Liberal bloggers feuding over Tester’s record

Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, once a darling of the Montana and national liberal blogosphere, appears to be having some trouble with the netroots as he embarks on a tough reelection campaign against Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg.

On issues ranging from wilderness to immigration reform to wolves the past several months have seen liberals’  irritation with Tester go from a slow simmer to a rolling boil in the blogosphere. 

National blogger Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos fame—one of Tester’s most ardent and influential netroots supporters in the 2006 election—slammed Tester in December for voting against the DREAM Act, a bill that would have created a path to citizenship for undocumented aliens who were brought to the United States as children. The bill was a top priority of Congressional Democrats last session, but Tester and fellow Montana Sen. Max Baucus joined three other Senate Democrats and in voting against the measure, which Tester referred to as “amnesty” for illegal immigrants.

Wrote Kos:

“Not only will I do absolutely nothing to help his reelection bid, but I will take every opportunity I get to remind people that he is so morally bankrupt that he'll try to score political points off the backs of innocent kids who want to go to college or serve their country in the military.”

More recently a fiery debate erupted on the Missoula blog 4&20 blackbirds over a post by frequent anonymous liberal blogger JC. In the post JC criticizes Tester for breaking key campaign promises dealing with wildness protection and the use of legislative riders and accuses the senator of marginalizing liberal policy critics by calling them “extremists”:

During Jon’s first term in office he took two actions that have explicitly gone against his promises: 1) he has introduced his Logging Bill, which would release certain lands protected as wilderness under current statutes and management practices; and 2) he inserted the wolf delisting rider into the 2011 Budget Bill.

Both pieces of legislation have been heavily panned by those who supported [former progressive Democratic Senate candidate] Paul Richards in his withdrawal from the primary race, and endorsement of Tester–and by many, many others. And for that vocal criticism of Tester’s legislation, Tester labeled his former supporters “extremists.” I guess their position once upon a time wasn’t too extreme for him to shake hands with. And Jon invited “extremist” Paul onto the stage for a victory salute. But those supporters have not changed their principles, policies, or politics. Jon Tester has.

But Tester supporters were quick to fire back arguing, in part, that Tester never pretended to be the liberal the netroots hoped he’d be, and that criticism of Tester is only aiding Republican Denny Rehberg’s effort to unseat the one-term Democrat.

Wrote commenter Jake:

We must remember that the lines have been drawn and our primary focus has to be to get Jon re-elected. The alternative is not in any way acceptable. Intellectual squabbling is a waste of energy, especially as some have estimated, it could be a close race.

Helena educator and 0ne-time Democratic gubernatorial candidate Don Pogreba (well, he filed for governor anyway), picked up the discussion on his blog Intelligent Discontent where he provided a lengthy rebuttal to JC’s post on 4&20 blackbirds. Pogreba says he’s troubled by the “developing trend in which progressives seem a lot more interested in tearing down a moderate-left Senator like Tester” than in attacking his opponent.

Writes Pogreba:

“The fact remains that Senator Tester is who he represented himself to be, not the person we progressives want him to be all the time. Montana’s not going to elect Bernie Sanders; it’s not going to elect Russ Feingold (hell, Wisconsin doesn’t even elect Russ Feingold anymore). What we can do is to support a Senator who looks out for the working class, did his best to create a Wilderness Bill that balanced environmental protection with political and economic reality in the state, and who has worked to protect small businesses and family farms here in Montana.”

The comments sections of each of the blog posts I reference above are well worth reading, if not lengthy. It’s too bad I don’t have the time or space to highlight them all here.

However, one interesting nugget stood out from comments on the 4&20 blackbirds piece.

Wilderness advocate Matthew Koehler, a staunch critic of the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, was invited in November to become a front page author on the prominent Montana Democratic blog Left in the West.  He got the gig from Rob Kailey, a.k.a. Wulfgar!, who took over administrative duties of the blog after longtime administrator Jay “Touchstone” Stevens left in November, followed shortly thereafter by blog founder Matt Singer. 

In announcing Koehler’s elevation to front-page post status, Kailey wrote:

His issues may often be singular, and his statements may not always meet with approval. I don't care. He has a great deal to say of importance to the left.  That I do care about.

But according to  a comment Koehler left on the 4&20 blackbirds post , he apparently lost  front page posting privileges on LiTW after openly criticizing Tester for attaching a rider that removes grey wolves from the Endangered Species Act to a must-pass spending bill.

Some might argue all of this blog squabbling is much ado about nothing.

That may be true, but it’s hard to deny that the netroots played a integral role early on in Tester’s rise from obscure Montana dirt farmer to U.S. Senator…as Tester himself said in an August 2006 interview shortly after his surprising defeat of presumed front-runner John Morrison in the Democratic primary:

“I’ll tell you, I think [blogs] are critically important to this campaign…They’ve brought more people into the political process, and I have nothing but high praise for what they’ve been able to do and what they’ve given me.”

An overstatement? Maybe.

But During the 2006 Senate campaign Act Blue donors raised $342,823 from over 10,000 individual online contributions for Tester’s campaign, mostly from blogs. ActBlue donations to Tester’s 2006 campaign outnumbered donations from any single PAC, according to OpenSecrets.org.

There’s no question that an incumbent Senator—in what is likely to be one of the most hotly contested U.S. Senate races in the country—will rely less on netroots  enthusiasm and activism as he will on the the traditional party resources.

What remains to be seen is whether Tester—a candidate lefty bloggers almost universally fawned over in 2006—will electorally suffer from the divisions flaring up among what was once his most active and vocal base.

AP: Anonymous political blogger using state computer network, sometimes 'all day long'

Now this is getting interesting.

The Associated Press’ Matt Gouras is reporting that anonymous liberal blogger MT Cowgirl has blogged from the state’s wireless computer network.

Of course, given that hundreds of people or use the state’s wireless network on any given day, Gouras’ story doesn’t definitively implicate any state employee of doing political work on state time and on state resources.


However,  according to the article, MT Cowgirl, whoever he or she is (she insists she’s indeed a she, though some commenters have suggested otherwise) frequently logged in on the state’s wireless network at the Office of Public Instruction, sometimes all day long:

The Department of Administration, provided with detail on the IP address of some posts, was able to identify that the blogger had been accessing — all day long at times — the state wireless guest system through a hookup in the Office of Public Instruction using an Apple Macintosh laptop.
The agency spokeswoman at the time, Jessica Rhoades, said neither she nor anyone else at the agency was doing it. Rhoades, who recently went to work for the governor's office, said the agency's information technology found at that time the wireless system could theoretically be accessed by someone sitting in the parking lot.

As Gouras points out in his article, whoever MT Cowgirl is, that particular blogger has shown an “uncanny knack” of tracking down insider information before anyone else, including most journalists, and has been a major cheerleader of Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

Speculation about her/his identity has been a hot topic for many months within Montana’s political circles. MT Cowgirl blogs with a ferocity and frequency that’s dazzling, but she does so anonymously and without any accountability. She doesn’t hesitate to post a “rumor,” and she has at times angered fellow progressives.

Gouras’ story is hooked on a post Cowgirl wrote last weekend suggesting that Roy Brown was less of a man because of his appearance and choice of briefcase. I blogged about that earlier this week here.

But Gouras’ story raises an more important point than whether or not MT Cowgirl occasionally irritates her fellow Democrats:

The race between Van Dyk and Brown for a Billings Senate seats is one of the most heated legislative races of this campaign, and the post by the left-leaning, anonymous blogger underlines questions of accountability in attempting to influence elections in the new media age. Especially with posts coming from inside state government.

I’ve had dozens of conversations about MT Cowgirl in various circles in Helena and beyond. Most people I talk to believe that Cowgirl may in fact be more than one person, and let’s just say I wasn’t at all surprised that Gouras revealed that the blogger or bloggers known as MT Cowgirl often uses a state computer network from the Office of Public Instruction.

Blogger misses mark with attempt at humor

GOP candidates and tea partiers aren’t the only ones dealing with backlash over ill-advised online comments these days.
The heavily pro-Democrat blog Montana Cowgirl Blog blew up over the weekend over a post anonymous blogger “Cowgirl” published on Friday. The post suggests that Democratic SD 25 candidate Kendall Van Dyk is more of a “man” than his opponent, incumbent Republican Sen. Roy Brown.
It’s worth pointing out that this race is the most expensive and hotly contested legislative race in the state—and the gloves have been off for a while.
But Cowgirls’ post (and subsequent unapologetic apology) crossed the line with some Democratic Party supporters who took it slap in the face to the state’s LGBT community.
The post, entitled “The Fundamental Difference,” shows an undated photo of a camouflaged Van Dyk posing with a nice mule deer buck he arrowed.
The caption under the photo is “Man.”
The next photo is a blurry photograph (presumably a screenshot from this Brown TV ad) showing Roy Brown in a blue dress shirt and sweater vest and carrying a shoulder bag.
The caption under the photo is “Man Purse.”
The inference, in case you missed it, is that Van Dky is somehow more of a “man” because he dons camouflage and hunts big game while Roy Brown wears sweater vests and carries a “man purse.” If you have doubts about the implications of the term “man purse,” look it up in the Urban Dictionary.
About the point of the post, Cowgirl had this to say:

The point of this post is to compare Brown’s country club elitism with Kendall’s Montana roots.

And while some of the online commenters found the post hilarious, several others saw it as gay baiting.
Jamee Greer, an organizer for the Montana Human Rights Network and an openly gay man, had this to say:

This is the gay baiting crap that I have had enough of. If I lived in Billings, I’d most certainly vote for Kendall van Dyk! Brown is no friend of, well, most of the human rights issues I advocate for during the session. But his fondness for argyle, messenger-ish man purse bags and his only-too-recently acquired hunting license, not to mention famed vegetarianism, means what, exactly? That he’s too “faggy” for Montana? Why are progressives using coded language? Eastern Montana has gay and lesbian voters, trans voters, allied voters. Don’t slap us in the face.

As Greer points out, this isn’t the first time Brown’s status as a “real Montanan” has been called into question by left. During his 2008 campaign against Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, Brown responded to rumors spread by the Montana Democratic Party that he is…gasp…a vegetarian! and thus unqualified to serve as governor of a state in which cattle ranching is such an important part of the economy.
For the record, Brown denied that he is now, or ever has been, a vegetarian. 
Cowgirl and her supporters maintain that the post is merely an attempt at humor, and she repeatedly asserts that she was not inferring anything about sexuality. But some readers don’t buy it, like Helena immigration attorney Shahid Haque-Hausrath:

Most of your readers, like me, are staunch progressives who have no allegiance to Roy Brown. Your post was offensive because you glibly engaged in offensive rhetoric about gender roles and masculinity. There is only one way to interpret your post: you portray Kendall as a “real man” and cast Roy Brown as an effeminate man, who therefore isn’t a “real Montanan.”

As I read this exchange, I wonder if those who found this post funny would find it equally funny if the shoe were on the other foot? If, for example, a GOP-leaning blogger were to suggest that openly-gay Democratic HD 92 candidate Bryce Bennett was less of a man than Don Harbaugh, his Republican opponent, would Cowgirl and her supporters find it amusing?
I suspect not.
Cowgirl, whoever she is, has in the past vehemently attacked conservatives for offensive comments aimed at gays and minorities. But in this case, the self-proclaimed feminist blogger seems to have abandoned her principles in the interest of scoring a few political points.
Greer has been accused by some anonymous commenters of hurting progressive candidates by continuing to point out why Cowgirl’s post was offensive. But Greer says the real harm done here is to Montana’s LBGT community:

Whatever potential anti-gay, anti-feminist votes, if any, are picked up for Kendall by making fun of men who are effeminate, “elitist” or “stylish” or “sissies”– let’s just say “faggy” — none of those votes are worth the damage done to the LGBT community in return.

 UPDATE: Montana Cowgirl points out in the comments section below that she offered an apology here.