"Jon Tester truly is your grandfather’s Democrat — a pro-gun, anti-big-business prairie pragmatist"

[Pirate Smile]

Fresh Off the Farm in Montana, a Senator-to-Be

By TIMOTHY EGAN
Published: November 13, 2006

GREAT FALLS, Mont., Nov. 9 — When he joins the United States Senate in January, big Jon Tester — who is just under 300 pounds in his boots — will most likely be the only person in the world’s most exclusive club who knows how to butcher a cow or grease a combine.
All his life, Mr. Tester, 50, has lived no more than two hours from his farm, an infinity of flat on the windswept expanse of north-central Montana, hard by the Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation.

For all the talk about the new Democrats swept into office on Tuesday, the senator-elect from Montana truly is your grandfather’s Democrat — a pro-gun, anti-big-business prairie pragmatist whose life is defined by the treeless patch of hard Montana dirt that has been in the family since 1916.

It is a place with 105-degree summer days and winter chills of 30 below zero, where his grandparents are buried, where his two children learned to grow crops in a dry land entirely dependent on rainfall, and where, he says, he earned barely $20,000 a year farming over the last decade.

To make extra money, Mr. Tester taught music to schoolchildren, and still plays a decent trumpet despite having only seven fingers (he lost the rest to a meat grinder as a child). He got into politics just eight years ago in a sustained rage over what utility deregulation had done to small farmers and businesses in Montana.

“You think of the Senate as a millionaire’s club — well, Jon is going to be the blue-collar guy who brings an old-fashioned, Jeffersonian ideal about being tied to the land,” said Steve Doherty, a friend of Mr. Tester’s for 20 years. “He’s a small farmer from the homestead. That’s absolutely who he is. That place defines him.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/13/us/politics/13tester.html?hp&ex=1163394000&en=f95ac0bf1970e04c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Arkana]

1. Good! The Senate needs more of those voices, and it doesn't have them.

Hopefully Tester will do all of this.

[knowbody0]

2. one more really interesting fact:

He farms organically.

[Glorfindel]

3. Hooray for Mr. Tester!

n/t

[Pirate Smile]

4. more - a big shout out to Daily Kos

"Republicans said that Mr. Tester was a favorite of “extreme liberal bloggers” and that the down-home persona masked an agenda out of step with much of America.

And indeed, the liberal Web site Daily Kos took up Mr. Tester’s cause early. When he announced he was running for the Senate, he was an underdog to a better-financed and better-known Democrat who was being promoted by the party establishment.

After Mr. Tester won the primary by a huge margin, Daily Kos posted a picture of him on its site, with the caption, “Say hello to the next senator from the great state of Montana.”

-snip-
Asked why he became a Democrat in a region that has been overwhelmingly Republican for the last generation, Mr. Tester said: “It started with my parents, who always said the Democrats work for the middle class. And in agriculture, Franklin Roosevelt did a lot of good things.”'

[nealmhughes]

5. Well, there will be two who aren't millionaires, for sure, Tester and Sanders.

I rather doubt that Senator Byrd is either, he's been too busy in the House and Senate for the past 50 odd years to get rich...

Anyone ever notice how people like John Roberts who have only been in private law practice for only a few years and most of their time in govt. or as a judge are filthy rich? Boy, they must be heckuvagood lawyer...

[Pirate Smile]

6. kick