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Montana Democrats plead with ‘The Dude’ to run for Senate

Some Montana Democrats really want their next senator to be a Dude.

A Facebook page launched last Friday hopes it can persuade “The Big Lebowski” star Jeff Bridges to run for Montana’s US Senate seat.

The page — which brands itself “The Montana citizen’s movement to draft Jeff Bridges to run for the Montana U.S. senate seat” — wants the actor, 64, to replace Democratic Sen. John Walsh on the ballot in November.

Last week, Walsh withdrew from the race, just weeks after the New York Times reported that a paper he’d written at the US Army College was ripped off from other sources without proper attribution.

Support has built among state Democrats for Amanda Curtis, a one-term representative from Butte, reports the Wall Street Journal, but Libby Pratt, who started the Jeff Bridges for Montana US Senator page, doesn’t think Curtis will be successful.

“We’re in the valley of death here, and I just thought, well here’s somebody who could run,” she said in an interview. “He’s the only candidate where you could put up a nude photo of him or a photo of him smoking a joint, and he would get more votes!”

Although the page has already tallied nearly 4,000 “likes,” it faces a big opponent in Bridges’ wife, Susan Geston.

“I looked down and I see this thing ‘Jeff Bridges for Senator’ and I said, ‘What?’ … There’s a group of people that have called in and want me to run for senator of Montana, like 1,000 people, and I said, ‘Sue?’” Bridges said on “The Howard Stern Show” on Monday (via The Bozeman Daily Chronicle). “And she looks at me and says, ‘Don’t even think about it.’”

There’s still time for Geston to change her mind, though. The Democratic Nominating Convention takes place at the Lewis and Clark Fairgrounds in Helena, Mont., on Saturday.