Big Sky Cairn

In 1997, current Montana Democratic Party Executive Director Art Noonan wrote a short opinion piece for PBS extolling his belief that money had an acidic effect on democracy. In the piece he wrote:

Democrats should be doubly shameful because we joined in the “politics of price” to balance the playing field and instead we achieved the loss of the moral high ground.

And…

I will never be a millionaire and so I feel very strongly that the money changers have more directly undermined the importance in my vote more than any constitutional amendment ever could.

Now whether the Democrats were ever keepers of the moral high ground is certainly debatable, but the article got me thinking: How does a man who believes that money is the root of all political evil campaign for a sitting U.S. Senator who receives millions of dollars from donors *PACs* outside the state of Montana?

According to Open Secrets, Max Baucus raised a little over $6.7 million dollars for his 2002 campaign. Of that amount, only 17.4% was raised in the Treasure State. In fact, of the five zip codes who gave the most money to Baucus only two are in Montana. So how does Noonan, a man raised in a town built on the backs of Union labor support a man who raises more money in the 90210 than he does in zip code 59701?

If Noonan is right and the people who give the money are the people who shape policy, than the citizens of Big Sky Country only own one-fifth of Max Baucus.

It’s worse than that. The $6.7 mil figure is for 2002. For 2008, he’s already raised around $10 million, and according to th Missoulian nearly 91% of that is from out of state.

That’s a great find though. Noonan is quite a piece of work…