Tagged: Chuck Denowh

Posted: November 14, 2011 at 7:48 am

Return of the Jedi

In 2010, the Empire struck back, hard. The Dark Side destroyed the Democrats, the first piece of sizable revenge exacted by the GOP ever since their Death Star (which had dominated the galaxy for two decades) was destroyed in the span of four years by Schweitzer, Tester, Bullock, McCulloch, Lindeen and Juneau.

The 2010 elections were bought, not won. There were millions of dollars brought in illegally by the GOP’s wealthy friends. Much of it was funnelled in by shell groups from undisclosed sources, and mostly by one particular front group called Western Tradition Partnership. This group is currently being prosecuted civilly in the Montana courts for their dirty 2010 campaign activity. Of the estimated million they brought in, none of it was reported nor the sources disclosed. In other words, we still don’t know who, exactly, owns the GOP-controlled Montana Legislature.

I’m told that the same shady GOP Darth Vaders who operated in 2010 were back at work this cycle, trying to buy themselves victories in city races around the state. They came up empty-handed, humiliated. Like John Sinrud, backed by the Montana Realtors, who wants to build high-rise condos and strip malls on farm land in and around Whitefish. Or Chuck Denowh, who is Rick Hill’s chief advisor but apparently took a hiatus to try to work some of the city races in the Flathead and elsewhere.

They were working hard behind the scenes trying to get victories. It hasn’t been calculated yet how many hundreds of thousands of dollars these losers spent on city commission races around Montana, but not a single Tea party candidate won election in Bozeman, Whitefish, Kalispell, Great Falls, Helena, Billings or Missoula last week.

Posted: November 9, 2011 at 8:47 pm

UPDATED Analysis: TEA Party Republicans Lose Big in Montana Local Elections

Montanans saw sweeping victories for progressives from across the state today. And while it is yet to be seen whether this will translate into a wave of momentum for the Dems next year, one thing is known. The TEA Party legislature proved itself guilty of a major overreach during the last session. In turn, TEA Party Republicans were soundly rejected by voters.

Nowhere did the phenomena manifest itself more dramatically than in the Flathead, where the TEA Party candidates backed by Chuck Denowh, John Sinrud and the Realtors, Ricky Lynn Blake and a slate of developers and self-funded shadow PACs spent big bucks on attacking their opponents–and were all defeated.

Congratulations to John Muhlfeld, John Anderson, Richard Hildner and Frank Sweeney and the large numbers of voters who turned out to defeat a well-funded crew of special interest nutjobs. The victories weren’t limited to Whitefish either. The only openly self proclaimed Tea Party candidate in the Flathead County elections, Erik Jerde, garnered a soul-crushing 34 votes out of 1275 cast in Kalispell. Those whom supported Tea Party poster boy Derek Skees in 2010 also all lost…Askew, Vail and Wise. Tea Party candidates lost in the Flathead Valley Community College Trustees election as well as the municipal elections.

In Great Falls, a woman who refused all donations beat the leader of the Cascade County TEA Party, Cyndi Baker. As the Great Falls Tribune reports, the TEA Partier had the most campaign signs of any candidate and the second largest campaign war chest. Baker blamed her defeat on teachers, despite losing by a margin of 84-16.

In Helena, the conservative candidate was defeated by Matt Elsaesser, who was re-elected by a wide margin, and newcomer Katherine Haque-Hausrath. Progressives also had major victories in Missoula including Caitlin Copple, Cynthia Wolken, Alex Taft, and others, as D. Gregory Smith at From Eternity to Here writes.

Billings also had a big win against the TEA Party, where the Billings “Montana Shrugged” TEA Party leader Jennifer Olsen was easily routed by Ken Crouch. Progressives Brent Cromley and Becky Bird also won handily. Denis Pitman, the conservative minister of Fuji Spa fame, is still in (proving the power of incumbency). However, Pitman’s opponent probably succeeded in halting his higher political ambitions now that voters know he checks his family man-of-God morality at the door once profits are on the table, and for that, we can be thankful.

UPDATE: In Bozeman, progressive Cyndy Andrus defeated Bill Fiedler by a whopping 4,289 votes to 2,209 votes. Fiedler was a member of the developers’ crew–he’s a member of the board of directors of the Southwest Montana Building Industry Association.

So, even though TEA Party Republicans won a legislative majority in 2010, they made a mistake in interpreting their one-time wins as a go-ahead to let voters know their true beliefs and goals. So it appears that focusing on nutjob bills over jobs was indeed a bad idea. They paid for it in the off-year elections. The progressives also won because they fielded some terrific candidates–people who actually cared about their community and its people more than getting a platform on which to scream TEA Party platitudes and shut down government. They worked very, very hard on the doors, raised money to get their message out, and voters responded well.

Congratulations to the winners! Here’s to a repeat of this in 2012.

Posted: June 29, 2011 at 12:35 pm

Wikipedia Editor Issues Warning to Hill Campaign

This is a story that I have observed unfolding for some time and has now become public after being reported by the Billings Gazette. Rick Hill’s campaign has made a constant effort to remove basic facts about Rick Hill from Hill’s Wikipedia page. For a while, the campaign manager Chuck Denowh (or perhaps someone else with the screen name “cdenowh) was removing facts on a regular basis. The history of what Denowh was removing is all laid out for anyone to see. He was usually removing any reference to Hill’s extramarital affair, something that was well documented in the news when it came to light in the late 90s.

But now a formal warning has been issued by Wikipedia, in bold letters at the top of Hill’s page: “A Major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection to this subject,” the warning says, and goes on to say that the article is no longer reliable and is protected from editing because its viewpoint neutrality has been compromised.

Wikipedia editing is a common thing for political operatives to fiddle with (Conrad Burns’, Brian Schweiter’s and Brad Johnson’s people both were all reported to have been editing their bosses’ pages). But, Hill is trying to remove a basic biographical fact that is a fair-game item in a political race. He is trying to make something (namely, his penis, and the improper use thereof) disappear, as if it never existed. Generallly not a smart thing in politics.

Posted: June 13, 2011 at 7:52 am

Rick Hill’s Campaign Manager Fought for Romney-care

It was just brought to my attention that Chuck Denowh, Rick Hill’s gubernatorial campaign manager, was Mitt Romney’s Montana campaign director in 2008. And believe it or not, Denowh actively voiced support for Romney’s health care reform in Massachusetts, which, as we all know, is pretty much the same thing as Obama’s health reform plan. The Romney plan required everyone to buy health insurance. Even Obama has praised Romney for it.

In a 2008 press release put out by the Romney campaign when it named Denowh as Montana director, Denowh said he liked Romney because

“Governor Romney has shown strong leadership on the issues that are important to Montanans. As Governor, he fought to lower taxes, cut government spending, reform health care, and enforce immigration laws,” said Denowh. “As President, he will bring that same energy and experience to Washington to turn around our government and make it work for the people of Montana, and the rest of the country.”

Maybe Chuck Denowh isn’t so bad, maybe he is a liberal at heart.

Posted: April 30, 2011 at 10:54 am

Rick Hill’s Campaign Banned from Editing Wikipedia Page

Wikipedia has temporarily blocked edits to its Rick Hill article after someone inside the campaign tried to erase references to some particularly-controversial Rick Hill scandals.

Early last week, the user cdenowh, who presumably is Rick Hill’s campaign operative Chuck Denowh, was banned from editing Rick Hill’s article on the “free encyclopedia anyone can edit” after a series of biased postings–and relentless whitewashes.

The shutdown warning cited a problem with bias, saying that:

A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia’s content policies, particularly neutral point of view.

Hill’s campaign had attempted to remove the portion of the page that currently reads:

When he was running for re-election in 2000 shortly before Hill dropped out of the race citing eye-sight problems, it was reported in the New York Times that Hill had attacked his opponent, Chief State Schools Officer Nancy Keenan, for “lacking an understanding of family values” because “she has no children of her own.” Keenan responded she had a hysterectomy after cancer as a young woman. ^[2]

The campaign was also frantic to remove information about the details surrounding Hill’s extramarital affair with a cocktail waitress, which have recently resurfaced in a series of emails from religious conservatives. Before the Rick Hill campaign’s edits, the page contained this information, (screenshot) which Hill’s campaign repeatedly removed.

The sources were listed here, but Hill’s campaign repeatedly removed both the language and the source material.

Posted: April 22, 2011 at 6:48 am

Montana Republican Math

As we wait for the legislature to resume and the GOP leaders sharpen their pencils, let’s discuss national politics, and math. The Tea Party and the mindless GOP and FOX news are all out in force, enraged at Obama’s suggestion that perhaps taxes ought to be raised as a way of paying off the debt.

To be sure, Obama has added his share of debt with maybe trillion and a half dollars–give or take–of stimulus and health care reform (the bailout ended up in a near wash because banks paid most of it back, so its not a big ticket item).

During the 2000s, Bush entered us into two invasions and occupations that have cost, let’s say, a trillion a piece. At the same time, he cut taxes. I’m told these are the only two wars in American History for which taxes were not raised as a way of paying for the war.

Of course not only were they not raised, they were lowered. Exactly how this accounting was suppose to work is something that not a single Republican in America has yet explained.

And remember, Bush and the GOP Congress that helped him pull off this feat were enabled or abetted by cheerleaders for both the wars and the tax cuts, cheerleaders like Denny Rehberg, Conrad Burns, Will Deschamp, Erik Iverson, Rick Hill, Chuck Denowh, Scott Sales, Bob Brown, Roy Brown, John Mercer, Martz, Marc Racicot, Jim Peterson, Mike Milburn and the entire brain trust and vanguard of the GOP past present and future who believed that two trillion dollars in wars can be covered by a tax cut.

And now again. The hot new thing lately is Paul Ryan, Republican Wonderboy, who’s “bold” plan for reducing 14 trillion of deficit calls for taxes to be cut–again. How does this make sense? Anyone?

Posted: February 21, 2011 at 12:08 pm

TEA Partiers Plan to Gather at MT Capitol with Weapons

Just when you thought the Montana Legislature couldn’t get any crazier, this post from the TEA Party forum Edberry.com appeared in the blog inbox.

What does “Extra-Conservative” TEA Party leader Tim Ravndal mean by a “very very very loud message” ?

Members of the forum on which this announcement was posted include the following: Rep. James Knox, 2012 Gubernatorial candidate Ken Miller, Rep. “Birther” Bob Wagner, Tim Baldwin (son of Chuck Baldwin), Rep. Cary Smith, Rep. Champ Edmunds, Robert Brown (who lists his title as Coordinator of the John Birch Society in Montana, though he always claims he testifies only on his own behalf) Rep. Dan Kennedy, and Republican operative Chuck Denowh.

Posted: February 14, 2011 at 5:12 pm

Ouch

When you’re getting incoming from the members of your own party, you know it’s bad.

This weekend, the AP reported that yet another Republican has entered the 2012 gubernatorial primary. In response to the announcement, retired congressman turned candidate for governor Rick Hill takes a swipe, however it wasn’t a swipe at his new opponent.

Here is the pointed comment from Rick Hill mouthpiece Chuck Denowh:

“No one can match Rick Hill’s record of delivering for Montana,” he said. “There really is a differentiation there. Livingstone has an impressive resume, but I don’t see he has a lot of applicable experience to be a governor.”

No one? Not even the current Congressman, 25 year career professional politician Dennis Rehberg? I guess not.