Unchecked power is not a healthy democracy

Montana appears well down the road to becoming a one party Republican, deeply conservative state, like the states that surround us. Jon Tester’s survival was an anomaly best explained by his personal popularity and his opponent’s weakness.

In the late ’60s, and ’70s, when I was first cutting my teeth in politics, the Democrats were Montana’s dominant party. They controlled the statewide offices, including the entire congressional delegation, the legislature and the office of governor. At Republican state conventions in that era, Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Great Falls-native Sen. Bill Rot...