HELENA, Mont., Oct. 10 (UPI) -- The Republican challenger for the Montana Senate seat presently held by Max Baucus dropped out of the race Thursday after being unable to trim Baucus' wide lead in recent polls, however, his name will remain on the ballot.
State Sen. Mike Taylor told a news conference that he would suspend his campaign after being battered by what he termed a barrage of mud slinging by the Baucus campaign but he nonetheless urged a write-in candidate to step forward for the stretch run.
"I am willing to step down in favor of a man or woman who will have a better chance than I to return decency to our seat in the United States Senate," Taylor said in a prepared statement. "I am willing to do this, not because my ideas have been tried and found wanting, but because they've been shouted down with slander and left untried."
There was no immediate word on a Republican successor to Taylor, however, the Billings Gazette reported Thursday that talk in the state capital was that former governor and Republican National Committee Chairman Marc Racicot would step in as an 11th-hour replacement.
Taylor's announcement, however, came too late for his name to be removed from the ballot, so any new GOP standard bearer would have to run as a write-in candidate, and voters would still be free to cast their ballots for Taylor.
"Conceivably, Taylor could still win the election," Montana Secretary of State Bob Brown suggested.
The chances of Taylor winning appeared to be slim in the final weeks of the campaign; Taylor trailed Baucus in a Gazette poll published in late September by a margin of 54 percent to 35 percent, with only 10 percent of the electorate still undecided.
Campaign aides said the campaign was mortally wounded by a new television ad produced by the Montana Democratic Party showing a film clip of Taylor, who ran a hairdressing school in the early 1980s, dressed in a ridiculously dated polyester leisure suit, performing a facial on a man during a segment of a Denver news program.
"Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that a sitting U.S. senator of 28 years would sanction the use of 20-year-old pictures of me for the most despicable of insinuations about my character," Taylor stormed.
There was no immediate comment from Baucus, although Democratic officials told reporters the ads were meant to call into question Taylor's business practices during his successful career in the hairstyling business.
Critics of the commercial complained that it was a not-too-subtle implication that the married Taylor was a closet homosexual and was meant to stir up homophobic opposition in the conservative Big Sky state.
"It is hard to believe their advertising firm did not see it," State Sen. Ken Toole told the Gazette. "Bottom line is, it is obvious and it ought to be pulled."
Toole, a Democrat, said he complained to party officials, but was told that there was no attempt to portray Taylor as a homosexual. Nevertheless, Toole said, the damage was already done.
"Once you play these cards, inject this crap into a campaign -- race, gay -- nobody controls it," Toole averred.
(Reported by Hil Anderson in Los Angeles)
