In a last-minute attempt to exclude the Green Party from Montana’s Senate race, Montana Democrats filed a lawsuit Thursday to prevent Secretary of State Christie Jacobsen from adding last-minute Green Party candidate Robert Barb to the November ballot.
Thursday, August 22, was the Secretary of State’s deadline to certify candidates for the ballot. Jacobsen has certified Barb, according to spokesman Richie Melby. Both Jacobsen and the state were served with the lawsuit by Friday afternoon, but the case had not moved forward. The lawsuit marks the third consecutive U.S. Senate election that the Montana Democratic Party has sued to prevent the Green Party from fielding a candidate. Lawsuits by the Democratic Party to disqualify Green candidates in 2018 and 2020 were successful.
The Democrats’ latest complaint relates to previous cases in which Montana Republicans have attempted to qualify Greens for Montana’s ballots, including Barb in 2020 – a move the party argues takes votes away from Democratic candidates. Montana Democratic Party Chair Robyn Driscoll confirmed that assessment in a press release Friday morning.
“There is no doubt that the Montana Republican Party has a history of interference with the Green Party – funding efforts to get the party on the ballot, recruiting signature gatherers, and installing Republicans as the Green Party’s candidates,” Driscoll said. “Robert Barb is without a doubt a Republican, he has donated to Republicans, shared social media posts calling climate change a ‘BS fake narrative,’ and promoted right-wing conspiracy theories. The placement of Robert Barb on the ballot was done in violation of Montana law, and no Green Party candidate should appear on the ballot as a candidate for the U.S. Senate.”
During the Green Party’s primary, their Green candidate, Michael Downey, pointed to Barb’s social media posts on Instagram, which included anti-conservation memes, as proof that Barb is not a true Green. Barb lives in Darby and has also made several donations to the Republican National Committee.
The state Republican Party said Democrats were scheming with Green Party candidates.
“The only machinations going on here are coming from the Democrats in Montana. Jon Tester planted Michael Downey in the Green Party primary and dropped him minutes before the deadline. And now they’re suing him while the ballots are practically out,” Montana Republican spokeswoman Madison Atkinson said in an email. “Jon Tester and the Democrats in Montana are actively trying to disenfranchise Green Party voters, so it’s bizarre that they are throwing these accusations at us.”
The core of the lawsuit is that Montana Green Party board members submitted Barb’s candidacy for Senate to the Secretary of State without a vote of party members, as required by party rules. Democrats argue that board members invalidated Barb’s candidacy with Jacobsen by failing to follow those party rules. The lawsuit does not include any Green Party member who claims to have been incapacitated by Barb’s nomination as the party’s nominee.
Barb’s lawyer, former Deputy Attorney General Rob Cameron, told MTFP shortly after the candidate’s name was submitted to the Foreign Secretary that Barb was a Green and was running on the Green Party’s core platform, which includes an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war.
Steve Kelly, the longtime chairman of the Montana Green Party, said the party accepted the candidacies of Barb and Michael Downey, who won the Green Party’s primary for U.S. Senate but withdrew his candidacy on Aug. 12, the last day a Montana candidate could drop out. Kelly said after Downey dropped out, several Democrats asked the Green Party not to appoint a replacement.
Barb had filed a lawsuit against the Green Party, arguing that he had the right to replace Downey because of his 38% of the vote in the primary election.
Downey told MTFP he ended his campaign because he did not want to be seen as a spoilsport in a close race between incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Jon Tester and Republican challenger Tim Sheehy.
The Senate race in Montana is considered one of the most competitive in the country, with the winner potentially determining the majority in the Senate.
Downey, like Barb, has been accused of being a puppet of the major parties. From 2018 to 2020, Downey was a regular donor to the Democratic small donation aggregator ActBlue. Some of those donations were earmarked for Joe Biden, who faced no Green Party opponent on the Montana ballot. Downey also donated to Democrat Kathleen Williams’s 2018 run for Montana’s U.S. House seat.
Like the major parties in Montana, the Greens would not pre-approve the party affiliation of candidates, Kelly said earlier this week.
The Democrats also accuse the party of the Green Party’s change of candidate in late summer being an unreasonable burden on the Democrats’ strategy.
“The MDP will need to devote staff time and resources to developing new message strategies that will appeal to voters choosing between the Democratic and Green Party candidates. It will then need to make additional campaign expenditures to get that new message across to voters, including by using additional staff, volunteers, literature and advertisements,” the Democrats argued. “In turn, the MDP will need to undertake additional fundraising efforts to finance its new expenditures.”
Some of the arguments about the burden of a new opponent are similar to those used by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump regarding the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden withdrew. Harris accepted her nomination by Democratic delegates on Thursday night.
Montana’s smaller political parties have repeatedly been targeted by outside forces seeking to either increase or undermine the influence of smaller party candidates, particularly in U.S. Senate elections.
Earlier this month, Republicans flew Libertarian Senate candidate Sid Daoud from Kalispell to a Donald Trump rally for Tim Sheehy in Bozeman. Daoud said he was pressured to drop out of the race, a move the national Libertarian Party was willing to facilitate in exchange for appointing Libertarians to a future Trump administration. Daoud, chairman of the Montana Libertarian Party, told Kalispell radio station KGEZ that he had to look Trump in the eye and turn the former president away.
The legitimacy of Downey’s campaign became an early part of Barb’s candidacy.
In 2020, District Judge James Reynolds disqualified Green Party candidates from the ballot in Montana after concluding that Republicans had organized a petition drive to qualify Green Party candidates for the ballot. Several people who signed the petition withdrew their support after learning that Republicans had organized the campaign. The Green Party denied any knowledge of the support.
Similarly, in 2018, Democrats successfully filed suit to invalidate several signatures required to register a Green candidate on the ballot.
In 2012, a Democratic-led dark money group backed the candidacy of libertarian Dan Cox, who received 31,000 votes in a close Senate race that saw incumbent Democrat Jon Tester defeat Cox and Republican Denny Rehberg.
Montana Hunters and Anglers funded an advertising campaign late in the campaign to boost support for Cox, who received 13,000 more votes than the next Libertarian in the 2012 election. The group’s treasurer was Barrett Kaiser, a partner at the liberal campaign consultancy Hilltop Public Solutions.
Democrats have sued the Green Party in several states this year. In Wisconsin, Democrats have filed suit to remove Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein from the ballot, the Associated Press reported. A similar lawsuit is currently underway in Georgia. In a Nevada court, Democrats are arguing that the Green Party’s request to qualify candidates as a minor party for the ballot was wrongly made and should be rejected.
Tom Lutey is a reporter for the Montana Free Press, a nonprofit newsroom, and can be reached at [email protected].
