Dive Brief:

• An apparently plagiarized master’s thesis has taken down a U.S. Sen. John Walsh.
• The Democrat from Montana announced Thursday that he is bowing out of the race for reelection to the seat he was appointed to in February.
• Walsh said he decided to drop out because of the distractions created by accusations that he copied passages from others and didn’t attribute them in his master’s thesis paper at the U.S. Army War College in 2007.

Dive Insight:

According to the Billings Gazette, Walsh was trailing his Republican opponent, but his campaign was on the upswing when the New York Times reported on July 23 that he had plagiarized the war college paper. Since the report, Montana’s largest newspapers have demanded that Walsh end his candidacy. Monday is Montana’s deadline for candidates to drop their names from the November ballot. After making a preliminary conclusion that evidence of plagiarism existed, the war college has scheduled an academic review board meeting next month to make a final determination, which could lead to Walsh losing his degree.