Page 5 - Flathead Beacon // 12.3.14

FLATHEADBEACON.COM
NEWS
Sen. Jon Tester. BEACON FILE PHOTO
Democrats Tap Tester to Rebuild Embattled Party
DECEMBER 3, 2014 | 5
W•O•R•D•S of the Week
AN INDEX OF RECENT NEWSMAKERS
FERGUSON
Protests erupted again last week in the St. Louis, Mis- souri suburb where a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager. On Nov. 24 a grand jury de- cided not indict the officer, Darren Wilson, who fired the fatal shots.
STORM
Glacier National Park was battered by a winter storm on Nov. 28 that toppled trees across the park, damag- ing various buildings, and dumped more than 2 feet of snow on the east side.
ROCKSLIDE
Rail traffic through North- west Montana was disrupted late last week after a rock- slide came down on BNSF Railway’s tracks in northern Idaho. The incident disrupted Amtrak’s Empire Builder service through the Flathead Valley.
DUI
On Nov. 20 outgoing state
Sen. Shannon Augare was pulled over and arrested for allegedly driving under the influence. Augare claims the arrest was politically motivated because of a vote he made as a former member of the Tribal Business Council.
Senator says DSCC chairmanship means recruiting strong Democratic candidates
By TRISTAN SCOTT of the Beacon
After his party’s bloodletting in the Nov. 4 General Election, Montana’s senior U.S. Sen. Jon Tester is now at the helm of Democrats’ national efforts to resurrect
the beleaguered party before the 2016 cy- cle and overcome dysfunction in Congress. Tester, a red-state Democrat, was re- cently named the chairman of the Demo- cratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, giving him a seat at the embattled party’s leadership table and an opportunity to re- build a party whose message has grown
stale and ineffective.
He takes the helm of the campaign af-
ter a series of painful Democratic losses in 2014, but will face a less pitched bat- tle looking forward to 2016, when the contours of the Senate field largely fa-
vor Democrats, who have just 10 incum- bents to defend.
Meanwhile, Republicans have 24 seats in play, many in blue and neutral states, giving Democrats an opportunity to re- gain the majority.
Tester said poor messaging, infighting and dysfunction in Congress turned vot- ers away from the polls last month, par- ticularly middle class families who feel neglected and disconnected with Beltway politics.
See Tester PAGE 12
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