Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer was in town recently to attend an energy conference, do a little gambling and explain why the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association has decided to abandon democracy.
According to the Review-Journal’s Political Notebooker Molly Ball, Schweitzer said that he’d be backing Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid for governor in 2010 over Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, “…despite the association’s general policy of primary neutrality.”
It seems Rory Reid’s father, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, has been a longtime political mentor of Schweitzer’s, and he has a relationship with the Reid family.
As a result, we get this: “Full disclosure: I met with Rory; I am not meeting with the other candidate,” Schweitzer said. (We’re sure he knows “the other candidate” has a name, and it’s Barbara Buckley.)
Now, we have nothing bad to say about Rory Reid. We’ve known him for several years, and he’s always impressed us as an intelligent, ethical and dedicated politician. In our view, he’d make an excellent governor. On the other hand, we think Buckley is every bit as sharp, knows the legislative process, has a genuine heart for helping people and can be as tough as Carson City requires a person to be.
But that’s not the point here. The decision about who will represent the Democratic Party in the 2010 gubernatorial race does not belong to Schweitzer, or Rory Reid, or Harry Reid. It belongs to the hundreds of thousands of Democratic primary voters in Nevada. They’re the ones who will decide between Rory Reid and Buckley.
And, not for nothing, but we think it’s totally ass (as the young people say) for the guy in charge of electing Democrats to governors mansions nationwide to come out and favor one candidate over another more than a year before the primary election is even held. It smacks of intimidation, of good old boy, backroom politics. And we’re not sure how they do things up in Montana, but here in Nevada, voters tend not to like that kind of thing. Especially Democratic primary voters. Just ask U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, who enjoyed their generous support in 2006.
So, Gov. Schweitzer, with all due respect, drop your money on the tables and then fly back to Montana. We’ll call you next year, once we’ve decided who best to defeat the Republican nominee, OK? And then we expect you to make with the campaign cash — regardless of who we pick, even if it’s not the candidate you like — because, well, that’s your job.
But hey, thanks for visiting.
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