Democrats choose Curtis for senate race

Montana Democrats selected a 34-year-old Butte high school math teacher as their candidate for the U.S. Senate in this fall’s general election.

Amanda Curtis won her state House seat in 2012 and has participated in one legislative session. She will step into the race after Sen. John Walsh dropped out amid plagiarism allegations.

She now faces an uphill fight against well-funded Republican Rep. Steve Daines with less than three months left to Election Day. Her first challenge will be name recognition in Montana.

“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 before Democrats at the special convention in Helena voted.

A total of 129 delegates from across the state attended the convention. The vote was 82 to 46 for Curtis.

Curtis emerged as the front-runner to replace Walsh after receiving the endorsement of Montana’s teachers union and when other high-profile party leaders said they weren’t interested in the job.

As a state legislator, she supported gun control legislation that would expand background checks, criticized a 2011 medical marijuana law as overly restrictive, and unsuccessfully pushed to increase the percentage of Montanans hired for state public-works projects.

She now calls for the support of working-class voters, saying Daines works for corporations and the wealthy. She said she intends to focus her race on campaign finance reform, tax reform, school funding and infrastructure that will 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, you and I.”