The MT Lowdown is a weekly digest that showcases a more personal side of Montana Free Press’ high-quality reporting while keeping you up to speed on the biggest news impacting Montanans. Want to see the MT Lowdown in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. Our newsroom has over the past few weeks published a slew of stories exploring the issues and politics driving races up and down this year’s Montana ballots. Close readers will note that many of them include pointed lines about some of the state’s most prominent Republican politicians: assorted variations of “declined to be interviewed.”There are exceptions, of course — U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, state superintendent candidate Susie Hedalen, and congressional candidate Troy Downing, Republicans who, alongside every Democrat we approached (and Libertarian John Lamb), engaged with the time-honored campaign tradition of fielding tough questions from independent journalists. But several Republicans who are seeking election or reelection to statewide office this year — U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy, Gov. Greg Gianforte, Attorney General Austin Knudsen, Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen and state auditor candidate James Brown — have either turned down MTFP’s interview requests or outright ignored our inquiries.The campaign of Jacobsen, the state’s top election administrator, didn’t respond to a dozen interview requests as we reported a story on her reelection bid this year, continuing a four-year denial streak. Sheehy, a first-time candidate whose campaign has spent more than $10 million making his name known to voters, has also rebuffed our interview requests.Republican strategist Jake Eaton, who is managing campaigns for Gianforte and Knudsen, declined my request for an interview about the governor’s economic record last month after alleging our news outlet is biased against certain GOP candidates. (A few days after our story published, Eaton circulated a campaign memo citing it, pointing to quotes that resulted from the grilling I gave the Democratic nominee for governor, Ryan Busse.)It’s tempting for our newsroom to respond to those rejections with indignation, wagging our editorial finger at feckless politicians and their operatives for failing to give the press its due respect. I’ve certainly heard in recent months from a fair number of readers who want MTFP’s coverage to include more full-throated criticism when candidates (especially candidates they don’t like) dodge our questions.As we discussed this trend in a newsroom meeting this week, though, the conversation turned pragmatic. When push comes to shove, we realize, civic tradition alone isn’t enough to make the state’s high-powered political figures engage with reporters who may ask inconvenient questions. Instead, they subject themselves to questioning when — and only when — they think it will advance their political cause.Back in the pre-internet days, when reaching a statewide audience required access to a printing press or broadcast tower, politicians needed newspapers and TV stations to publicize their campaign messages — and typically had to deal with whatever scrutiny came in return. Today, the media landscape is increasingly dominated by a noisy mass of social media accounts and niche websites, many operating as cheerleaders for a particular political orientation. As such, mainstream news outlets like MTFP have less negotiating leverage than we once did when we approach candidates with interview requests.It’s understandable, if perhaps not forgivable, for politicians facing the myriad pressures of high office to respond accordingly. As Tom Lutey, who’s been covering Montana politics for decades, noted in our staff meeting this week, “They kind of go to the safe places” — that is, cable news segments and talk radio shows and podcasts where like-minded hosts are more likely to offer affirmation than scrutiny.To their credit, some Montana political figures do choose to buck that trend. Beyond the Republican exceptions named above, outgoing state Superintendent Elsie Arntzen has consistently made herself available for interviews with MTFP in recent years, even when we’ve been reporting on her habit of drawing controversy. Most Democrats have also made themselves accessible — perhaps in part because, with many of them lagging incumbent Republicans in the polls, they’re hungry for media coverage that might help them close the gap.In any case, our job at MTFP is not to lure candidates into interviews by promising them safe spaces — nor to put our thumb on the scale in favor of those politicians who give us their time. It’s rather to do our very best day after day to report a fair and true and complete depiction of what’s going on across the state for the benefit of the folks who ultimately control our politics with their votes: Montana citizens.That’s certainly an easier job when elected and aspiring political leaders choose to accept our interview requests. But it’s a job we’re going to do regardless. And I should add that there are damn good reasons to take calls from MTFP reporters even in a world where we’re one avenue for communicating with voters among many.I think most of the candidates who’ve taken the time to engage thoughtfully with our reporters in recent years have found that the resulting stories present their ideas with clarity and fair context, including the occasional fact-check. That professional scrutiny gives our coverage a legitimacy that readers won’t find from a partisan blog. Politicians, whatever their partisan orientation, who can take tough questions and respond with thoughtful answers demonstrate something to voters that all the campaign money in the world can’t buy.—Eric DietrichVerbatim 💬“People talk about housing affordability all over the country. This isn’t a Montana issue. It’s a false narrative we see from Tester and Ryan [Busse] running for governor, and others.”—U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy, in remarks published this week by the Washington Examiner.Sheehy, a Republican who is running against Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Tester, also told the Examiner he believes housing woes are “the consequence of these terrible policies coming out of Biden-Harris that have driven up inflation, driven up interest rates.”Montana’s housing market has been ranked the least affordable in the nation relative to resident incomes by the National Association of Realtors, and affordability has been widely described as a “crisis” by political figures of both parties. Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, routinely calls housing costs “probably the biggest issue facing working families in Montana” and established a task force in 2022 to examine Montana-specific policy solutions.—Eric DietrichViewshed 🌄Construction crews are expected to start laying replacement pipe at the St. Mary Siphon next week, a step critical to returning irrigation and drinking water to Montana Hi-Line communities along roughly 200 miles of the Milk River.The 3,600-foot-long siphon, where century-old pipes failed in June, is part of the system that diverts water from the Canada-bound St. Mary River into the North Fork of the Milk River, which flows east across northern Montana and would run dry most years without the diversion.The Bureau of Reclamation this week posted photos of two critical pipe segments on site, both more than seven feet in diameter. The old pipe segments have already been removed. Initially planners expressed doubt that several miles of new steel pipe would be available before December.Repairs on the St. Mary and downstream Halls Coulee siphons are still expected to stretch into next September, posing a summer of irrigation and drinking water challenges for Hi-Line communities, which will rely on reservoirs and runoff until repairs are finished.The cost of construction is estimated to be $70 million, $24 million of which is currently available. It will take an act of Congress, most likely in December, to deliver the remaining funds. —Tom LuteyThe Viz 📈With absentee ballots already mailed to voters, it’s crunch time for Montana’s 2024 election, which concludes Nov. 5. With less than three weeks to go until the election, I found myself wondering how many Montanans will vote this year — and how the turnout will compare to past elections with presidential contests on the ballot. As it turns out, the state’s turnout rate has swung up and down over the past century.Data kept by the Montana Secretary of State’s office indicates that presidential election turnout in Montana was quite high, ranging from 81% to 86%, from the late 1920s through the early 1970s. Turnout peaked in 1952, the year Dwight Eisenhower was first elected president, with 86% of registered voters casting ballots.Montana turnout dropped by 10 percentage points, however, between the 1972 election and the 1976 contest between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Turnout rose somewhat when Bill Clinton won Montana in 1992, the last time a Democratic presidential candidate has won the state, but has never returned to historic levels. The 2020 election, which featured expanded use of mail ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic, did see turnout reach 81%, with 612,075 Montanans casting votes. That year, the national turnout rate was 92%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The lowest-turnout presidential election for Montana in the last century was the 2000 election between George Bush and Al Gore.  This year, the total number of Montana registered voters is currently up by about 30,000 relative to 2020, to nearly 784,000 people. Montana’s U.S. Senate race is vital to the balance of the U.S. Senate and already the most expensive per vote in U.S. history. Will Montanans turn out in droves by Nov. 5? I don’t have a crystal ball, but we’ll certainly be keeping a close eye on what happens for our readers here at MTFP. —Jacob OlnessBy the Numbers 🔢The amount of a loan approved by the U.S. Department of Energy to help Calumet expand its biofuels plant in Great Falls. Construction is expected to run from 2025 through 2028.Calumet, which operates a refinery on the banks of the Missouri River, said the expansion could bring production to 300 million gallons a year of sustainable aviation fuel and 330 million gallons of combined sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel. That would make Montana Renewables, Calumet’s biofuels subsidiary, one of the largest global producers of sustainable aviation fuel, according to a press release. The expansion includes an effort to develop feedstock sources from area farms and ranches, the company said. Feedstocks used by Montana Renewables include tallow, distillers corn oil and canola oil.The Biden administration has a goal of increasing domestic production of sustainable aviation fuel, made with agricultural feedstocks, to 35 billion gallons annually by 2050 and called the fuel type “increasingly vital” to meeting decarbonization goals. The DOE said that sustainable aviation fuel could bring the aviation industry two thirds of the way to meeting a 2050 goal of net zero emissions.The biofuels process produces a lot of wastewater and Montana Renewables is seeking approval from the EPA to inject the water underground at a site between Dupuyer and Valier. In reaction to the loan and expansion announcement, Pondera County commissioners issued a statement urging Montana Renewables to abandon the wastewater injection plan and fund water treatment on-site in Great Falls.—Matt HudsonFire Watch 🔥Though smoke from Idaho’s wildfires continues to drift eastward while blazes burn across the western half of Montana, the National Weather Service forecasts rain and snow on Monday that may shift the fire season toward an end. The Sharrott Creek, Johnson, Daly and Railroad fires have now burned a total of 20,000 acres across Ravalli County in western Montana, though none of them grew substantially in the last week. A number of fires covering several hundreds acres speckle counties just east of Ravalli County as well.The Nevada Lake Fire, a prescribed fire that escaped containment on Monday, is burning near Highway 141, on the border between Powell and Lewis and Clark counties. According to InciWeb, a disaster management database managed by the Forest Service, “attempts to control ‘slopover’ or areas where the prescribed fire escaped containment lines were unsuccessful.” The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks had planned the prescribed fire in collaboration with the Montana Department of Natural Resource and Conservation and the Blackfoot Challenge, an Ovando-based community conservation group. Though the wildfire spanned more than 200 acres as of Friday, it had not substantially grown since Wednesday. According to the National Forest Service, the vast majority of prescribed fires proceed as planned.Despite predictions about colder and wetter conditions, Dave Nobel, a National Weather Service meteorologist based out of Missoula, said there isn’t definitive evidence that Montana’s wildfire season will end in the next week. “The models have been having a hard time just knowing what to do with the southern edge of this moisture plume that’s hitting British Columbia,” Nobel said. According to Nobel, north-central Idaho and northwest Montana have a good chance of heavy precipitation on Monday. In addition, the National Weather Service put out a winter weather advisory for southwestern Montana. —Zeke LloydHighlights ☀️In other news this week —Spending by non-candidate political committees in Montana’s U.S. Senate race is now approaching $140 million. Tom Lutey published a new version this week of his guide to the national political groups that are almost certainly cluttering your mailbox.Former Missoula resident Cody Marble was exonerated of a rape charge after wrongfully spending more than a decade in prison. However, as Mike Dennison reports in a story we republished this week from the Montana Quarterly, his effort to seek compensation for that lost decade under a new state law has finally hit a dead end.On Our Radar Alex — Fall is my favorite time of year to hike the trails up Missoula’s Pattee Canyon, for one particular reason: the senescence of the larch groves. In a recent photo essay, the Flathead Beacon referred to these enigmatic deciduous conifers as “a platypus of the plant kingdom.” For any fellow admirers of the trees’ color-changing habit, the piece is full of fascinating tidbits.Amanda — In the past year, at least three mothers I know have told me I should track down “Hunt, Gather, Parent,” which pairs anthropological research into a handful of indigenous cultures’ parenting styles with an American mother’s first-person account of her struggles with her willful 3-year-old. I highly recommend it for other parents of small children out there — the mix of readability, insight and actionable tools is unmatched among the parenting literature I’ve found. I only wish I’d started reading it earlier.Brad — Last weekend I got to fulfill a high school fantasy, facilitated by Facebook Marketplace, when I somehow found myself first in line to purchase an underpriced pair of refurbished vintage Klipsch Heresy I stereo speakers. Half the fun was setting them up and blowing an entirely nonironic vinyl copy of Journey’s “Escape” down the block. The other half was mining the internet for post-purchase commentary on the caliber of deal I got. (I got a screaming deal.)Katie — As Missoula grapples with its approach to homeless camping, this Seattle Times story provides an interesting look at a strategy Washington state is using to close encampments without scattering people by moving them into state-funded shelters and housing.Zeke — I recently immersed myself in Primary Colors, a fictionalized account of Bill Clinton’s storied 1992 primary campaign published by an anonymous author in 1996. Through a network of political and romantic narratives, the book depicts the human side of American politics, reminding me our elections are not, and never will be, simple affairs. Eric — I learned this week courtesy of The Pulp that the deepest known cave in the continental U.S., Tears of the Turtle, is located in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness. Onetime MTFP fire intern Bowman Leigh reports on a muddy multiday expedition into the depths this summer where cavers reached a depth of 2,477 feet.*Some stories may require a subscription. Subscribe!The post When the candidates won’t take interviews appeared first on Montana Free Press.