Montana Democrats pick Senate hopeful

Amanda Curtis speaks before the opening of the Montana Democratic Party's special nominating convention in Helena, Montana, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2014. Curtis, a legislator from Butte, is one of the candidates seeking the party's nomination to replace Sen. John Walsh in the Senate race against Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Daines.
Amanda Curtis speaks before the opening of the Montana Democratic Party's special nominating convention in Helena, Montana, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2014. Curtis, a legislator from Butte, is one of the candidates seeking the party's nomination to replace Sen. John Walsh in the Senate race against Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Daines.

HELENA, Mont. -- Montana Democrats on Saturday selected a little-known state lawmaker named Amanda Curtis as their candidate for U.S. Senate after Sen. John Walsh dropped out because of plagiarism allegations stemming from his time at the U.S. Army War College.

Curtis, a first-term representative from Butte, now faces the challenge of introducing herself to Montana voters and making her case for them to choose her over well-known and well-funded Republican Rep. Steve Daines with less than three months until the Nov. 4 elections.

"If we win here in Montana, outspent and outgunned in a race where we were left for dead, it will send a message to Washington, D.C., that we want change," she said in a speech before the vote.

Republicans need a net gain of six seats in November to take Senate control, and Montana is a prime target to pick up a seat that's been in Democratic hands for more than a century.

The Senate race was seen as a tough one for Democrats to win even with the incumbent Walsh in the running. Now Daines is expected to have a bigger advantage going against a newcomer who doesn't have his name recognition or $1.7 million campaign bank account.

But Democratic Party delegates at the Lewis and Clark County Fairgrounds insisted that the race is still winnable.

"We need to keep this seat, period," said Judith Forseth, a delegate from southwestern Montana's Park County. "I'm not ready to concede."

Montana has never elected a woman to the U.S. Senate. It has sent one woman to the U.S. House, Jeannette Rankin, who was the first woman elected to Congress in 1916. She was elected again in 1940.

Curtis, 34, is a high school math teacher. She emerged as the front-runner earlier in the week after she received the endorsement of Montana's largest unions and high-profile party leaders said they weren't interested in running.

On Saturday, she appealed to working-class voters and portrayed Daines as being in the camp of corporations and the wealthy. She said her Senate campaign would focus on issues that include campaign finance reform, tax reform and funding for schools and infrastructure that would create jobs.

"This is the worst job market in a generation, but the stock market is doing just fine. Wall Street is doing great," Curtis said. "This recovery has not reached the rest of us."

Daines' campaign released a statement after the selection that did not mention Curtis but said voters in November will have a clear choice between the candidates.

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock appointed Walsh, who was his lieutenant governor, in February when Max Baucus resigned from the Senate after 35 years to become ambassador to China.

That gave Walsh the incumbency and a boost in fundraising, but his candidacy faltered when The New York Times published a story in July that showed Walsh used other scholars' work extensively in a research paper written in 2007.

A Section on 08/17/2014

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