Top billings: how a Montana Democrat bagged the hunting and fishing vote and won the governor's mansion.

• Author: Sirota, David
• Position: Brian Schweitzer

There aren't too many states in the union redder than Montana. George Bush won the state by more than 20 points in November. The state legislature and governorship in the capital, Helena, have been in GOP hands for 16 years. The sparsely-populated state is represented by only one congressman, the far-right Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), and by two senators, an ultra-conservative Republican (Sen. Conrad Burns) and a conservative Democrat (Max Baucus) who often votes with the Republicans. The state's electoral votes are conceded so automatically to the GOP that neither party's candidate campaigns there. Culturally, with the exception of a few rich Hollywood types who weekend in resort spots like Big Sky, the state could hardly be further from the metro-cosmopolitan culture of the coasts. To give but one example, Montana has the highest percentage of hunters of any state in the union.

But in November, a Democrat, Brian Schweitzer, won the state's race for governor. Schweitzer not only won, but he did so decisively, beating his opponent, Bob Brown, the Republican secretary of state and a two-decade fixture in Montana politics, by a solid four points. His victory was so resounding and provided down-ballot party members such strong coattails that Montana Democrats took the state senate and four of five statewide offices.

How did Schweitzer pull off such a dramatic victory in an election year when Democrats seemed to have lost their capacity to win red states? The answer should give Democrats everywhere some hope and Republicans reason to worry.

The story begins with the man himself. If you look in an encyclopedia under Montana: Self-Image of, you'll find a picture of Brian Schweitzer. The grandson of Montana homesteaders, he looks the part: Schweitzer is a burly six-foot-two, always clad in jeans with a gilded silver belt buckle. Schweitzer put himself through college by mopping floors at sororities, got a master's degree from Montana State in, of all things, soil science, and then worked for eight years on irrigation projects in the part of the world that's hardest to irrigate--the Sahara Desert. When he returned to Montana in the late 1980s, he built a farming and ranching business from scratch--no small task at a time when corporate agribusiness was swallowing huge swaths of America's heartland. He is gregarious, tough-talking, and utterly without self-doubt.

But in addition to a winning personality and strong populist convictions, Schweitzer had an innovative, three-part political strategy, one that perfectly fit the current conditions in Montana--and which Democrats across the country could learn from.

First, Schweitzer took advantage of public dissatisfaction with two decades of insular one-party rule in the state capital, casting himself as an outsider and a reformer. Second, he rallied small business, usually a solidly GOP constituency to his side by opposing the deals Republicans had cut in Washington and Helena to favor large of out-of-state corporations over local entrepreneurs. Third, and most interesting of all, Schweitzer figured out how to win over one of the most important, reliably Republican, and symbolically significant groups of voters: hunters and fishermen.

Moving to Montana

To get to Whitefish from the East Coast means a series of smaller and smaller planes, until the last leg from Salt Lake City, when you are basically shoved into a lawn mower with wings. The first thing you notice when you walk out of the one-terminal Kalispell airport is that every car is dirty. For everything from a sports car to an SUV, the vastness of the state means long drives, windshields splattered with bug carcasses, and doors caked with dust.

I first traveled to Whitefish four years ago to work as a campaign consultant for Schweitzer during his first run for political office as the Democratic candidate against U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns. During those few months, I saw Schweitzer in all manner of different settings--from his speeches to school board meetings to his kibitzing with farmers at the local grain dealer's shop. It was clear this guy was a natural. On his long drives across the state in a late-model Buick sedan, Schweitzer liked listening to right-wing talk radio. Though he despised the hosts' message, he admired the way they stirred their listeners' grievances about government and liberal elites. But Schweitzer knew that those same listeners, people much like himself, had a whole other set of grievances, ones which Limbaugh and Hannity had no interest in tapping.

Everyone thought Schweitzer was just another Democratic sacrificial lamb who would get crushed in a Republican state. But he barnstormed the state as an old-school economic populist, pointing out that Burns was taking millions from drug companies and other corporate interests. At one event in the rotunda of the state capital, Schweitzer had armed guards dramatically spill a suitcase full of cash on the floor in front of reporters to illustrate how much out-of-state corporate money his opponent was pocketing. In a rally in the GOP stronghold of Kalispell...