If you haven’t recognized by now that Montana’s Stream Access Law has become an obsession with the property rights movement, you’re just not paying attention. But there’s still hope, especially once you familiarize yourself with the candidates for one of the Montana Supreme Court seats up for election in November.
Mike Wheat is the Montana Supreme Court judge who wrote the decision confirming access rights at bridge crossings on the Ruby River. Wheat is a 1978 graduate of the University of Montana law school and has largely been practicing law in Montana, or serving as a judge, since.
His opponent is Lawrence VanDyke, a relative newcomer to Montana legal circles after graduating from Harvard Law School in 2005. He’s practiced law in the Treasure State less than two years.
For hunters and anglers this isn’t a resume contest. Instead, our focus should be on where the candidates stand on bedrock principles such as access, as without access, hunting and fishing become theoretical pursuits rather than central to why people live here. In Montana you can hunt, fish and engage with nature and wildlife in a way that is the envy of the rest of the nation, and the world for that matter.
Wheat’s credentials on matters of access are proven. VanDyke, since he has such a limited record in Montana, is more difficult to judge. But it’s fair to draw some sense of his judicial philosophy based on who is supporting VanDyke with campaign contributions. Most are from out of state, and a big chunk come from the Washington, D.C., corporate law firm where VanDyke used to work. His campaign contributors read like a who’s-who list of Republican and Tea Party activists from across the country.
I’m not delusional enough to believe there was some perfect non-partisan world that’s been upset by VanDyke’s campaign strategy. Nor do I believe that the outside groups that are supporting VanDyke are doing so solely to reverse Montana’s Stream Access Law. There are other things on their agenda, most of which aren’t the concern of this column.
I’m also not delusional enough to think that one side is all ethics and righteousness while the other is motivated by a political heart of darkness. Beacon columnist Dave Skinner nailed this murky reality recently when he wrote that funding for the race mostly comes from two factions, “Those making a living suing corporations with deep pockets, and those making a living defending corporations with deep pockets.”
The thing is, as we whistle toward the apocalypse, I still hope to fish a bit along the way. And of this much I’m certain: if Wheat loses to VanDyke, stream access decisions will be one vote closer to being flipped by the Supreme Court. Maybe just as importantly, considering Wheat’s authorship of the Ruby River decision, those national anti-access forces will have a prominent victory to rally around. They have money and money buys persistence. The anti-access forces lost at Mitchell Slough and lost again on the Ruby, but they are not going away.
Another race where access has been elevated to a prominent campaign issue is the battle between John Lewis and Ryan Zinke for Montana’s lone House seat. The Lewis campaign recently released a 30-second ad directly hitting Zinke on the access issue. I don’t recall ever seeing an ad so focused on access as a campaign issue in such a prominent race. Lewis’ rationale are a handful of Zinke’s votes in the Montana Legislature, as well as some links to the movement to transfer ownership of federal lands to the states.
I’d like to see the campaign flat out renounce the land transfer movement. Zinke has little to lose as that effort looks increasingly unpopular across the political spectrum. If public testimony at recent hearings in Montana and Idaho is any indication, conservatives and liberals alike are about as fond of transfers as they are of locked gates where they used to hunt.