upon and that nobody cares.”
The former senators also consider the political emphasis on divisive social issues — exacerbated by the explosion of social media and the success of Republicans at exploiting the culture wars — as a major driver of the turn toward the G.O.P., though abortion debates tend to increase Democrats’ popularity among women.
“I think the voters drifted away from the party because, in their minds, the party was not paying enough attention to working families and the needs of middle-income Americans and took a journey on social issues, sort of making them a last stand,” said Ben Nelson, a former Nebraska governor who served as the state’s most recent Democratic senator before retiring in 2012.
Perhaps most vexing to Democrats is that rural voters don’t view the government or the Democratic Party as allies, even though the party has championed programs that are lifelines for rural America, not the least of which are agricultural supports.
“Rural people don’t think Democrats have addressed this divide despite our advocacy for things that could improve their lives — Medicaid expansion, increase in the minimum wage, child tax credit and many more policy tools,” Mr. Daschle said.
Mr. Dorgan, his onetime colleague in Senate leadership, echoed that view. “I think they don’t see much of a future,” he said of rural voters who had embraced Republicans and Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda. “There has been a relentless attack on government for a long time by Republicans.”
Besides Mr. Tester, Democrats do see some chance in the Nov. 5 elections to regain a foothold on the Great Plains. The party is competitive in House races in both Nebraska and Montana, where they are hoping to unseat Republican incumbents. And in Nebraska’s Senate race, an independent, Dan Osborn, is mounting a populist challenge against Senator Deb Fischer, a Republican. National Democrats have disavowed any involvement in the race but hope that he will align with them in terms of Senate control if he prevails.
Then there’s the fact that Mr. Tester is trying to win a fourth term in a state that has moved sharply to the right. Unlike other rural states, Montana’s evolution has been fueled not by an exodus of voters, but by a steady influx of new conservative residents who are much more aligned with the MAGA movement. Democrats worry that these voters are unflinching Republicans who are strongly supportive of Mr. Trump and are not familiar with or interested in Mr. Tester’s long history in the state or Montana’s tradition of political independence.
“They don’t know Jon, and they are Republicans,” Mr. Baucus said.
Mr. Tester has sought to characterize his opponent, Tim Sheehy, a veteran and businessman who moved to the state a decade ago, as the archetype of the newcomer that many longtime Montana residents resent — a deep-pocketed transplant who swoops in and helps drive up housing prices by paying top dollar for a huge ranch, which is then cut off from public access for hunting and recreation.
“In the end, as long as we’ve got folks that want to come to this state that have hundreds of millions of dollars in their bank account — they want to make Montana a playground for the rich — we’re going to have a hard time having homes for working-class people,” Mr. Tester said in a swipe at Mr. Sheehy in their second and final debate last month.
Mr. Sheehy retorted that he and other new arrivals contributed to the state’s prosperity.
“Truth is, I wasn’t lucky enough to be born in Montana,” Mr. Sheehy said. “I sure would have loved to have been — couldn’t control where my mother’s womb was when I crawled out of it.” He added, “But I’m proud to say that when my wife and I left the service and we put down roots here, we started a company, created hundreds of jobs to try to invest in the betterment of our community.”
Mr. Tester’s allies say that if any Democrat can hang on in this environment, it should be him, given his authentic rural background, underscored by the three fingers he is missing on his left hand — lost to a meat grinder he proudly notes that he still owns. They believe that pedigree should counter Republican attacks that he has “gone Washington.” But they fear it might not be enough.
“The things they say about him are not going to stick as much for somebody who doesn’t have a butch haircut, an overhang over his belt, and still farms,” said Mr. Nelson, the former Nebraska governor, describing Mr. Tester’s appearance. “But until the Democratic Party — and this may be the year we do it — can convince enough folks about support for working families, we are going to continue to be at risk.”
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