There’s an interesting story about U.S. Senator Max Baucus, D-Mont., posted March 1, 2007, on the website of The Nation.

It will be interesting to see if the Great Falls Tribune, the Billings Gazette, the Helena Independent Record, or maybe even the Missoulian picks it up and does some reporting. I doubt they will. Maybe the Queen City News or the Missoula Independent will catch it?

The story is called, “K Street’s Favorite Democrat” and it was written by Ari Berman.

Some interesting info came out of the story, like this paragraph:
-After helping to craft the largest tax cut in a generation, Baucus raised more than $1 million in campaign contributions from the financial sector for his 2002 re-election campaign. Opening doors in both directions were former Baucus staffers. During the debate over whether to add a $400 billion privately run prescription-drug plan to Medicare, his former chief of staff, David Castagnetti, and legislative aide, Scott Olsen, were part of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America’s $8 million lobbying effort. Shortly after the legislation–written largely by the pharmaceutical industry–passed, Baucus’s top staffer on the Finance Committee, Jeff Forbes, left to open his own lobbying shop, with clients including PhRMA, the drug maker Amgen and the American Health Care Association. These companies have in turn donated generously to Baucus; almost $700,000 between 2001 and 2006 from the healthcare industry and pharmaceutical lobby.

-And only three senators have more former staffers working as lobbyists on K Street (at least two dozen in Baucus’s case).

I seem to remember the Montana media hitting former U.S. Senator Conrad Burns, R-Mont., pretty hard about his former staff who were lobbyists and his friends on K Street; we’ll see how they handle this information.

And this paragraph was interesting, too:
Baucus seems like an accidental senator: not especially well spoken, engaging or smooth, though he looks the part with a tall athletic frame, mop of shiny gray hair and strong cleft chin. He speaks in a staccato monotone, smiles awkwardly by exposing his top teeth and rarely displays the backslapping manner customary in Washington. At Finance Committee hearings, the most remarkable thing about Baucus–other than his deference to the ranking Republican, Charles Grassley–is how unremarkable he is. He’s managed to rise in the Senate simply by sticking around. Elected to the Senate in 1978, the son of a wealthy ranching family, Baucus was little known before he became the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee in 2000.

Ouch!!!!!!!

This was kind of a shocker, but the Republicans ran someone against Burns in the primary and that person lost big time:
-Montana Democrats, who feel invigorated after recent victories, are talking of running a primary opponent against him in 2008.

Doing favors for friends?
-Baucus is more at home with Montana’s elites. His relationship with billionaire Washington is of particular significance. “Max is the only Democrat that Dennis Washington has consistently supported, financially and politically, with a great deal of enthusiasm,” says Milton Dotsopolous, a trial lawyer from Missoula who advises Washington politically. “He appreciates the fact that Max doesn’t always purely toe the party line.” In 2002 the Washington Group donated $60,000 to a 527 campaign organization operated by Baucus. And in 2005, Washington held a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee at his ranch.
In 2003 the Environmental Protection Agency drew up a plan to clean up a Superfund site at Milltown dam in Missoula and place the waste just downstream. But Baucus, citing environmental concerns, urged that the sediments be moved upstream, by rail, to an existing repository more than 100 miles away. Such a step, Baucus conceded, would be “significantly more expensive,” the Missoulian reported. It just so happened that Dennis Washington owned both the company that would remove the waste, Envirocon Inc., and the railroad, Montana Rail Link, that would transport it. Baucus eventually got his wish. The contract, which has never been disclosed, is said to be worth roughly $100 million. “I met with Max and talked with him about it,” says Dotsopolous. “But he was more driven by the public policy interests.”

If it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck…We’ll see how far this flies in Montana.