Dean talks at Pachyderm meeting in Havre

Montana Republican Senate candidate James Dean defended the lack of specifics he has given about his policy proposals and personal life at a meeting of the Pachyderm Club Friday and said, if elected, it will be with the support of God and not the voters.

"It will be the grace of God that gets me elected and not by anything else," Dean said. "It is not even going to be by all you all liking me or voting for me. It is going to be by the grace of God alone that I am going to get into the U.S. Senate, that is it."

Dean made the statement after he was asked by Richard Pierson how he planned to raise the money needed to run a campaign when he is not being transparent.

Dean said he was being transparent and would raise money through prayer.

Dean is one of six Republicans seeking their party's nomination to take on Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., in next year's Senate election. Tester, a Big Sandy farmer, is running for his third term.

Dean and his wife, Sarah, have both filed in the race on opposing sides of the ticket. Sarah Dean is challenging Tester in June's primary.

The Deans, who live in Havre, have declined to answer questions about their personal backgrounds and policy proposals other than to say they want to radically reform the nation's financial system and government bureaucracy.

After James Dean spoke, several people at the Pachyderm meeting told the candidate they did not like how he was handling his campaign.

Vern Brown said he did not like what Dean was offering.

"I elect people to go and represent me because I know who they are, I know what they are about and I trust them," Brown said. "I don't really trust you because you are not telling us what you really want to do."

Richard Cronk asked Dean how long he has lived in Havre.

Dean said he got engaged to a girl from Havre in 1999, but that he has lived in Havre for only a couple months.

Cronk did not give him a good chance in 2018.

"The chance of you being elected senator are about as big as Trump marrying Hillary Clinton in the next 10 years," Cronk said.

James Dean, said Friday he is a retired U.S. Air Force veteran, former Judge Advocate General Corps lawyer and financial advisor, has spent years studying U.S. financial system, military and government, and is the only candidate with a plan to avert another crisis and improve the economy.

He added that while other candidates offer a list of positions on issues, he actually has a solution.

To solve the problems, Dean said, he wants to introduce a complex new system based on software to connect people.

"I want to introduce a system where every problem can be solved at a very, very rapid rate," he said.

He said his system would allow people who want to start a business to use an app that will send out messages simultaneously and provide entrepreneurs with the startup capital, expertise, manpower and other resources.

Dean said his new system will boost the economy by 50 to 100 percent annually, which he said is needed to avert a financial crisis and pay down the national debt.

To make his plan work, Dean said, he will have to work with people in the Federal Reserve to reform the nation's banking system.

"If I am sent to the Senate by you guys, what I am going to be doing is going deep into the engine of how our systems work and in secret and in quietness, work with experts to get our system fixed from the inside," Dean said.

He said that he will not introduce a bill or work with congressional leaders to get his reforms, saying that as things relate to banking, the Republican party and Tester have already been paid off.

"I can do it without Congress cooperating," he said.

Neil Larson said he wants to get government out of the business sector and is troubled by the idea of Dean working in secret to change government policy.

"I have to, because if I tell you what I am going to do in advance they are going to work against me," Dean said.

Dean said that he wants to go to Washington, D.C., to fight "swamp creatures" and the biggest swamp creature is the U.S. Federal Reserve.

"It sounds to me like you want to run the government," Larson said.

"Big time, absolutely," Dean said. "That is why anybody runs for office because they want to run the government that is the whole point."

Larson said he thought the whole point of running for office is for someone to work with their constituents to improve the government.

Dean said that is what he wants to do.

Pierson said people want government to be more open, not less.

"We really have a problem with the ideology of doing something in secret when that is what we are trying to not have in government," Pierson said.

"This is warfare, folks," Dean said. "I am engaged in war against our system, and I am not going to tell the enemy what I am going to do."

He added that there will be a level of trust with voters that he will need to develop during the campaign.

Dean said, if elected, he will be able to make change by working directly with President Donald Trump in a way that does not require legislation.

"Do you think we want that?" Larson asked. "Do you think the public wants you to go in and do stuff without our approval?"

Dean said that if he is not elected, in the next financial crisis many people are going to suffer financially.

"When I say I am going after the Fed and am going to fix the system, I intend do it, and honestly, I don't care, sir, if you don't like my methods," Dean said. "My methods are carefully crafted over years and years, and I know exactly what I am doing. And that is going to help your life and it's going to help your family's life and it is going to help keep our country safe."

People in the audience also asked Dean about his personal background.

Dean said that he was born in Oregon. He said that he entered the U.S. Air Force Academy when he was 18 and as a freshman cadet studied political science and economics.

He went on to manage millions of dollars of financial transactions and did cost assessments on Air Force machinery and weapons systems, he said. Dean said he was later stationed in Saudi Arabia, where he managed the U.S. Military's operating budget in that country.

Dean said that he was later picked by the U.S. Air Force for a legal education program and scholarship. He attended the University of Hawaii for a law degree and said that he briefly served as a policy advisor for then Gov. Linda Lingle, R-HI.

After graduation, Dean said, he served as a JAG Officer at the U.S. Military detention center in Guantanamo Bay where he provided legal defense for the U.S. government regarding it's treatment of detainees.

He also said that he has worked for Merrill Lynch as a financial adviser and started a venture-backed biotechnology company.

Dean said that when the financial crisis hit in 2008, he lost half a million dollars and at the suggestion of his mother, began to study the U.S. financial system and what went wrong.

From 2008 until this past September, he said, in addition to his other work, he worked to find solution to problems facing government and finance, which he said no politicians, experts or think tanks had a clue how to solve.

Dean was asked why he moved to Havre.

Dean said he moved to Havre because of issues involving family. The issues, he said, he cannot share publicly now, but will eventually share the details with voters.

Dean said he legally changed his name from Daniel Lane Dean and had filed to appear on the ballot in California for president in 2016 before this name change.

The filing records show he filed as "Both Democrat & Republican."

Dean was asked by Larson about his name change and presidential run.

He said that he changed his name after he and his wife reached the decision through prayer.

"So it was a religious decision," Dean said.

Dean said the Billings Gazette also reported that his wife used various pseudonyms for her online business ventures.

He said she uses different names because she has stalkers who try to email her and track her down.

He said he filed in 2016 to run for president after realizing in 2015 that his plan was worthy of national implementation, but never campaigned.

He said the action was like rehearsing before a theater of empty seats and was a way to get prepared to run for public office.