As Max Baucus' role in key national issues increases, powerful interest groups are touching down in Montana to sway the senator's constituents.

The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a well-heeled national conservative group best known for promoting tea party protests of American Recovery Act funding, will be in Billings on Monday to rally against proposed regulations on greenhouse gases.

APF's Monday stop is significant because Montana has historically been a flyover state, not just in presidential elections but also in ground campaigns to win over voters on national issues. Few national interest groups have a Montana presence. Debates on hot-button issues such as the environment and health care are driven by homespun public-interest groups with small staffs and even smaller budgets.

A multimillion-dollar interest group advancing conservative causes on a national scale, APF is focusing on the pay-to-pollute system of cap and trade, in which smokestack limits are set on carbon dioxide. Companies polluting beneath the cap are then allowed to trade their unused capacity to companies that over-pollute.

Critics fear that companies will simply bill consumers for the cost of those credits, significantly boosting energy bills. Proponents say cap and trade is the system of carrots and sticks needed to lead companies to pollute less. House Democrats are expected the approve cap and trade this summer. The Senate is expected to vote sometime after August.

Earlier this month, Baucus, the state's senior Democratic senator, told The Gazette that he would use his seniority to make sure any cap-and-trade system "was right for Montana." National interest groups want their version of "what's right" to be adopted by Baucus' constituents.

"It could come down to three or four votes, and so we need him to be in play," APF President Tim Phillips said of Baucus.

Phillips said APF wants "no" votes from every senator in the 12 states it's visiting, but radio ads promoting Monday's stop in Billings mention Baucus specifically.

Baucus is more than a single vote. He sits on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who last week promised to complete the committee's climate and energy work before the Senate's August recess. Boxer will likely need Baucus' support to deliver the legislation on time and in the form she wants.

Baucus is also spearheading health care reform in the Senate, which is on a track similar to climate change legislation. His home state is one of eight targeted by Patients United Now, which has a $1.7 million TV ad campaign likening Canadian health care to what's being proposed by Baucus and others. The ads tell the tale of a middle-aged Canadian woman with a brain tumor who nearly dies waiting for government health care. Patients United Now's Web site indicates that it's a project of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation.

Baucus isn't the only target of the APF. Fellow Democrat Sen. Jon Tester's vote on cap and trade is a concern, too. The 12 states targeted so far have two things in common. They have Democratic lawmakers but also conservative bases and they have strong ties to coal energy, either as producers, consumers or both. States like Ohio and Indiana get 80 percent or more of their energy from coal, according to the Federal Energy Information Administration. Coal fuels Pennsylvania's steel industry, as well the state's energy portfolio.

In Western states, electric cooperatives rely on coal for 40 to 70 percent of their energy. Coal-fired power plants are big business out West. So is mining.

The Americans for Prosperity Foundation delivers its short, pointed message on the side of a red, six-story hot-air balloon, which has the words "lost jobs, higher taxes, less freedom" printed on it.

So far, those favoring cap and trade have no platform like it.

"I'm looking for church basements I can use for free to host events," said Eric Schoettle, of Repower Montana. The group is the Montana version of Repower America, a project by the Alliance for Climate Protection, which was created by former Vice President Al Gore.

In a May interview with the online environmental news site Grist.org, Gore described his Alliance for Climate Protection and The Climate Project as "multi-hundred-million-dollar" organizations "aimed at getting the facts before the people." He started the groups with proceeds from his environmental documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," and other sources.

At least for now, the organization isn't spending much on Montana. Repower's organizational structure is similar to President Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Sweat equity is its primary currency.

Schoettle said Repower began locating state offices earlier this year based on climate change votes in the House. The attention is now shifting to votes in the Senate, although the long-term goal is to be a local voice on environmental issues beyond climate change.

Schoettle's objective isn't to debate arguments made by anti-cap-and-trade groups. Repower wants to have a different debate about what happens if nothing is done about climate change, a discussion that Schoettle said Montanans should be having. Drought and insect infestations, like the pine beetles turning Montana's forests red, only get worse as the climate changes, he said.

"The cost of inaction will be borne out in places like Montana, where the climate isn't exactly moderate already," Schoettle said. "It's ways of life like farming and ranching that are going to be affected the most."

Groups like the Montana Environmental Information Center prefer a cap-and-dividend system that gives U.S. households almost 90 percent of money collected from polluters, ideally so consumers won't bear the brunt of rising energy prices.

And the groups say they haven't been able to use the media the way the Americans for Prosperity Foundation has.

"We've had some types of events where we bring people to the table to discuss what cap and trade is, and we have had a hard time getting the media to pay attention to us," said Amy Cilimburg of Montana Audubon.

Cilimburg said groups ranging from small-business organizations to renewable-energy coalitions are building support for climate change legislation. Those efforts are grassroots and not well-funded.

Friday, the Natural Resources Defense Council, another large, national organization issued the preemptive strike against APF. The group warned that APF, which describes itself as "an organization of grassroots leaders who engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state and federal levels" was actually founded in 2003 by billionaire David H. Koch, co-owner of Koch Industries, which has a large stake in the oil and gas industry. Koch Family Foundations is one of the largest single sources for conservative organizations in the United States.