Energy In Montana’s Congressional Campaign
In Montana this year, there is only one congressional election taking place. Both U.S. senators from the state, Max Baucus and Jon Tester, are in the middle of their 6-year terms in office. Only U.S. Representative At Large Denny Rehberg is running a re-election campaign this year. There are three Democrats seeking to challenge Rehberg for his seat.
Energy is a big issue in Montana, where the effort to squeeze profit out of natural resources struggles against the desire to preserve the state’s natural environments for the sake of their non-economic value. The following are the energy policy positions of the four candidates in Montana’s congressional election this year:
- Representative Rehberg seeks to expand the burning of coal, oil, and gas, while consdering renewable, clean energy sources on the side.
- Democrat Dennis McDonald expresses a policy that’s about the same as Rehberg’s, supporting more drilling for oil and burning of coal.
- Democrat Melinda Gopher focuses on energy as an issue of local economic development, supporting the development of a wind turbine project that would be jointly owned by two Chippewa bands.
- Democrat Tyler Gernant does not mention any support for expansion of oil and coal extraction as Rehberg and McDonald do, but promotes the idea of Montana as a center for innovation in the development of “clean, renewable and sustainable sources of energy” .
