An old crook never goes away:

Former senator Conrad Burns of Montana is the latest example showing the loophole in the new ethics and lobbying reforms that were enacted last month.

A few days after the legislation became law, Burns strolled into the weekly Wednesday meeting of Senate conservatives in the Mansfield Room just a few steps off the chamber floor. Asked what he was doing there, Burns smiled and announced, "Lunch."

After losing his re-election bid last year, Burns signed up to work with Gage. That’s a lobbying firm on Capitol Hill founded by his former staffers, where Burns is not considered a lobbyist but is an adviser to a host of the firm’s clients, most of whom have a connection to the Big Sky state. The former senator must observe a one-year cooling-off period– the new law will extend it to two years starting in January — before he can represent clients before his old colleagues.

I know, I said I was done writing about Conrad, but he said he was only going to run for two terms. We all make mistakes.

From this month’s Washingtonian:

Jack expressed anger at politicians who now claimed they never knew him. He was particularly annoyed that Montana senator Conrad Burns had been quoted as saying he wished Jack “had never been born.”

“Was he wishing I was not born when we were together in Florida, or when we were dining at Signatures, or when he was using our sports boxes or getting tons of money?” he said later in an e-mail.

I’m done writing about Conrad Burns. This is my last post on the man. Okay, until the indictment comes down.

Conrad’s angry, it turns out, with the media, because they picked on him during the campaign. Leaving a group of reporters at the Capitol, Burns left a message for the press:

As he stepped on to the elevator to head to his office, he told a group of reporters to read the 109th Psalm in the Bible.

That passage opens, “Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise; For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.”

Classy move from a classy guy. The Montana press that has largely given him a free pass for 18 years is now “wicked” and “deceitful” because they had the audacity to print stories critical of him. Perhaps the embarrassing old crook forgot that the Montana media:

• repeatedly gave him a free pass on wild lies and misperceptions in the debates
• backed his assertion that he had never supported a sales tax, when he, in fact, “supported a national sales tax“
• included Walt Williams, who practically functioned as a press secretary during the campaign.
• included the Montana Standard, which wrote more glowingly about you than your own web site

Here’s a newsflash for Conrad. You lost because you ran a campaign that suggested you were entitled to the job. You lost because you spokesman for much of the campaign was walking cliche, a pale shadow of Karl Rove without the intellect. You lost because you lost your way in Washington.

I’m done with you…and it sounds Montana might be, too:

He said he feels “pretty good” and said he will probably return to Montana to live.

Goodbye, Senator.

Conrad, Eric, and Judy discuss retirement plans

Montana Senator-Elect Jon Tester spoke at 11am this morning at the Townhouse Inn in Great Falls. I don’t know if it was carried live anywhere but the Montana News Station network has video posted of the speech and a brief interview here. In a continued move of class, the anchor at the station notes that Burns and his campaign staff has no comment.

Conrad Burns apparently fled the hotel where his campaign was headquartered last night. He answer to reporters about the race?

Burns declined to comment on the race as he left the Billings hotel where his supports were gathered, saying only that he was headed home to be near family.

Assuming that the media analysis is right and Tester is the winner of the Montana Senate race (and the numbers look iron-clad), I don’t expect Burns to gracefully leave.

AP and MSNBC call the race for Tester.

Tester to speak at 11am MDT.

As we come to the homestretch of the Senate campaign, I thought I’d offer my last take on the race, for what it is worth. I’m not willing to make public predictions, largely for the same reason that I don’t watch critical moments when the Padres play–I don’t want to be responsible for jinxing anyone. The most I will say is this–it’s going to be close tomorrow, but the Tester campaign has done everything it can to win this race. That said, here’s my take on some of the positives and negatives of each of the campaigns.

The Burns Campaign Positives

• He hasn’t been indicted yet.
• I think the tax ads have been effective at planting some doubt in the minds of voters.
• The pork. It’s been upsetting to listen to the Senator try to buy my vote with my tax money, but local papers have definitely helped Burns get the word out. I think fear of losing federal funding (as unwarranted as that might be) will be the biggest factor explaining the undecided and leaning voters who end up voting for Burns. 
• The media seemed to feel more than a little sorry for him at times.

Negatives

• Burns’s inability to say the right thing: The firefighter incident, the secret plan in Iraq, the faceless cab drivers all suggest a man badly out of touch.
• Not choosing Bob Keenan to run in Burns’s place. Look, Keenan is a jackass, but he would have been a better candidate in this race for the Republicans.
• The third party ads have been disastrous for Burns. Whether it’s been the ad calling the senior Senator Backus or the Patriot Act ad, Burns has come across as desperate with each attack ad.
• Agreeing to debate as many times as he did. Each debate saw Burns looking more foolish and less connected to Montanans.
• Oh, and being  cheap, political hack. That can’t have helped.

The Tester Campaign Positives

• The most positive thing about the Tester campaign was the candidate. We finally chose someone that working Montanans could relate to.
• A strong, centrist campaign that didn’t betray his progressive ideals. There’s a lot of talk about the new breed of Western Democrat, and Tester seems to fit the mold. He’s to my right on a number of issues, but the truth is to get elected in Montana, he needs to be. Despite this, he’s managed to fire up progressives in Montana in way that I can’t remember a candidate, even Schweitzer, doing.
• Excellent communication with supporters, combined with a genuine sense of appreciation for their contributions.
• An aggressive research team looking into Burns’s claims, in debates, and ads. It’s a lesson often forgotten by Democrats. We need to hit back hard–and immediately when false/misleading claims come down.
• Schweitzer.
• Baucus. I’m astonished to admit this, but I loved the Baucus ad at the end of the campaign.

Negatives

• Too much time in the last few weeks on the sales tax issue. Though Burns certainly did support it, neither the newspapers nor the public believed that, and the issue hurt Tester’s credibility.
• The DSCC ads, especially the firefighters ad. I think the late slide in Tester’s numbers can be attributed to the negative ads. The papers were doing the work of letting voters know what kind of person and Senator Burns was; in a sense, I think those true stories lost some of their impact after the ads.
• Not enough clarity on his positions. I spoke to a number of people who were concerned that Tester didn’t have a positive legislative agenda–and were concerned that the whole campaign was flat tops and Abramoff. The agenda is—and was—there, but didn’t get the attention it deserved.

Stan Jones

• Easy. Not enough talk about the Amero.

In a perfect moment summarizing the the way that the Bush Administration and his rubber-stamp Congress think, Jason Klindt lost his temper today when a newspaper had the audacity to print a poll:

Jason Klindt first said Monday that the Great Falls Tribune would not be allowed to attend, before changing his mind later in the day.

“Running a bogus poll on the day before an election to try and suppress Republican voter turnout is irresponsible and in poor taste,” Klindt told The Associated Press on Monday.

The campaign decided to allow the paper’s reporters to attend “so as not to punish the readers,” Klindt said.

The mindset of the new GOP in action. When a piece of information conflicts with your belief–factual or ideological–ignore it, or attack the messenger. Maybe once Conrad gets sent home and Jason is looking for work, he can write press releases for Cheney and Rumsfeld about our forthcoming victory in Iraq.

In an article that otherwise could very well be comprised entirely of the scraps of a Jason Klindt press release, the National Review’s Byron York explains what issues play well in Montana:

On Thursday, Burns got the biggest help of all, when President Bush visited Billings, drawing a big, enthusiastic crowd. The president got a lot of applause when he emphasized — pretty late in the game for some GOP strategists — the issue of federal judges and what would happen to the confirmation process should Democrats win control of the Senate. “I want you to hear this loud and clear,” Bush told the crowd. “If the Democrats controlled the Senate, John Roberts would not be the chief justice today. He’d still be waiting for the Democrats to give him a hearing for his seat on the Court of Appeals. If the people of Montana want good judges, judges who will not legislate from the bench, judges like John Roberts and Sam Alito, you vote for Conrad Burns for the United States Senate.” That’s the kind of message that works well in Montana.

I’m not sure that judges are an issue that Senator Burns really should want brought to the forefront, given this report from the Center for Investigative Reporting that Shane highlighted last night:

On February 12, 2001, a day before Montana’s senators recommended Haddon to the White House for the federal bench, Sen. Burns registered $1,000 contributions from both Haddon and his wife, Betty Haddon. Sam Haddon, who was a member of the Bush for President Montana Steering Committee in 2000, submitted a request to be considered for the judgeship to Sen. Burns after Bush won the presidency. Burns, who had recently been reelected to a six-year term when he received the 2001 contributions, also received $2,000 each from both Haddon and his wife during his 2000 campaign. Overall, Haddon gave Burns $5,000 from 1989-2001, about half of the nearly $10,000 he gave to Republicans during that period. 

That Conrad is one classy guy. Vote for a change.