Super slow political news day in Montana.  A future story could be:  Which came first – the chicken or the egg?  Or maybe, Why is navel gazing so popular?  From Helenair.com:

For the most part, money talked during Montana’s state primary elections.

Candidates who spent the most money in contested state primaries generally won their respective races. That’s not to say that spending more money was the only reason they won, but it certainly helped.

That probably comes as no surprise, although there have been plenty of exceptions over the years.

The question is, why? Do stronger candidates attract more donations? Or does having a larger campaign war chest make someone a stronger candidate? Or, more likely, is it a combination of the two?

More importantly, should money play such an important role in campaigns? It’s unfortunate and unfair that it does, but it seems to be a political fact of life.

Money will continue to heavily influence state and national political campaigns until there are major overhauls campaign-finance laws.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen. Those who write the campaign-finance laws benefit from them as incumbents.

The need to raise money, and lots of it, can keep many potentially good candidates from running against those capable of reeling in lots of campaign cash, particularly incumbents.

To measure the impact of money in the primary, we divided the amount of money the candidates spent in their respective races by the number of votes they received. That tells us how much they spent per vote received.

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