Posted: February 19, 2013 at 6:39 am
by Cowgirl
The major fight that has broken out in the Republican party nationally and in the Montana legislature is now playing out in the Lewis and Clark county republican party. The local GOP group has devolved into a modern day version of the Salem witch trials as Republicans hurl accusations at each other to purge their own ranks of alleged moderates. Continue reading
Posted: December 19, 2012 at 7:32 am
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was forced to come out yesterday and plead with fellow Republicans to be more “circumspect” when they talk about guns.
“It’s not helpful” for GOP lawmakers to be speaking publicly about some of their ideas right now, he said. Boehner’s pleading is a little late. In the wake of the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, several GOP lawmakers are now calling for arming teachers as a way to prevent mass shootings
Bringing guns into schools is also a pet project of Montana Republicans. Just last session, Republicans in the Montana legislature pushed a bill to allow guns in schools (House Bill 558).
And who could forget the fundamentalist Christian school in Montana that decided to raffle off a semi-automatic assault rifle as a school fundraiser this fall.
Stillwater Christian School obtained the assault rifle came from the NEMO rifle plant. Family members of former gubernatorial candidate Rick Hill’s running mate Jon Sonju are NEMO executives.
In addition to bidding on the assault rifle, you could also attend the schools “Stillwater Shootout” fundraising event down at the shooting range in Kalispell, MT.
School officials said they didn’t see a problem raising money with a semi-automatic assault rifle raffle. Rather, they called it “sports-minded and fun.”
This Christian private school doesn’t just work to instill these beliefs into the young minds of school children, it also gets involved in elections. This year, school leaders sent out an email before the primary urging GOP primary voters to oppose non-TEA Party candidates.
With the hard-right wing now calling the shots, hardly surprising that GOP legislators didn’t just stop with their bill to allow guns in schools. Montana Republicans also tried to pass new laws last session to:
Lift the prohibition on carrying concealed weapons in bars, churches, banks, and government buildings. (House Bill 384)
Create fully-armed militia in every town (House Bill 278)
Allow anybody to carry a concealed weapon around without a permit. (House Bill 271)
Force employers to allow employees to bring guns to work in their cars. (House Bill 368)
Legalize hunting with silencers (House Bill 174)
And when they ran out of gun bill ideas, they tried to legalize hunting with hand-thrown spears (Senate Bill 112)
This is not a joke. These were real bills put forward by Republicans in the Montana legislature, unencumbered by common sense. Republicans can’t say the public has no reason to fear their proposals when they seem to fear open debate of what they truly believe.
Posted: November 29, 2012 at 12:19 pm
In an article in the IR this weekend reflecting on Schweitzer’s eight year reign, past and present Republican leaders said they don’t much care for Schweitzer and are anxious to see him go. Given how many times they tried getting the better of him but ended up getting burned, I can’t really blame them for having had enough of him.
Former Senate President Bob Story complained in the article that Schweitzer ruled with an “iron hand” and often belittled the legislature and did not “share credit.” Outgoing President Jim Peterson was quoted in a grudging admission that Schweitzer has “put Montana on the map,” but went on to say that he doesn’t like Schweitzer’s “divide and conquer” strategy.
What these guys are not mentioning, of course, is that they spent the full eight years of the Schweitzer administration sending awful bills to the Governor’s desk, constipating the legislative process wherever they thought it benefited their party politically,playing games to try to jam Schweitzer politically, and often killing good legislative proposals solely to prevent good policy from being achieved by Democrats. Like, for example, the 2011 bonding bill that would have created great numbers of jobs around the state by investing in much-needed infrastructure. Clearly that would have been bad news for a GOP legislature, to have new jobs created by a Democratic governor. So they used their superior numbers to scuttle it. And yet these same bozos are now complaining that Schweitzer was somehow too heavy-handed a governor. It’s laughable.
Really what you are seeing, with these weak shots across Schweitzer’s bow in the waning days of his administration, is the agony of defeat. Nothing makes a Republican angrier than a successful Democratic executive, especially one who humiliates his opposition and occasionally poaches traditional GOP territory. And humiliated they were.
Without a strong GOP leader in either chamber, they simply got routed again and again, progressively worse each session, and in 2011 stumbled over themselves so badly that they became a national joke. And yes, the Governor took the credit for himself and his party, as well he should have. Why would he give credit to a bunch of obstructionists?
With the exception of a few moderate Republican lawmakers who have a commendable approach to public service that puts citizens above political games, the GOP crew in House and Senate have mostly focused on playing petty games, pushing Tea Party lunacy, and searching for a reason to get in Schweitzer’s way. Having morphed slowly but surely, over thirty years or so, into a party that does nothing but complain about liberals, environmentalists, “big government”, “illegal immigrants”, “people getting stuff for free” and all the other supposed ills of Democratic governance, the GOP now knows no other existence except to try to paint Democrats as boogeymen and boogeywomen. They tried the same thing with Schweitzer, but it never worked.
Worse, he beat them on their own turf: managing taxpayer money, creating a vibrant business climate, developing energy, and cutting taxes. Not to mention the bag of goodies with a more traditional Democratic flavor, including new programs like full-time kindergarten for toddlers, tuition freezes, a new public health system for state workers that might eventually be expanded for private citizens, many renewable energy projects, new protections for those seeking to avoid discrimination based on their sexual orientation, and new relations with Indian country, who were excluded from government and ignored by the GOP.
And so the GOP’s whining and moaning about Schweitzer’s shortcomings are nothing more than the whimper of a defeated army. It is enjoyable, predictable, and hopefully will continue on.
And Steve Bullock will continue the fight, I am certain. Though he doesn’t necessarily have a stage act like Schweitzer’s, Bullock showed during his campaign that he can be ruthless and nasty. His campaign hit hard at Hill. They crucified him over his taking the illegal 500lk$ and also ran brutal negative ads portraying Hill’s support of a sales tax. Hill himself has complained that these ads finished him off and were unfair. All is fair in politics.
I’ve even heard it whispered that many of the low blows dealt Hill during the primary– which forced him to empty his wallet to defend himself and caused infighting among the GOP, and ultimately suppressed enthusiasm for Hill in November–were instigated by Democrats, perhaps even Bullock’s operatives. Plausible, I suppose. If it’s so, it’s good stuff. It means he plays for keeps. It’s important, because if any of my readers think the newly appointed GOP leadership in the legislature wants to work in a constructive way with the new Governor, you are suckers, I’m afraid. A few moderates will want to do business with a Bullock administration. Otherwise, the name of the GOP’s game is to try to find ways to embarrass the new Governor. The GOP will, as always, be looking to start a knife fight. Like Schweitzer, Bullock will need to bring a gun.
Posted: November 14, 2012 at 6:58 am
Several things are going through Rick Hill’s and Denny Rehberg’s minds today. First, he is wondering why he ignored the old adage, “pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.” Taking the $500,000 donation in circumvention of Montana law–even though the law was in a state of limbo–was a bad move. It wasn’t worth the risk, and Hill’s political instincts were clearly dulled from years on the sidelines. Taking the loot ensured weeks of awful headlines, branding him as a guy in a smoke filled room, flanked by fat cats chomping on cigars, and talking proudly of the fact they own the candidate, and handing him a briefcase packed with big bills.
Second, he must be reconsidering the pick of Sonju. Hill only won by 1000 votes in Yellowstone County which makes victory virtually impossible for a Republican. Presumably, any Billings name on the ticket would have brought in substantial votes there, but would have left Hill’s performance in the Flathead (where Sonju comes from) largely intact. Sonju got the good end of the bargain. He’s now a rising star with statewide name recognition and will run for statewide office soon, a blueprint stamped out by Steve Daines, who ran with Roy Brown in 2008. His ticket tanked, but Daines carved out his own little thing, and made it work.
The other thing that Hill is kicking himself about is that he way overestimated the likelihood of a competitive primary, and the strength of the idiots who challenged him. All of them embarrassed themselves and were never serious contenders at all. They were political neophytes on the statewide scene, and if Hill had gauged this accurately, he would have done two things: pick a Billings running mate. (Sonju was a pick designed to shore up right wing votes in the Flathead, a conservative battleground), and he could have saved his money, and refrain from spending anything in the primary. Hill believed, in error, that his past sins of marital infidelity would blow up in his face in a primary, especially one inhabited by “moral” conservatives like Essman and Miller and Stapleton. He turned out to have been wrong. None of those yahoos had the skill or finances to mount a serious challenge. But Hill blinked, and Bullock came out of the gate in June with a huge financial edge, ran a mistake-free campaign, turned out key constituencies like Indian voters, and never looked back.
As for Denny, his contemplation today should be about his choice. Why did he choose to run for Senate? The answer cannot be that he wanted to accomplish some affirmative thing for Montana, because he does not believe in that type of stuff. He believes in negative government, occupying an office for the purpose of keeping liberals, or Democrats, out of it, lest they destroy society. So all Rehberg was doing was trying to upgrade the size of his office, get a larger budget for offices and an entourage of staffers, and have people call him Senator.
Denny is also probably wondering why he ever voted for a pay raise; and why he voted to allow the federal Homeland Security office to have domain over public lands. The pay-raises produced brutal copy for negative ads by Tester and Dems, while the land grab enraged Rehberg’s own base, especially when they were reminded about it in a terrific ad funded by an environmental group, who successfully used the issue to get conservatives to flee Rehberg and vote Libertarian. Dan Cox the libertarian got a record 6.5 points.
And Rehberg is also wondering why his twenty million dollar barrage of attack ads, telling voters that Tester supports Obama 95 percent of the time, was so ineffective. After all, Karl Rove came here and told Denny that he’d take care of business and put a knife in Tester by linking him to the president. But Rehberg knows the answer to this, and its eating his guts out: Tester worked hard for constituents for six years, hammering things out for loggers, vets, hunters, the elderly, Indian peoples, women and so on. And he earned the trust of Montana citizens, which allowed them to conceptualize Tester as someone distinct from Obama. Rehberg, on the other hand, sat around for twelve years, doing nothing at all except complaining about Democrats, riding the occasional right-wing wave, and free loading on a generally conservative state electorate. A worker always beats a free loader.
Posted: November 7, 2012 at 11:11 am
…only to discover that the pain in his ass was due to the fact that the entire 2012 election had been shoved up it.
Rove came up empty, in Presidential and Congressional races.
Here in Montana, Denny Rehberg has been sent packing by Jon Tester, in an enormous victory, a virtual landslide. Tester blew him out. Libertarian candidate Dan Cox got almost seven percent, one of the biggest takes by a third party candidate since Ross Perot got in the mid-twenties in 1992.
We should all be proud of what Tester did. The polls showed him neck and neck going into the last days, but he got his vote out and closed big. And he overcame an absolute monsoon of negative ads lasting three months, one of the biggest smears ever recorded on Montana’s airwaves, funded by Washington DC Republicans and Karl Rove’s group Crossroads GPS. He dumped tens of millions into the race (and even paid a visit to Montana, to help Rehberg with strategy), all of it impugning Tester for having had the temerity to support his President. And the beauty is, it doesn’t really look like the attack worked at all. Tester cruised to victory. What mattered more to voters was that Tester turns in a workday, doesn’t whine or complain, doesn’t spend his days smearing people or blaming people, but tries accomplish something.
Same for Obama, the object of vitriolic GOP hatred, who demolished the weak Mitt Romney in spectacular fashion, defeating yet another empty, negative campaign by the Republicans. Poor Rove, whose group spent half a billion dollars and got zilch in return. Dems have actually picked up a seat in the United States Senate, and Rove had the dubious task on FOXNews last night of trying to convince the public that while every network and news outlet was projecting Obama the winner, they were, according to Rove, doing so in error. He had secret math, you see, that showed Romney was, in fact, still going to win. What happened in Montana and nationally, well, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy than Karl Rove.
Dennis Rehberg, meanwhile, concludes 12 years of federal service and many more years of state government service, and the Cowgirl blog recognizes this contribution to society. Though we rarely agree with Rehberg and have always advocated against him, anybody stepping up to run for or hold public office deserves recognition and congratulations upon the completion of a career, as do his many staffers and operatives who spent the last two years in this fight. We wish Denny and his crew well in his future endeavors. Perhaps we will even see him try again two years from now for the Senate or even four years from now for governor, or maybe even try to take his seat back if Steve Daines vacates his newly won House seat to try to move up to Senate.
Speaking of Governor, Lee Newspapers, CNN, and NBC have called the race for Bullock, and now AP has as well. Down three points heading into the weekend according to a Mason Dixon poll, Bullock came up strong last night. Votes are still outstanding in Yellowstone County and also in a few key Indian countries like Glacier and Bighorn. But Bullock is showing about a 2 point edge right now, and I don’t believe it will be eroded much by the balance of votes yet to be counted. He will be our next Governor. Keep the cellphone tight, Steve, for Rick Hill will be calling you shortly to congratulate you and concede the race.
Hill, like Rehberg, deserves credit for trying a comeback late in life. He came up short, and has now probably concluded his political career, but he put in a tough effort and should be congratulated on having waged a pretty close race
Pam Bucy and Kim Gillan fought the good fight, but were up against two guys who had run for statewide office before, and so these two impressive gals started out at a disadvantage. Expect to see both of them remain in the orbit of public service. Either or both would be excellent applicants for Bullock cabinet positions and Bucy, I believe, will be back again to run for something else.
Daines got a huge investment from the national Republican party, so that made life miserable for Gillan who could not pull in the same dough from her party and was running for an office that seems to have the word Republican posted on the door. It was an uphill battle from the get-go. But Bucy, a far superior candidate to her opponent, got shafted. Our new attorney general Tim Fox has achieved his office by being bankrolled by secret money, close to a million dollars worth, the source of which has still not been determined. Bucy had no such slush fund. When you tally up the money, Bucy got outspent 5-1 at least. It puts a cap on a sad chapter in Montana electoral history, in which Republicans attempted to take over the government with unlimited, secret corporate money. Poor Pam became the object of the corporate wrath, despite an impeccable resume that made her opponent look like a bum.
In other races, Juneau, Lindeen and McCulloch all have leads right now, but Juneau’s race will be tight. She’s up half a point, with Billings and Indian country yet to be reported. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for her.
We should be proud of all these candidates. And, I am proud of all of you, who have participated in this election by tuning in, for keeping the discussion alive and spirited, providing information, and for making Cowgirl blog the place for politics in Montana.
Posted: November 6, 2012 at 7:29 am
Montana’s 2012 elections will go down in history–but not in a good way. Rather, this cycle will be remembered for corruption, lies, deceptive ads, illegal donations, apparent illegal coordination with third-party groups, and secret corporate money.
The season was kicked off with TEA Party Republican legislator Jason Priest secretive “Montana Growth Network” buying the Supreme Court race for TEA Party judge Laurie McKinnon. Priest’s shadow group spent more on one saturation mailing then the conservative candidate he was backing had raised for her entire campaign.
McKinnon, who dog whistled at Lincoln Reagan dinners across Montana about “judicial activism,” “strict constructionist” and other conservative buzzwords, was able to defeat the leading candidate Elizabeth Best in the primary–in spite of reports of alleged Judicial Code of Ethics violations reported in Montana papers across the state. Priest’s ”Montana Growth Network” is thought to be one of the American Traditions Partnership’s many spinoffs.
Indeed no group has been more insidious than American Traditions Partnership in corrupting Montana’s elections. ATP’s launched it’s biggest attack on Steve Bullock. It mailed a fake newspaper to hundreds of thousands of Montanans depicting Bullock in a line-up of sex offenders.
In a brilliant piece of investigative journalism, the PBS show Frontline has revealed the seedy underbelly of secret money in Montana’s elections, with a full-hour expose of Montana politics and this secretive right-wing group. Under state law, third party groups, the ones like American Tradition Partnership which spend masses of unregulated, unreported money, are legally barred from coordinating with candidates. But several legislative candidates and the ATP have been caught red handed, working together, in apparent violation of the law, the Associated Press reports today.
ATP even sent mailers impersonating unions– using the unions’ logos–to attack local candidates that the unions have actually endorsed.
ATP wasn’t alone, unknown corporate groups dumped half a million dollars in illegal into Rick Hill’s campaign coffers, forcing a judge to issue a restraining order against Hill to stop him from spending the illegal cash. The Montana GOP claims the donation came from the Republican Governor’s Association, but shortly before the RGA sent the dough to the Montana GOP, that an entity calling itself the ”Montana Law Foundation” sent $200,000 the the RGA. There’s only one reason that a fake Montana group would donate to the RGA instead of the Montana Republican Party and that’s to hide the donation’s source.
Tim Fox, the Montana Republican lunatic who is running for attorney general despite having never done anything other than defend drunk drivers and call for rape victims to have the rapists’ babies, got some national Republican donors to buy $700,000 of TV advertising on his behalf. Fox Fox refused to reveal his true extremists beliefs. Instead, he hid behind the hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising that his corporate bosses– including the Koch brothers, the insurance industry and the cigarette companies put up to hide the truth.
Montana’s U.S. Senate race has also drawn a deluge of dark money aimed at defeating Jon Tester and replacing him with scandal-plagued extremist Dennis Rehberg.
Tonight, Montana citizens will find out whether ATP and groups like it will completely own our state and federal governments–using lies, deception, illegal activity and corporate money to install their candidates into office, from a P.O. Box, without ever revealing who their donors really are.
Posted: November 1, 2012 at 12:45 pm
If you think the black helicopter crowd lives only in rural Montana, think again.
Recall that when Dave Gallik was forced out as Commissioner of Political Practices last year, there was a feeling among readers at the time that something didn’t smell quite right. His four employees had rummaged through desk and photocopied his notes, kept tabs on his comings and goings, and sent it all to reporters. They even called the police one time without any legitimate explanation. There was a feeling among many observers (and many commenters here) that something smelled fishy, especially when the now-infamous photo appeared on the front of the IR, the four women posing for the photographer, seeming to bask in the glow of their 15 minutes of sunlight.
Gallik has always maintained that he was framed by four people who were out to get him because he was a tough boss who forced them to change their ways, and they were resistant.
Well, yesterday Gallik got his day in court. And one of his chief accusers, Julie Steab, one of the employees who made some of the strongest accusations against Gallik in the press, was called to the stand.
To the shock of observers in court and the embarrassment of the attorney bringing the case against Gallik, Ms. Steab testified that she was the target of a surveillance operation, that “an unknown person or persons” were “following her” around, day and night, in the aftermath of Gallik’s resignation. She also testified that the other three women in the office were similarly tailed. But Mary Baker, one of the other employees, took the stand after Steab and stated that she had never been followed nor did she know of any case where any of the four employees were followed.
I’d say Steab’s bizarre testimony is grounds for the press and public to reconsider Gallik’s tenure and the events surrounding his departure. In my opinion, he was brought down by at least one woman whose credibility has been shattered, whose testimony yesterday clearly suggests to me some type of paranoia or tendency toward fantasy.
The attorney bringing the case was none other than the Tea Partier Art Wittich, suing Gallik on behalf of the Montana Policy Institute, the right-wing think tank. Wittich, like most GOP attorneys in Montana, spends his days suing the Governor, Steve Bullock, Commissioners past and present, and Democrats generally. Clearly his star witness, Steab, did not deliver, destroyed her own credibility, and caused Wittich some embarrassment. Poor guy. It’s kind of like calling a witness to the stand, who upon cross examination confesses to having been abducted by aliens, or having seen Elvis still alive in Hawaii.
Which leads me to a humorous final point, a general pattern of events the last few weeks:
It’s been a dry spell for GOP attorneys. A few weeks back, Rick Hill hired Bozeman Tea Party hot-head Monforton to give him legal advice. It it was Monforton’s idea to take the $500,000 donation, it was perhaps the worst legal advice in Montana political history, probably destroying Hill’s campaign. Then another of Hill’s lawyers, Cory Swanson, a young corporate lobbyist and lawyer who makes a living suing the Schweitzer administration, got his head handed to him in district court by three top-rank democratic lawyers, the judge barring Hill from spending the illegal $500k. Jim Brown, another conservative attorney who represents right-wing American Tradition Partnership, was caught on camera with a mouthful of marbles when presented clear evidence that his client broke the law by coordinating with GOP candidates; he had no response to the reporter, and turned red in the face. Brown had to then contend with a crowd of protesters outside his office the day after the PBS story aired (though he was a good sport about it, fielding questions from members of the hostile crowd). Now Wittich puts his star witness on the stand to make his case, and she says that big brother is watching her day and night. Bwahahahaaa!
Posted: October 30, 2012 at 5:40 pm
The first public poll since former Congressman Rick Hill took an illegal $500,000 is out today.
The Pharos Research Group survey has Steve Bullock leading Rick Hill 47% – 44%. The poll also shows that Tester’s lead against Rehberg is growing, although the race is still very close. Bullock and Tester prevail in the survey despite a strong Republican sample.
Pharos Research Group conducted the live call poll of 799 likely voters in Montana from October 26 through October 28. Of those polled, 31% identified as Democrats, 43% identified as Republicans and 26% said they were Independents.
Forty-eight percent of those polled were men and 52% were women. You can read the entire poll here.