Kirk Siegler Seth Bodnar, the former president of the University of Montana, is now running for Senate as an independent Kirk Siegler/NPR hide caption BUTTE, Mont. - It's long been an adage in Montana politics that if you're running for office, you'd better have a float in the Butte St. Paddy's Day Parade, which draws thousands to the mining city's historic uptown, soaking up the nostalgia - and the Guiness. Here, you're just steps from the towering old mining headframes and the one mile long and half mile wide Berkeley Pit. Now shuttered, it was once one of the world's largest copper deposits. Larry Carden, in a Notre Dame sweatshirt, never misses the parade. "You'll see a lot more boos for the Republicans than you will the Democrats, I can guarantee you that," he says. That's a nod to Butte's long history of Democratic politics and a strong labor movement going back to around 1900, when the "Copper King" mine owners ruled Montana business and media, and bribed their way into political office.…