At a recent campaign event at a brewery in Whitefish, Mont., Ryan Busse attacked his political opponent, Republican Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, with surprising vehemence for a red-state Democrat .
He criticized Mr. Gianforte, who is running for a second term, as a wealthy, elite out-of-state interloper who simply doesn’t understand Montanans.
“I love putting my fist on this guy, because there are so many places to put it,” Mr. Busse told the crowd.
A former gun industry executive whose 2021 book “Gunfight” denounced the industry would seem to be an unlikely candidate for governor in a state that loves its guns, especially since his book has him catapulted to celebrity status in gun control circles.
But Mr. Busse, 54, and his running mate, Raph Graybill, 35, an activist constitutional lawyer from Montana, are testing a new approach to campaigning as Democrats in Republican states. Instead of embracing the soft-spoken moderation of, say, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, or recently retired Louisiana Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, or even Montana’s last Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, M Busse and Mr. Graybill are campaigning as a fighter, eager to activate not only the state’s few progressives, but also its many disaffected voters in both parties. (Mr. Busse and Mr. Graybill will officially become the party’s nominees in Tuesday’s primaries.)
At the very least, their campaign could boost the turnout of another fading Democrat seeking election in a state almost certain to vote for former President Donald J. Trump in November, Sen. Jon Tester.
“We have to break the mold of what people think as a Democrat in a state like this,” Mr. Busse said as he hiked the mountains past his Kalispell home with his four dogs. hunting bellows. “We have to shake things up and be loud and bold, and that happens to be the only equipment I have.”
In red states in the South and West, where Republican candidates tend to be the most vocal and bold, Democrats generally opt for a quiet contrast. Josh Stein, the North Carolina attorney general running for governor against an arch-conservative, Mark Robinson, has presented himself as the moderate consensus-builder. In Indiana, Democrats seeking a candidate for their state’s open governorship landed on Jennifer McCormick, who was elected public schools superintendent in 2016 as a Republican and has positioned herself as a centrist .
This is not the Busse-Graybill method. Mr. Busse, as vice president of sales at the high-end gunmaker Kimber, likes to say that he sold “millions of guns” to Americans before turning on the gun industry. internal and to denounce its increasingly militaristic and militant marketing methods and policies. This has made Mr Busse, an avid hunter and sport shooter, an apostate in the gun world, but he insists no Democrat is better equipped to counter Western Republicans and their intransigent views on gun rights.
Mr. Busse opposes the assault weapons ban and supports universal background checks for gun purchases and scare laws that allow police to confiscate guns from those deemed a threatens – but, above all, it denigrates the carrying of high-powered weapons like the AR. -15s as political statements to, as he puts it, “own the libraries.”
His sons, Badge, 16, and Lander, 19, were plaintiffs in a lawsuit that said the state’s failure to consider climate change projects when approving fossil fuels violated the Constitution. Montana. Last summer, a judge agreed in a historic ruling.
The president of the 1972 convention that drafted the state Constitution was Leo Graybill, Mr. Graybill’s grandfather. And Mr. Graybill has been a zealous guardian of his family legacy, suing the Gianforte government eight times over abortion restrictions that courts said violated the state’s guarantee of privacy rights. In all, Mr. Graybill sued the state 18 times on constitutional issues — and won every case.
Now, in addition to running for lieutenant governor, Mr. Graybill is leading the legal fight to secure an amendment to the state constitution that would explicitly protect access to abortion on Montana’s ballot next November.
Democrats insist they have a chance to win back the governor’s mansion. Mr. Gianforte burst into the national consciousness in 2017 when he punched a reporter the day before his House special election. Accused of assault, he was sentenced to 40 hours of community service and 20 hours of anger management classes. A wealthy former software executive, Mr. Gianforte still won re-election to the House in 2018, then won the governorship in 2020.
But Mr. Busse’s campaign focuses less on the governor’s temperament than on portraying him as an out-of-touch outsider who is changing Montana in ways the independent, wild West doesn’t want. Wealthy newcomers like Mr. Gianforte, who moved to Montana in 1995 after selling his software company for $10 million, helped drive real estate prices to dizzying levels, Mr. Busse argued that, rather than adjusting property tax rates to ease the growing tax burden, the Republican governor and Legislature have let property taxes climb on homeowners while protecting businesses, particularly homeowners. pipelines, with lower rates. (Mr. Busse actually moved to the state that same year to head sales for Kimber.)
“We are two Democrats who oppose the largest tax increase in state history,” Mr. Graybill said during a friendly meeting in late April at a fundraiser in Missoula. “Come on.”
Mr. Gianforte convened a bipartisan task force to examine the state property tax issue this year and last month extended deadlines for two existing property tax relief funds for high-income Montanans fixed or limited or who are disabled veterans.
A spokesman for Mr. Gianforte, Sean Southard, said property tax cuts of up to $1,350 actually saved all Montanans, but he also blamed governments state offices, which spend tax money.
“While the governor’s property tax cut has helped, Montanans have seen property taxes rise too much as some local governments increase spending at alarming rates, driven in part by a series of levies on factories approved by the voters,” he said. “The Governor is committed to working with local partners, through his Property Tax Task Force, and with the Legislature to undertake permanent reforms to provide significant, long-term relief to property owners property tax.
At least Mr. Busse maintains that there will be a virtual circle connecting his campaign to the much better financed and larger race to get Mr. Testeur re-elected to the Senate. This campaign’s advertising blitz will attract voters from all Democrats, while Mr. Busse’s splashy style could energize Montanans who are fed up with more seasoned politicians from both parties. As Mr. Tester fills the airwaves, Mr. Busse and Mr. Graybill flood social media with cheeky, irreverent — and sometimes crude — posts.
At M. “The impetuous style of Busse, the Republicans see it as a gift”. The Republican Governors Association recently put together a montage of Busse’s bluster – “I live in Kalispell, some of you may have heard, it’s not the most politically enlightened place in the world — and set it to silly music, emphasizing that Mr. Busse will turn off, rather than activate, Montana voters.
“Whether it’s his insults toward Montanans on the campaign trail or his liberal talking points, he continues to blatantly demonstrate why Montanans will reject him hands down this fall,” said Courtney Alexander, a publicist for the Montanans. ‘association.
Afterwards Mr. Busse and Mr. Graybill spoke to the professor. In Robert Saldin’s political science class at the University of Montana, Abe Malley, a senior, gently confronted Mr. Busse about his shooting positions. The candidate fired back, flamboyantly, suggesting that the 29-year-old student – a former Marine studying to become a social studies teacher – wanted to “appropriate the libs” by defending the purchase of military-style AR-15s in the case the Democrats would ban it. them.
A few weeks later, Mr. Malley was still surprised and insulted.
“With guns in Montana, he’s going to have a lot of trouble convincing people,” he said of Mr. Busse. “I definitely think I’m in between, and his position is just weird enough that I don’t know if I can trust him.”
Even Democrats have doubts. Democratic Governors Association officials are taking a wait-and-see approach to the race, knowing that it is extremely difficult to defeat an incumbent governor, even in a more divided state. Mr. Gianforte will have plenty of money, from his own bank accounts and wealthy allies, and Mr. Trump will bring out his base.
Local newspapers have declined or disappeared in much of Montana. Mr. Graybill criticized what he saw as largely friendly coverage of Mr. Gianforte from the remaining media, including the Sinclair Broadcast group’s television stations. Robert E. Smith, Sinclair’s longtime principal, is an ally of the governor.
“If we can communicate, we can win,” Mr. Graybill said.
Fred Van Valkenburg, who attended the fundraiser in Missoula, at the home of Daniel and Kay Kiely, was a former Montana state Senate majority leader and Senate president. He warned that while Mr. Gianforte could have avoided the property tax increase, most voters tend to blame their city and county governments, which collect the revenue.
“I think Tester can win,” said Mr. Van Valkenburg said. “Busse has a higher hill to climb.”
But others see a way forward. Carter Fredenberg, 37, was in Whitefish to observe Mr. Busse at the brewery. A Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and fifth-generation Kalispell resident, he said, “Things have changed a lot in four years,” and not for the better.
The Covid-19 pandemic has attracted a flood of wealthy coastal conservatives who have pushed for more controls on access to rivers for fishing and land for hunting. Housing prices are raising concerns that Montana is becoming a playground for the rich.
And as Mr. Busse tore into Mr. Gianforte as a “weird guy” policing Montana doctors’ offices and bedrooms, Ron Gerson, the chairman of the Flathead County Democrats, liked what he saw at Jeremiah Johnson Brewing .
“We’ve been too nice,” he said of his party. “You can’t be nice in this environment.”