UP CLOSE WITH CONRAD BURNS: INCUMBENT BANKS ON RECORD OF DELIVERY

The nation's drug czar came to Great Falls last week to honor
Montana's fight against methamphetamine. Naturally, he singled out
Montana Meth Project guru Tom Siebel.

This time, though, Siebel had to share the stage. In fact, he led the
accolades to his co-star.

"Thanks, Conrad Burns," the moneyed anti-meth crusader said,
launching into an anecdote about how Montana's three-term Republican
U.S. senator had invited him to testify before a congressional
committee on the dangers of the drug.

Then it was Cascade County Sheriff David Castle's turn before the microphone.

"Conrad, without your help, we wouldn't have the Central Montana Drug
Task Force and the HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area) grant
that created this project," Castle said, addressing the senator -- as
he prefers -- by his first name.

Finally, John Walters, the White House national drug control policy
director, spoke on the senator's efforts.

"Part of what Sen. Burns has done is educating his colleagues" in
Congress about the dangers of meth, Walters said.

It wasn't a campaign event, at least technically, although Burns made
the rounds of the folks gathered at the Grace Home Treatment Center
for Walters' appearance, shaking hands and jawing with them.

"You like that HIDTA program?" he asked a couple of Great Falls
police officers. "We got to fight for that thing every year."

The moment played right into the incumbent's campaign slogan:

Burns Delivers for Montana.

Burns directed an estimated $500,000 in HIDTA grants to Montana last
year, according to his office.

That's a pittance of the $2 billion in federal dollars he claims to
have procured on behalf of the state during his 18 years in the
Senate, helping to rank Montana in the top 10 states in terms of per
capita federal support.

On the same snowy day as Walters' visit to Great Falls, Burns dropped
by the Great Falls-based Montana Cooperative Development Center with
a ceremonial $225,000 federal check to use for aid to start up cooperatives.

He also attended the opening ceremony for the Great Falls branch of
the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Northern Border Air Wing at
the Great Falls International Airport. Last month, he announced he'd
procured $7.6 million for the air wing in 2007. It was part of more
than $49 million for Montana in the most recent Defense
Appropriations Bill, according to his office.

That wouldn't be possible, Burns reminds voters wherever he goes,
without the seat he holds on the powerful Appropriations Committee.

Jon Tester, he says -- his tone turning ominous when he talks about
his Democratic opponent -- would enter the Senate as a callow
freshman if he were to best Burns in 16 days. No seniority, no scratch.

Last week, Democratic leaders in the Senate promised to do their best
to get Tester a seat on Appropriations if he beats Burns.

Burns takes personal pride in the projects he procures.

In the Hamilton debate, he spoke of funding outpatient clinics for
veterans in rural areas of Montana.

"That's mymoney," he said. "Myoutpatient clinics."

He repeated the refrain last week, at a debate in Billings.

"We have one of the most aggressive telemedicine projects (in the
country) in this state, and Ibuilt it."

Much as he did in Hamilton, Tester snapped at Burns: "It isn't really
your money. It's taxpayer dollars you're spending" -- the sort of
comment that provokes Burns to hit back on pocketbook issues,
charging that Tester would raise taxes.

Which is pretty much how the campaign has gone.

For all the talk about the war in Iraq, health care, and other
weighty subjects, the Burns-Tester contest keeps circling back to
money, especially Burns' relationship to it.

The same seniority that Burns touts at every turn is, according to
Tester, the incumbent's undoing.

"Washington has changed him," Tester said.

Underlying that statement is the implication that the same power
afforded Burns by his Appropriations seat made him vulnerable to
influence by convicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

A Bloomberg analysis showed that Burns received more money, $150,000,
in donations from Abramoff and his associates than any other member
of Congress. Burns returned or otherwise donated a similar amount.

Abramoff bragged to Vanity Fair magazine that his people got
everything they wanted from Burns' committee, and Tester accuses
Burns of changing votes after receiving the donations. Democrats have
exploited the situation for political gain for more than a year now,
forcing Burns to start his campaign on a defensive note with an early
ad stating flatly, "I don't know who Abramoff influenced, but he
didn't influence me."

Burns almost never mentions Abramoff by name now, although he
continues to insist, "I broke no law." His voice rises as he says it.

"When you're attacked, when it's unwarranted and untruthful, it
hurts," he said in an interview last week. "You have your moments you
get down a little bit."

But he recovers quickly, Burns said.

"I used to sell. Just because one guy says no to my product, I don't
just quit and go home. You got to go down the road."

Burns often refers to a series of early hardscrabble jobs that he
held after leaving the family farm near Gallatin, Mo., a place he
calls "two rocks and one dirt." Sometimes it sounds as though he and
Tester -- an organic grain farmer from Big Sandy -- are trying to
out-rural one another. Early campaign ads by each candidate used
barnyard metaphors that hinted at less polite language.

Burns was an auctioneer before he founded the Northern Ag Network in
1975. He went on to be elected a Yellowstone County Commissioner in
1986 and, just two years later, ousted two-term Democratic incumbent
U.S. Sen. John Melcher.

On the Senate floor, just as on the campaign trail, he's played the
aw-shucks card to great effect, according to some of his colleagues there.

"He comes across as kind of a country boy. In reality, he's smart as
a whip," said University of Colorado president Hank Brown, who served
in the Senate from 1991-97. Burns called Brown one of his role models
during his first term.

"A cattle buyer is smarter than anybody alive. He's just above a
rocket scientist," Brown said, adding that he spoke from his own
experience as a vice president of beef-packing firm Monfort of Colorado.

Montana's junior senator quickly became an expert on communications,
"I suppose because of his background in the broadcasting business," Brown said.

Current Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard, a Republican, said he and Burns
speak the same rural language. Allard, a veterinarian and early
riser, said he often runs into Burns in the halls of the Capitol at
6:30 a.m., "much sooner than most people in Washington, D.C., get out
of bed," Allard said. "I think that says a lot about him."

Calling Burns "one of the hardest-working members of Congress,"
Allard said he doesn't find the cash-for-votes allegations credible.

"I don't think he did anything intentionally," Allard said.

Although the subject of Abramoff was standard debate fare, and
continues to be a feature of ads saturating the airwaves, it rarely
comes up in Burns' campaign appearances unless, of course, raised by
reporters -- as it was during a contentious exchange at a picnic last
month in Great Falls. Burns, as he tends to these days, brushed aside
the issue. "Old news," he told a reporter from the online magazine Salon.

Last week, during a typically punishing whirlwind of late-campaign
appearances, Burns appeared relaxed and comfortable, joshing with
supporters who were not so impertinent as to voice the A-word. "How
do?" he greeted them, asking about family members by name.

"Conrad is probably happiest and most comfortable when he's traveling
Montana. ... One of the things I'll never forget is how much intimate
detail he knows about the state. It's unbelievable," said Dick
Wadhams, who served as Burns' press secretary in 1994-95.

Wadhams now works for Virginia Sen. George Allen, who -- like Burns
- -- has seen his verbal gaffes posted on the video-sharing Web site,
You Tube, and is fighting for his political life. However, one of
Burns' most damaging faux pas -- an obscenity-laced tirade directed
at a Virginia hotshot crew in the Billings airport this summer --
took place in the absence of video cameras.

In 2000, Wadhams rejoined Burns in the waning days of his re-election
campaign, when it looked as though then-Democratic unknown Brian
Schweitzer might pull off an upset.

Burns won by four percentage points.

"Things really started clicking" for Burns in the final weeks,
Wadhams said. "The worst thing in the world to do is underestimate
Conrad Burns in the stretch."

Burns seems intent upon showing he still has a few moves that could
leave a newbie in the dust. Both candidates have been courting
Montana's Indian tribes, with each meeting with the leaders of all
seven reservations.

So far, though, only Burns visited the Great Falls office of the
landless Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, which has petitioned
the government for more than a century for federal recognition. With
4,300 members, the Little Shell represent a tiny voting bloc.

But Burns won the tribe's appreciation with his visit last week, said
tribal Vice Chairman James Parker Shield.

Shield said that when tribal representatives asked Tester if he'd
support legislation to bypass Bureau of Indian Affairs red tape in
the recognition process, Tester replied that he hadn't read the
proposal, and couldn't commit to supporting it.

"I felt I was asking a general question in general terms," said
Shield, a former chairman of Cascade County Republican Party. "He
should have been able to give a yes or no answer."

However, Tester supports federal recognition for the Little Shell,
and has voted in favor of it in the state Senate, according to his
spokesman, Matt McKenna.

To Burns, Shield said, "We need your help."

Burns, in turn, asked for some help for himself.

Talk to your tribe's members, he urged Shield.

"Tell 'em to vote early and often," he said with a laugh, as he posed
for photos beneath the feather bustle displayed on the wall, which
Shield wears when he dances at powwows.

Then he donned his parka and ducked back out into the darkening day,
heading through the persistent snowfall toward Lewistown and his next
opportunity to ask still more people to vote for him just this once more.