Though not the most high-profile contest of Montana’s election season, the secretary of state’s race is proving to be lively and at times confrontational, with the candidates leveling accusations of lies, illegal dealings and fiscal incompetence.
Not to mention, the candidates differ greatly on the issues, including voter identification laws, Election Day registration and all-mail voting. The secretary of state is Montana’s chief election official.
Democrat Linda McCulloch is trying to defend her seat against Republican challenger and former Secretary of State Brad Johnson. McCulloch beat Johnson in 2008 by only 5,000 votes out of more than 470,000 votes cast. A Constitution Party candidate received almost 12,000 votes, which Johnson believes was the difference between him winning and losing.
Once again there is a third-party candidate, Libertarian Roger Roots of Livingston, but Roots hasn’t raised or spent any money and has done little to establish a statewide presence. Johnson doesn’t expect Roots to have “the same level of impact” on the outcome as the third-party candidate in 2008.
“I think we go into the election pretty much dead even,” Johnson said of his showdown with McCulloch in a recent interview. “And if there is the kind of Republican momentum that I anticipate on Election Day, I fully anticipate to win.”
McCulloch also believes the race is tight. She says her record from her first term should put her over the top, arguing that she has cleaned up an office that was in financial disarray when she inherited it from Johnson, a claim Johnson refutes.
“In short, it was a total mess,” she said in an interview last week.
McCulloch said the secretary of state’s office was a million dollars in the red under Johnson and had been running in the red for years. She said she cut “wasteful spending,” closed a building and took other cost-cutting measures, “all without a loss of jobs.”
“We turned the office around and we ended this last fiscal year in the black for the second straight year,” she said.
The Democrat also says she blocked $58,000 in illegal bonuses that Johnson had authorized for nine appointed officials and were due to be paid out after McCulloch took office. Johnson says he checked with his human resources officer to see if the bonuses complied with state policy and was told they did.
But the chief legal counsel for the Department of Administration later ruled the bonuses illegal. Johnson says there are “differing professional opinions with regards to those bonuses” between the chief legal counsel and the human resources officer.
“The suggestion that there was something that was done intentionally outside of the scope of the law, which is what she implies, is wrong and I resent it,” Johnson said.
Johnson has also accused McCulloch of lying in her statements that he previously supported Election Day voter registration and now opposes it. He says he has always opposed it, though it became law while he was in office. McCulloch points to meeting minutes backing her assertion.
“He obviously didn’t remember or didn’t know (someone from) his office went in and supported it but it was his office,” she said.
Johnson maintains that McCulloch is mischaracterizing his views.
“I think it’s unfortunate that we’re seeing that kind of mischaracterization of someone’s record as part of the campaign,” he said.
Johnson wants to eliminate Election Day voter registration, arguing that it places unnecessary burdens on county election officials and voters who have registered in a “timely fashion.” He wants to change the late registration deadline to the close of the business day the Friday before Election Day.
McCulloch wants to maintain the 2005 law that allows voters to register on Election Day.
The candidates also disagree on voter identification laws. McCulloch favors keeping the current requirements, which allow people to show forms of identification without photos when voting.
Johnson wants to require voters to show government-issued photo identification, such as a driver’s license, to prevent fraud, though he says, “to be clear, I have never suggested rampant voter fraud in Montana.”
“If we don’t get elections right, people start losing faith in the process,” he said. “The system simply can’t survive if people don’t believe in the outcome.”
McCulloch says Montana doesn’t have a problem with voter fraud. She established a “fair elections center” with a website where citizens can report potential election law violations and the reports always deal with issues other than fraud.
“I don’t see any need for more restrictive ID laws,” she said, adding that Johnson’s plan would be costly: “We can’t afford it.”
McCulloch supports switching to an all-mail voting system in Montana, citing cost savings, voter participation and support from county election officials.
Johnson opposes the idea. He says Montanans already have the option of casting an absentee ballot, which is becoming increasingly popular, and he believes the right to walk into a voting booth on Election Day is sacred.
“I think it’s wrong for the government to arbitrarily take that right away from Montanans who wish to voter in that manner,” he said.
McCulloch says other accomplishments from her first term include the secretary of state office’s election night reporting system, in which people can view election updates and results as they’re made available. She says the website received 2.5 million hits the night of the 2010 general election and 2.8 million during the June primary.
Another of Johnson’s priorities is modernizing the secretary of state’s office and streamlining operations.
Both Johnson and McCulloch tout their record on the Land Board. McCulloch, who previously served two terms as the Superintendent of Public Instruction, says she has never missed a Land Board meeting in 12 years and has consistently voted in favor natural resource development.
Citing her Land Board record and fiscally conservative approach to managing the secretary of state’s office, the Montana Chamber of Commerce endorsed McCulloch. The organization endorsed only two Democrats for Montana’s state and federal races, the other being State Auditor Monica Lindeen over Derek Skees.
Johnson says he was an “aggressive” advocate of natural resource development when he was secretary of state, taking on the governor in some instances when he felt the state was dragging its feet on approving leases.