Green Party candidate files to join U.S. Senate race
There’s a new Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate.
Robert Barb has filed to replace Michael Downey as the Green Party challenger to Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester.
The two Greens were primary opponents in June when Downey prevailed in a race that drew 1,089 voters. Barb’s attorney, Rob Cameron, said that after Downey withdrew his candidacy Aug. 12, Barb pursued the nomination.
“He came in second in the Green Party primary with 38% of the vote. When Downey dropped out at the last minute, the last hour of the last day he could, my client expected to be the nominee,” Cameron said.
Barb filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Christie Jacobsen and the Greens, arguing that he had a right to replace Downey and that the Green Party had an obligation to field a replacement candidate. Cameron said the lawsuit was a precautionary step that proved unnecessary, once he spoke with Steve Kelly, a long-time Montana Green Party leader.
“I have this higher obligation, and it’s not to him,” Kelly said of Barb. “I need to get somebody on the Green ballot for these people, the 1,089 voters that voted in the primary. So, they can vote again in the general if they want to, for a Green candidate.”
Downey dropped out of the race a few days after former President Donald Trump rallied Republicans in Bozeman to support Tester challenger Tim Sheehy. He told Montana Free Press last week that he didn’t want to be considered the spoiler in what’s expected to be a tight race between Tester and Sheehy. At the rally, Trump called upon another third-party Senate candidate, Libertarian Sid Daoud, to rise from the rally’s VIP section for recognition. The former president told the audience of 8,400 people at Montana State University’s Brick Breeden Fieldhouse that Daoud would have a big announcement to make in the coming days.
Daoud, of Kalispell, later told local radio station KGEZ that he had been flown to the rally in a small plane to meet with Sheehy, U.S. Sen Steve Daines and other Republicans, who pressured him to quit the race.
Daoud declined and told Trump directly that the Libertarians were staying in the Senate election.
Kelly said Democrats were pressuring him not to replace Downing.
“The principals never call me, but that it’s the same thing” as the Republicans, Kelly said. “They send an emissary, a flunky scribe. They don’t come anymore because I try to convert them. I’m the Green devil, right? They think I have these powers, like if their young staffer talks to me. Next time they turn around, he’ll be Green.”
Just a couple of years ago, Democrats accused Republicans of producing fake Green Party candidates to draw conservation-minded voters away from top-ticket Democrats.
In 2020, a Lewis and Clark County District Judge disqualified a Republican-backed Green Party candidate from the ballot because the Montana Republicans had attempted to qualify the third party to lure unsuspecting conservation voters. Republicans had spent $100,000 for signature gatherers to help the Greens qualify for the 2020 ballot. The Montana Green Party said it had nothing to do with the effort. A similar attempt was stopped by Democrats in 2018.
In earlier elections, a liberal outdoor group promoted the campaign of Libertarian candidate Dan Cox in the 2012 U.S. Senate race. Cox drew 31,000 votes, 13,000 more than the Libertarian candidate running for governor during the same election cycle. Republicans cried foul, accusing Democrats of promoting the Libertarian Cox to siphon votes from Republican Denny Rehberg, who was challenging Tester.
Reporter Tom Lutey can be reached at tlutey@montanafreepress.org. The Montana Free Press is a Helena-based nonprofit newsroom.