Big Sky Country is a tough place to be a Democrat, but Max Baucus ‘67 (AB ‘64) is actually enjoying himself as he runs for a fifth term. 

Liberals are accusing Senator Max Baucus ’67 (AB ’64) of being too pro-business. Conservatives are complaining that he is paving the way toward socialism. There are only a few days left before Congress adjourns for summer recess, and Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, is in a familiar position: trying to craft a compromise on a huge piece of legislation that has divided Congress for years. 

This time around it’s the bill on Trade Promotion Authority, better known as Fast Track. Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has been negotiating for days with his Republican counterpart in the House, but things are not going smoothly. Baucus favors granting the president more authority to negotiate trade deals, but he insists that the act provide substantial aid for workers and farmers hurt by such agreements. The GOP representative, who has been sequestered with Baucus for hours trying unsuccessfully to gut the benefit package, yells and storms out of the room. 

Another senator might have shouted back, packed up his briefcase, and issued a press release about how impossible it is to work with Republicans. Besides, few politicos are expecting that groundbreaking legislation is going to emerge with elections just around the corner. But Baucus doesn’t budge. He sits in his chair, waiting for his colleague to return. “Heck,” Baucus says to a staffer, “it’s his office, and he has to come back sometime.” 

Indeed, soon the talks resume, and after a couple of all nighters, the two have hammered out their differences. Baucus, while losing some points, succeeds in getting wage and health insurance subsidies for farmers and workers who are both directly and indirectly affected by trade agreements. Although environmental groups and unions complain that the new law permits deals that will erode labor and environmental standards, there’s no question that Baucus has established a precedent with its $12 billion aid package: it’s essentially a statement that while globalism must move forward, the government needs to take care of those left behind.

“Max did fantastic work to get this trade bill through the Senate,” declares President George W Bush several days later, on August 6, at the ceremonial signing of the act at the White House. On the C-SPAN broadcast of the event, it looks like he pulls Baucus to the podium so that they can appear in a picture together. Only a few days earlier in a telephone conference call, Baucus had asked Bush whether he had a nickname for the bill. “Not yet, Maxie,” the president said. 

At first glance, it seems strange that Bush would be so chummy with the guy whom the Washington Post described last year as “probably the most vulnerable Democrat” in the Senate. Baucus is running for his fifth term, and while his chances at reelection this fall look better today than a year ago, national Republican strategists still see the race as a decent shot at erasing the Democrats’ one-vote majority in the upper chamber. Montana has become a much more conservative place since Baucus was first elected to Congress in 1974, and it and the other Rocky Mountain states are now regarded as hostile territory for Democrats. 

But Baucus is also Bush’s kind of guy. He runs five miles most mornings, has a license to drive an 18-wheeler, and rides his Harley-Davidson-with his wife on back-some 600 miles to the annual Harley gathering in Sturgis, South Dakota. To many in his state, he’s not Republican or Democrat. He’s just Max, another Montanan who doesn’t fit those East Coast categories. The trade legislation, arguably, underscores his pragmatic nature, his independence, and that 28 years inside the Beltway have not caused him to lose touch with Big Sky country. And that message could be the key to his surviving another Montana November.

Jean Baucus AB ’39 did not raise her son to be a senator. If he was being groomed to do anything, it was to take over the family business: the 60,000-acre ranch that can be traced back to his great-grandfather, Henry Sieben, at the turn of the 20th century. Before he turned 12, Baucus had learned to shoot a rifle, hunting pheasant and rabbit. He learned to ride and still handles a horse well (at a recent parade he quickly reined in a skittish mare that had been lent him by a constituent). As a teenager, he spent his summers stacking hay, and his autumns playing football for the Helena High School team. 

Baucus’s mother didn’t see him as a potential congressman, certainly not a Democrat. “I just thought he was a good healthy Montanan,” she says. Still, like many in Big Sky country, Baucus showed an independent streak. On the one hand, he was an outdoorsy western guy; on the other, he pursued his own interests regardless of what others might think. He was, for instance, an accomplished organist, and initially enrolled at Carleton, a new college with a reputation for being an alternative school. After one year he transferred to Stanford to join friends, but his undergraduate career at the Farm was not conventional: he left campus for a year to travel around the world, though schools in the early 1960s frowned on students taking a year off. He toured Africa and Asia on a budget of a few dollars a day. The trip ended after he wound up in a hospital in the Philippines with a severe case of dysentery. The globetrotting left Baucus physically weak and pencil thin, but it also left him with a fresh appreciation of his own country, a strengthened belief in democracy, and a fIrsthand understanding of the poverty that many in the Third World face. 

These were the feelings that Baucus brought with him to Stanford Law School. 

Talk about Baucus with his classmates from that time, and you don’t get a sense of a young man destined to become one of the nation’s most powerful Senators. Down-to-earth and friendly, he was well liked, even charming. His red VW bug attracted more attention than his academic performance. Jack Pettker ’67, who was in Baucus’s first year study group, says that neither he nor Baucus would be described as “intellectually quick on our feet.” But Pettker was impressed by Baucus’s thoughtful nature and his interest in new ideas. And he studied hard. 

Unlike many of his classmates, however, Baucus hadn’t come to law school with the goal of becoming a practicing lawyer. His motivation was, well, idealistic. He had been inspired byAlexis de Tocqueville’s argument that lawyers are the nuts-and-bolts of America, doing the work that makes this democracy run smoothly. Law school only fanned Baucus’s commitment to seeing how a problem could be viewed from different perspectives. “He was persistent,” explains Pettker. “He continued to chew on ideas long after the exams were done.” 

Baucus admits to being nervous about his law school studies in his first year, but he didn’t let that anxiety deter him. “Like every 1L, he had some worries, but Max was also very good at rising above them,” remarks James Galbraith ’67, another classmate. “He wasn’t scared of failure.” Indeed, Baucus himself recalls that he volunteered to answer questions in class, a move that in hindsight might seem foolish as he sometimes wound up tongue-tied and ridiculed by professors for his answers. In one instance, after Baucus tried to establish certain points of evidence, Professor John Bingham Hurlbut responded, “Mr. Baucus, all that you’ve established is that you are a masochist.” 

Says Baucus: “I just about died.”

But perhaps only a masochist would be willing to run today for the Senate in Montana on the Democratic ticket. 

In the first part of the 20th century, Montana was union country, with gold and copper mines in Butte that were then called “the richest hill on earth.” In the 1960s the state was solidly Democratic, the home of Senator Mike Mansfied, the legendary majority leader, and Senator Lee Metcalf, a strong supporter of Great Society programs. But even then there were signs that a shift was under way. The mines’ output was dwindling, and decent-paying mining and timber work was disappearing. Last year Montana ranked dead last among the states in average wage per job-$23,037-after having been in the middle several decades earlier. It has become a breeding ground for right-wing anti-government populism, captured in its most extreme form by the Freemen, a group that forced an 81-day armed standoff with federal agents six years ago. 

Baucus first ran for public office in 1972. He had spent a few years in Washington, D.C., at the Securities and Exchange Commission and had returned to Montana to assist in rewriting the state’s constitution. He won a seat in the state House of Representatives, but not without creating a bit of a stir in his family. He ran as a Democrat, and his parents were stunned. “This was a traditionally Republican family,” says John Baucus, Max’s younger brother, who still tends to prefer Republican candidates though he always votes for Max. Members of the clan say that Baucus’s political affiliation was a little embarrassing at first-some friends and relatives would avoid talking about him in front of his parents-but the family quickly grew proud of his work. 

Baucus ran successfully for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1974 and was elected to the Senate in 1978. An adversary in Baucus’s first race for Congress, Pat Williams, says that Baucus, the centrist in a three-person primary, was-and is-a tenacious candidate, who walked 600 miles across the district as part of his successful campaign. Six years ago he walked 800 miles across the state. “Max is indefatigable,” says Williams, who later represented Montana in the House from 1979 to 1997.”He has been virtually nonstop, day in and day out, for a quarter of a century.” 

Those were easier days, however, for a Democrat to win an election in Montana. The campaigns have become rougher. Whether fair or not, Baucus’s opponents now try to tag him as a liberal. Years back that word might have been less bitter a label, but now it’s a mark of being an outsider. The shoe may not fit perfectly-Baucus, for instance, was the key Democrat supporting President Bush’s tax cut, a move that was reported to have infuriated Senate Majority Leader 10m Daschle. Still, that hasn’t stopped his latest opponent, State Senator Mike Taylor, from suggesting that Baucus is too extreme for Montana. 

In the Rocky Mountain West, Baucus is something of an endangered species. “He’s the only high-profile Democrat left in the state,” says Chuck Johnson, a longtime political reporter for Montana’s biggest newspaper chain and the dean of the state capital press corps. Montana went strongly for Bush in 2000, and solidly for Bob Dole in 1996, the same year that Baucus had his tightest Senate race ever. The state’s other senator, its one member of the House, its governor, and the majority in the state legislature are all in the GOP. 

Baucus’s chances for reelection improved late last year when Marc Racicot, a popular former governor who now serves as chair of the Republican National Committee, opted not to challenge him. Williams, the former congressman, also cautions against overstating Montana’s Republican leanings, noting that he personally is a liberal and was reelected eight times before choosing to step down. Indeed, as of April, a poll commissioned by the Baucus campaign showed him having a 33 percent lead. 

Still, that gap can close quickly. Montana is one of the least-populated states in the nation, and it does not take much money to wage an advertising blitz at the last minute. That happened in 1996; in the final two weeks of the election Baucus saw his lead drop from 18 percent to 4 percent in the wake of a series of ugly attack ads and thousands of calls from out-of-state Republican-financed phone banks. Even Williams concedes that a Republican candidate in Montana gets a certain automatic vote that a Democrat can’t count on. Baucus may be the favorite in tills race, but he certainly is not taking it for granted. Adds Johnson, the political reporter: “He’s the party’s last bulwark against Montana becoming completely Republican.”

On a gray March morning, the wind is whistling outside the century-old state capitol, with its majestic copper dome. Spring has started in much of the country, but not here in Helena. With a few staffers trailing behind, Baucus walks into a vaulted hearing room, replete with murals of Indians slaying bison and the explorer Meriwether Lewis perched atop a cliff. He has convened an early morning hearing on the reauthorization of the nation’s welfare reform program, and about 100 people-many single mothers with young children, a few older men in cowboy hats, and a number of social workers and ministers-are already there. Several go up to shake his hand, and each one simply calls him “Max.” 

“Welfare reform is one of the most important issues to come before the Finance Committee, and I chair that committee,” Baucus tells the crowd. Most voters don’t have a clue about the committee’s heavyweight status in Washington, and he can’t afford to be shy about communicating what he can accomplish. 

Baucus has a history of being in front of issues. His supporters say that he uses that trailblazer status to take care of Montana. He was, for instance, one of the first Democrats in Congress to back the proposal to reinvent welfare in 1996, but he also helped to make sure that a special waiver was approved for Montana that freed the state from some of the more onerous regulations. When the formula for federal highway funding was being rewritten, he made sure that it granted a 60 percent increase for Montana-the average increase for other states was 44 percent. The state receives $1.73 in federal money for every dollar in taxes that it sends to Washington. 

The hearing at the state capitol is particularly timely. Bush has proposed to end Montana’s welfare waiver, and Baucus is not happy about it. “We’re a lot different from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston,” he says. “I’m going to fight to keep our waiver.”

It’s not the sort of battle cry that makes for catchy headlines. He could perhaps punch it up by attacking the president, but Baucus wants to work with Bush, not get into a shouting match. And many in the room, while wishing he would push for bigger welfare checks and even less stringent guidelines, apparently appreciate what he does. Thank you, says one speaker, for winning more childcare money. Another expresses appreciation for a provision in a recent farm bill that is worth millions of dollars to Montana. Even GovernorJudy Martz, a Republican, can’t avoid a compliment when she appears at the hearing. “In all my years, I have never seen a closer relationship with our delegates in Washington, D.C.,” she says. A picture of the event in the next day’s Billings Gazette certainly conveys that message: it shows the senator and the governor sitting side by side. 

The hearing was just one in a series of stops in a whirlwind, four-day, SOO-mile plus tour of the state during Congress’s spring break. At almost every event, Baucus listens as much as he speaks, and frequently asks questions. Those traveling with him are exhausted by the pace, but Baucus appears to thrive on it. “I love getting out of the office,” he says. The senator comes back to check in with constituents almost every other weekend, even though there are no direct flights between Washington and Montana.

 The trip in March, however, has a decidedly political edge. The election is nine months off, but the National Republican Senatorial Committee has already run a commercial in Montana featuring a sound bite from President Bush. While Bush doesn’t specifically mention Baucus, the ad’s narrator accuses Baucus and four other Senate Democrats of being “partisan” and responsible for bringing down the president’s most recent economic stimulus proposal. “Call Max Baucus,” the narrator urges in the Montana version of the spot. “Tell him to support the nation’s interests, not partisan interests.” (A compromise version passed a few weeks later.) 

Only the election results will tell whether that attack sticks, but Baucus isn’t taking any chances. In an odd coincidence, he had already scheduled time to run his own spot, just as the Republican one began to run. Baucus’s ad also features President Bush, but in his the president compliments the senator for his help last year in getting the tax-cut package through the Senate. The commercial never uses the word Democrat, but ends with a tagline, “Max Baucus, reaching across party lines to do what’s right for Montana.” 

“That was a great ad,” says Tom Scott, the chief executive of First Interstate BancSystem, the largest financial institution with headquarters in Montana, at a meeting with Baucus the day after the welfare hearing. Another executive chimes in with a rhetorical question that evokes laughter from all in the room. “Is this the first time a Democrat is running on a Republican’s coattails?”

Many Montana Republicans dispute Baucus’s effectiveness in bringing home the federal dollars. The state’s other senator, Conrad Burns, a Republican, “is a much more effective advocate for the state,” says Matt Denny, the former chair of the state Republican Party. He and others insist that Baucus is out of touch with his constituents after 28 years in Washington.

 As part of the campaign to oust Baucus, opponents travel the state in a rusting Dodge Dart-dubbed the Max Mobile and covered with “Ax Max” bumper stickers. It’s a 1974 model, and a message, scrawled on its body, points out that 1974 is also when Baucus moved to Washington to join the House of Representatives. In case anyone is unclear about how much time has passed, a big 28 is on the junker’s hood, with observations that 1974 was also the year that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released, that Mama Cass died, and that streaking was popular.

The Republican nominee, Mike Taylor, says that Baucus’s campaign war chest-$5.5 million by June 30, about six times as much as Taylor had raised-is further evidence of his caring more about outsiders than constituents. “One candidate in this race has to wring money out of the D.C. special interests, and it isn’t me,” Taylor says. Adds Denny: “The thing that always struck me about Max is that he shows up one year out of six. The rest of the time he’s off gallivanting around Hollywood or New York.” In the 1996 election, Baucus was attacked for “doing the wishy-washy” and being a millionaire. The Republicans called him a closet liberal environmentalist who often changed his mind out of political expediency. Perhaps worst of all for a Montana elected official, Baucus was accused of getting $100 haircuts.

Anti-incumbent sentiment could be a problem for Baucus, but it’s hard to imagine anyone mistaking him for a member of Washington society. Friends say that he and his wife, Wanda, seldom go out on the town. He drives himself to Dulles Airport in his 1994 Ford Taurus. He likes to eat at Dairy Queen and McDonald’s. During his trip in late March, he dressed in the same blue blazer and gray slacks throughout the trip. The threadbare back pocket has a hole the size of a silver dollar. He denies ever getting a pricey haircut. 

Perhaps Baucus is vulnerable to such personal attacks, because ideologically he cannot be pigeonholed. While Republicans suggest that he’s a liberal, some Democrats complain that he is so conservative that he might as well be a Republican. He voted for a ban on assault weapons in 1994, but more recently voted against restrictions on gun show sales, and the National Rifle Association now supports him. He opposed John Ashcroft’s nomination and consistently votes for abortion rights, but he also was one of the first Democrats to cross President Bill Clinton, successfully nixing Clinton’s proposal to increase fees for mining and grazing on federal lands. Then, of course, he was the go-to Democrat on the 2001 tax cut after supporting a tax increase in 1993. 

Critics complain that Baucus is pandering to voters, but that’s a criticism that the political extremes often make of centrists. And Baucus follows some deeply held principles for which he will take risks. Being a “free trader” is one for which he has literally put his body on the line. 

At the World Trade Organization’s gathering in Seattle in December 1999, Baucus had a meeting scheduled with members of the Chinese trade delegation, who were staying at a hotel across town. (Baucus has been a leading advocate for legislation to normalize trade relations with China.) The rioting had just started in the streets, and Jim Gransbery, a Billings Gazette reporter who was accompanying Baucus, recalls that a top officer from the capitol police force refused to provide the scheduled ride, saying it was too dangerous. “Max just said, ‘I guess we’ll have to walk,'” Gransbery remembers. When Baucus arrived at the other hotel, the Chinese delegates at first refused to come down to get him, saying that it was impossible that he could be there. Baucus met with them for an hour, laying out concessions they would have to make to get the law through Congress. By the time Baucus left, it had grown dark. Anarchists were roaming the streets, breaking windows and lighting fires. Baucus, dressed in a suit and tie, led his group back. He even stopped to observe a clash between police and protestors. Gransbery recalls telling him, “Max, we’re not really dressed for this.” 

Baucus’s support of trade with China, Fast Track, and other free trade issues is not a clear political winner at home. Many Montanans are angry about NAFTA, because it has meant that Canadian and Mexican exports are undermining the market for some Montana products. While Baucus does not waver from his belief that increased trade will ultimately benefit Montana and the nation at large, he also understands that it can be abused-and that both rightly and wrongly it can cost some people their livelihoods. 

So over the last two years, Baucus insisted that any bill that granted the president fast-track authority also had to include trade adjustment aid for those impacted by the lowered barriers that might result from new deals. Senator Phil Gramm of Texas called health insurance subsidies for displaced workers a “step toward socialism,” but Baucus forced it through. After the legislation passed, even an AFL-CIO policy analyst, Elizabeth Drake, conceded in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor that the new benefit package, while not enough by her standards, “does set a precedent.” 

Once again, Baucus was trying to find middle ground. He’s the increasingly rare lawmaker who believes in compromise and doesn’t follow party lines. He wants to be at the table when the deals are cut. “I’m a Democrat, and I’m proud of it,” he says. “But I don’t care about labels. I call them as I see them.” He’s counting on his iconoclastic take on policies, one that veers from right to left and back again, to sustain his support with independent-minded voters. And in fact, there’s one label that he doesn’t shy from: He’s a Montanan. 

During Baucus’s tour at the end of March, the state was already dotted with blue and green campaign signs that say simply, “Max: Montana’s Senator.” And he wound up most of his talks with the same reminder he used at the end of the welfare hearing. He told the crowd his office telephone number and then repeated it. “I have a policy,” he says. “I take all calls from Montanans unscreened. Just tell them that you want to talk to Max.”