Sen. Steve Daines Isn’t Who He Says He Is

Neither are the tech companies spying on his constituents.

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If there’s one thing I learned in Montana fighting wildfires, it’s that people in Big Sky Country don’t like being lied to. Not by out-of-state news media, not by out-of-state politicians, and not by out-of-state tech giants either. It’s surprising, then, that incumbent Sen. Steve Daines has tried to sell himself as a fifth-generation Montanan, even though publicly available records show that’s not the case.

In 2002, Daines told his hometown newspaper, “I’m a third-generation Montanan, kind of that classic Montana kid.” Where those extra two generations came from in his current boasts is still a mystery. In reality, the only member of Daines’s family line actually born in the state was his maternal grandfather, Harold J. Erickson. Daines himself was born in Los Angeles, California, as anyone in Montana can easily discern.

The minutiae of the senator’s pedigree would be a footnote in an otherwise unremarkable career defined by fealty to Big Tech and Donald Trump, were it not for the weight he’s placed on his genealogical record. Daines has long traded on an invented legacy in the state to distract from his very real legacy furthering the family fortune in Washington.

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To be a fifth-generation Montanan is to come from a family that struck out for broke on wind-whipped ranges and lived through depression and drought, recession and starvation. Multigenerational families trace their family lineage to those who stuck it out while their neighbors died or headed west toward California’s warmer climes. But Daines’s family hopped around the country, returning when the getting was good or when opportunity struck. His parents owe their wealth to a contracting and luxury development business responsible for some of the state’s least tasteful McMansions.

Daines and his former employer, Rep. Greg Gianforte (known for body-slamming a journalist in addition to his current gubernatorial bid), made their fortunes at RightNow Technologies, a cloud computing company owned by Gianforte, which he sold to Oracle in 2011 for $1.8 billion. Since the sale, both Gianforte and Daines have raked in millions from their company Genesis Partners, which rents office space that Daines’s father built for Oracle. Between his time at Montana State University and his ascension to national politics, Daines and his family lived in Hong Kong, where he worked for Procter & Gamble.

Daines has celebrated his relationship to Oracle, the largest employer in Bozeman, as a rationale for his political career. But his voting record, paired with Oracle’s troubled past, paints a picture of an astroturfer profiting off the surveillance of some of America’s most libertarian, anti–big government voters.

Oracle may be the largest employer in Bozeman, but it’s also one of the largest collectors of online user data in the country. As Matt Novak wrote in 2014, not only was the contract that put Oracle on the map from the CIA, but the company’s name is lifted from the CIA’s own data storage system code name. Since its humble beginnings building the CIA’s first relational database, Oracle has been marred by scandal, from building bunk software for the Air Force and the state of Oregon, to hiring private investigators to literally dig through its competitors’ trash.

Daines’s fiscal reliance on a company in the business of buying and selling garbage didn’t end with his departure from RightNow Technologies. Since entering Congress, he’s taken a two-faced approach to regulating the new American tech monopolies, assuming the rhetoric of a stolid anti-monopolist when it comes to legislation that could deal damage to his former employer’s competitors. But when Oracle stands to benefit from legislation, Daines is all too happy to push it forward.

In 2017, Daines voted in favor of letting internet service providers collect consumer data without users’ approval, reversing FCC regulations barring the practice. The law opened the floodgates for both the mass collection and auctioning off of internet users’ data to the highest bidder. The regulations were so egregious that in Daines’s home state of Montana, Republicans in the Senate passed a measure banning internet providers that secretly collect consumer data from receiving state contracts.

In 2013, while serving as a U.S. representative, Daines voted against an amendment that would have prevented the federal government and employers from requiring employees or job applicants to disclose their social media passwords. The vote took place just four years after the practice of forcing employees to surrender their social media passwords earned the city of Bozeman (Daines’s hometown) The Guardian’s title of “civil liberties villain of the week.” Daines has also supported FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s war on net neutrality, a required stance for all those who hitched their wagon to Donald Trump early on.

Daines’s voting record, paired with Oracle’s troubled past, paints a picture of an astroturfer profiting off the surveillance of some of America’s most libertarian, anti–big government voters.

Daines’s situational ethics lines up with his down-the-line conservatism, even in a state that’s long been skeptical of corporate power. Daines has raked in millions from the coal industry, oil and gas interests, and the big banks over the past couple of years, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. His fealty is to big-dollar donors, even if “God and country” are what tend to fall out of his mouth when he tries to cloak his disastrous environmental record for the folks back home.

The Montana senator’s all-or-nothing approach, tying his fate to that of the president’s, will face its greatest test in November when voters decide between him and Gov. Steve Bullock, currently locked neck and neck according to the latest polling. While the state is almost guaranteed to go for Trump in the general election, Trump’s support is down by around 5 points from 2016, signaling that Daines’s strategy of staking everything on another four years of Trump may prove to be a losing calculation.

On Tuesday, Bullock celebrated those whose ties to the land go back farther than the state itself—way more than five generations. “Today I ask all Montanans to honor indigenous people and their contributions—historic and current—to the fabric of our society. Montana has been made greater by the contributions of First Nations people to our educational system, sacred lands, representative democracy & more,” Bullock posted on Twitter. By contrast, Daines tweeted, “Look forward to Judge Amy Coney Barrett becoming Justice Amy Coney Barrett soon.”

Sen. Daines’s campaign did not respond to The American Prospect’s request for comment.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this story identified Donald Trump's polling support in Montana at 15 points below his 2016 level. It has been changed to 5 points, the correct figure. The Prospect regrets the error.

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