"We feel attacked:" MT Libertarian Chair Sid Daoud discusses the GOP plan to kick his party off the ballot

Plus: elair lands Montana's first summertime banger with "Dreamed Up"

Courtesy of Sid Daoud

Welcome to Big Sky Chat House— a newsletter about movers and shakers in Montana.

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Despite the near-constant tension and drama that has defined the 2023 legislative session, a pair of election-related bills that surfaced earlier this month still managed to send shockwaves through the state.

If enacted, Senate Bill 565 would drastically increase the amount of signatures required to put third-party candidates on a primary ballot, while Senate Bill 566 would effectively remove third-party candidates from Montana’s 2024 Senate race (and that race only) by allowing only the two candidates with the most primary votes to appear on the general election ballot.

It’s hard to not see the bills as an attempt to tilt the 2024 Senate race in favor of the GOP candidate who runs against Jon Tester, the vulnerable incumbent Democrat. Both bills were introduced by state Senator Greg Hertz (R-Polson).

In the subsequent weeks since the bills were made public, the press has uncovered several points of intrigue: The New York Times, citing text messages sent between state lawmakers, revealed that the bills were orchestrated by Montana Senator Steve Daines (R), who also serves as the Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Two state lawmakers also told the Times they had been personally pressured by Senator Daines’ office to support the bills.

There’s no question who the GOP had in mind when it crafted the bills: the Montana Libertarian Party (MTLP), the most influential third party in the state.

I caught up with MTLP Chair Sid Daoud, an Army veteran who also serves on the Kalispell CIty Council, to learn why he’s skeptical that Libertarian voters would tip the 2024 Senate race for a Republican candidate, why he thinks Libertarians may vote for Tester “out of spite,” and his next move if the bills become law.

** PS: Looking for the Song of the Week? It’s moved to the end of the newsletter! **

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Max: I’ve heard the bills’ proponents say this would actually protect third parties from manipulation. Is there merit to the notion that the two major parties try to take advantage of third parties and use them as Trojan horses for their own candidates?

Sid Daoud: Sure, and they do. But they also try to manipulate each other the same way. It's not just third parties. We have never complained that we are being manipulated and we can't do anything about it. [For instance], when Sam Rankin ran [as a Libertarian], we very quickly put out a press release saying, hey, this is not your Libertarian choice.

We can defend ourselves. The Green Party right now probably can't defend itself because they've kind of fallen apart over the years, and they're starting to rebuild, but they're not there yet. But in those cases, we have the COPP—the Commissioner of Political Practices—here in Montana, and his job is basically to define those manipulations, right?

And they did. in 2020, [the COPP] found that the Republican Party had spent more than a hundred grand of their own donations to get signature gatherers to get the Green Party on the ballot. And then they filled those Green Party slots with Republicans. They got found out by the COPP, and it was news for like a day. And then everybody just stopped caring. That’s on us, as Montanans. We should have demanded that this should never happen again.

538 ran a story last week that argued that removing the Libertarian Party from the ballot might not give the GOP enough of a boost to win the 2024 race. What did you think about the story?

I think the 538 story was extremely accurate. And this is what we've been trying to say the whole time. We've basically been blamed for having Tester in office because we ran candidates in [his] first two races. In one of those, we got historic numbers with Dan Cox. The Republicans are pretty P-O’d about that.

The 538 article did an excellent job. I'm a nerd, so I love graphics, numbers and statistics. They showed that if we weren't in the race, then Libertarians would've had to overwhelmingly vote for the Republican for the Republican to have won that race, [but] a lot of times Libertarians will only go to the polls if there's a Libertarian to vote for.

Saying that we pull only from the right is also false. [For example, in 2022] Libertarian John Lamb ran against Zinke and Tranel. It appeared through [polling] that John Lamb had pulled three points off of the Republican side and two points off of the Democratic side. That's what we see nationally in states where we can track that stuff.

What that story didn't show is undervotes. That’s when somebody skips pieces of the ballot; they just vote for the races that they're interested in. Undervotes go up when there's no Libertarian in the race; you'll see more people voting on just specific races and skipping other ones.

We don't feel like we're skewing elections. We are a legitimate political party. We don't have allies with either the Democrats or the Republicans. We're competing against both every time. A lot of people think that we're like Republican Lite or something like that. We're not. We're our own party. And truthfully the weird thing that's happened over this couple of decades is that we've seen so many people move to the fringes of that left / right scale. We're in the middle. We're in a place where all these people that have been abandoned in the middle are finding us and saying, hey, these guys are more centrist than the other two parties. And we're gaining membership because of that.

Can you highlight a couple planks of the Libertarian Party platform for those who are unfamiliar?

I'm gonna bring this down to like a kindergarten level, because a lot of the stuff that we've learned in kindergarten is what the Libertarian Party's all about: don't hurt people and don't take their stuff.

[That idea] really resonates with Montanans. Unfortunately, it doesn't resonate enough at the polls for them not to vote defensively: they want to vote for the Libertarian, but they're like, oh, if I vote for the Libertarian, then this other guy that I don't like from the other party is gonna win. So we see that defensive vote thing, and that's why there's a stigma with the Libertarian Party that it's a wasted vote, but our counter to that is voting for the person that you want is never a wasted vote. And if you keep doing that, then the party that resonates with you, or the people that resonate with you—which is more important—are gonna win eventually.

Is there a viable scenario in which the Libertarian Party will encourage voters to support Tester in 2024 in response to these bills?

We'll point back to Senator Tester's last race. We did not have a candidate in that race, and he still handily won.

[The GOP] is trying to make it all about us, but we're gonna show them that it's not us. And one of the ways we might do that is if they end up trying to legislate us out of existence, whether they're successful or not, Libertarians are still gonna vote. And we're gonna be pissed off at the one party that has tried to eliminate [us].

They didn't try to eliminate us on the bare battlefield of politics. They're trying to legislate us out of existence, which is extremely underhanded and we feel attacked. I would say that if this happens, there's a big chance that Libertarians might vote out of spite.

If these bills are enacted, what approach will you take?

What happens then is that we’ll have to go to court. We already have our lawyers lined up. We're ready to fight these bills; I suspect that one or both of them will actually pass. I don't think the governor will veto either one. I think he's on board with it.

So we take him to court. Now, the little bit of a bright spot here is no state has ever been able to increase the requirement for third party ballot access and succeeded in the courts. So I have a good feeling that if we do have to take this to court, we can get it struck down.

But, you know, anytime you go to the court system, you're rolling the dice. You can predict what you think will happen, but you never know. It just depends on the day the judges that are present. So, that’s for [SB] 565.

With [SB] 566, I think there's gonna be a lot more support to take it to court. One of the grounds for [doing so] is they decided to target this just to one race. That looks very suspect to me, and I'm hoping it would look very suspect to the courts as well.

I'll bring up one little thing: they did amend the bill and it looks like it affects more than the Senate race now, but it really doesn't. It's a smoke show. They have language in there that says something like the 2025 Legislature should look at expanding this into the US House races. And the 2027 state Legislature should look at expanding this into all statewide races.

But it [only] suggests this to the future legislative bodies that they take a look to expand it. It doesn't look kosher. It all looks extremely underhanded and like the bill sponsor, I guess, through these bills, is trying to manipulate the races.

** Shortly after we spoke, the House State Administration Committee voted to table SB 565. In a follow-up text, I asked Sid what he thought about that development.

Bills are never dead in our Legislature until the final day of the session. The same thing happened on the Senate side with 566 and they picked it back up four days later and it passed. We are crossing our fingers that it does not resurrect.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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Montana Song of the Week: elair’s “Dreamed Up”

Courtesy of elair’s Facebook page.

Hell, it’s still snowing, but that hasn’t stopped Missoula’s elair from dropping Montana’s first summertime banger of 2023. On “Dreamed Up,” the singer and rapper combines an off-kilter beat, a bleary synth line and a ridiculously catchy hook into a jam guaranteed to soundtrack countless cookouts, stoned lake hangs and road trips this summer.

Elair has long juggled his rapping and crooning, bringing to mind a certain Canadian child star turned musical icon. On “Dreamed Up,” he deftly switches between the two, showing off a nimble flow and a playful, almost sing-song approach to the hook. While “Dreamed Up” may be a song about embracing the fantasy of stardom, elair sounds convincingly like he’s already made it.

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Thanks so much for being here. We’ll see you next week! In the meantime, you can always reach me via email, the comment section below, or on the Elon Machine, @SavageLevenson.