A Montana Democrat faces long odds in his race for a seat in the state legislature from a particularly blood-red corner of the state. However, even running in the election is a win for candidate Dakota Adams because his father warred on national elections and democracy itself as the leader of the Oath Keepers.
Adams is the son of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, a man who played a significant role in the most anti-democratic and violent ploy to overthrow a fair election in anyone’s lifetime.
Yes, Dakota’s upbringing has had an effect on how he sees the world and not just the fact that he’s a Democrat. Rhodes’s actions — which include bringing up Dakota — have led him to an 18-year sentence along with other Oath Keepers members for conspiring in the January 6th insurrection.
Dakota describes his childhood (and entry into early adulthood) as a process that sounds nearly identical to the formation of the militia movement itself. As the Daily Beast reports:
“We lived in extreme isolation in one particular cultural bubble in increasingly paranoid and militant right-wing political spheres everywhere we moved in the country, until eventually we ended up in Montana.”
Increasingly paranoid and militant sounds like many in the MAGA movement, including Donald Trump, who fled from Manhattan to the friendly confines of Florida. Yes, Rhodes and Trump likely were and are paranoid, but just because they’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t watching them — and both Rhodes and Trump have been watched closely for nearly their entire adult lives.
But this story is about Dakota Adams, Rhodes’s son.
Never mind the fact that Adams is a Democrat, many of us would be cheering for him without regard to party. He has lived a hard life under his father and seems to be adjusting well.
Adams’s mother divorced Rhodes in 2018 which allowed Dakota to get out from under Stewart Rhodes’s strict control of the family. Rhodes destroyed nearly every chance at a normal education while barring them from discussing their homelives to other would be friends. As The Daily Beast notes, Adams couldn’t multiply numbers until he was 19.
Wonderfully, he’s spent the last few years making up for lost time in college.
See? I said that one would want him to succeed regardless of party. He just happens to be a Democrat.
January 6th was the nation’s political awakening, but it functioned in a similar manner for Adams, who states:
“It served as a sobering wake-up call in terms of how much danger we are truly in and how the Republican Party enabled a president to become an active danger to this republic. I was forced to reevaluate a lot of beliefs and face hard questions about what I really stood for.”
All of us did, even we Democrats who stood firmly opposed to Trump had to ask how far we would go in our opposition. Adams had family to think about. It would be several years before his father went to prison.
Because of the political makeup of his district, he likely won’t win his seat, but his approach is both admirable and pragmatic. He isn’t interested in fighting culture wars in a culture 100% opposed to those Democratic values.
Instead, he is focusing on culture wars that Democrats push to improve impoverished family lives, something perhaps more important to true Democratic values.
Adams states: “There has to be a consistent eye on ensuring that people can afford to still live here who are not moving in with $200,000-a-year remote jobs.” Yes, one has to protect the urban “cool factor” (“We live in Montana!) to make it safe for the locals that make Montana what it always has been.
He goes on to say, “If it’s too expensive to build a life in Montana, then everybody who’s trying to do that is going to leave.”
Now, that sounds like a Democrat with the right focus for his area.
The sins of the father won’t touch this young man. Adams is trying to do right for and by his corner of the world.
His Oath Keepers father took that same corner of the world to focus on Washington, D.C., and steal an election from an entire nation, no corner. In this case, we happily report that “like father is not like son,” and the apple fell one hill over from the tree.
This report is based on original reporting by Amanda Yen of The Daily Beast.
Editor’s Note: This is an opinion piece reflecting the opinion of the author alone.
