Montana, Fearful of Losing House Seat, Wants More People to Make State Home

Montana wants YOU. This enormous state is bigger than the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina combined, bigger than all of New England, bigger than 60% of the sovereign countries in the United Nations. It has a problem of acute disproportion: too much land, too few people.

Montana is facing what Gov. Stan Stephens, a Republican, calls “a terrible thought.” The state is dangerously close to losing one of its two seats in the House of Representatives in the national reapportionment that will follow the 1990 Census.

By some estimates, Montana will have just enough people to keep two House members, but Census Bureau projections say that, under the complicated congressional formula, the state will fall about 12,000 people short of qualifying for a second House seat even though it is believed to have about 805,000 residents.

With America’s 20th head count scheduled to begin one year from today, Montana has little time to fend off disaster.

State Atty. Gen. Marc Racicot said he already is contemplating legal action if the census numbers are disappointing. Some legislators have suggested in jest--well, half in jest--that this would be a perfect time for Montanans to have more children. More seriously, Montanans have been making public appeals, inviting people elsewhere to move here by next April and beef up the census count.

Stephens is not entirely comfortable with these efforts. “I get letters from people in Texas, Alaska, who knows where,” the amiable, plain-spoken governor said. “They say they hear Montana needs people, and they’ll come here, you know, if I guarantee them a job. Well, of course I can’t.”

On the other hand, Stephens said, it would be wonderful if enough people would move in. In an interview, he asked that newspaper readers be advised that “they would fall in love with this place in a minute if they came out here.”

Montana is not the only state likely to lose a House seat. This kind of reshuffling happens after every census, when the House is reapportioned. Each state is guaranteed one House member. Seats 51 through 435 are allotted on the basis of state population, 435 seats being the maximum fixed by law.

Six other states have only one representative in the House, but Montana would be the most populous single House district by far. After 1990, the average ratio of residents to House members will be about 540,000 to 1; Montana’s would be 800,000 to 1.

The constituency is scattered here. Alaska, another single-seat state, is bigger than Montana but the vast majority of its 400,000 people live in the narrow Anchorage-Juneau corridor. Montanans are spread out fairly evenly over 150,000 square miles.

Even more worrisome to Stephens and other local leaders is the thought of a lower political profile for a state that already feels nearly invisible.

“South of Denver or east of Minneapolis,” Stephens said, “you mention Montana, and you can see their eyes glaze over . . . . I go back to Washington, and they’re not even sure where Montana is.”

Montana lies between the high plains of the upper Midwest farm belt and the timberlands of the mountainous Northwest. In an increasingly urban and suburban nation, Montana remains a bastion of small-town America. Billings, the largest urban center, has 66,000 people.

Outside the immediate vicinity of a lead or copper smelter, the country is an environmentalist’s heaven, largely unsullied by traffic or industry, noise or smog.

At least two Montanans have a personal concern about reapportionment: Reps. Pat Williams, a Democrat from the traditionally liberal western end of the state, and Ron Marlenee, a Republican from the conservative farm country in the east.

They could find themselves competing for a single House seat in 1992.