Democratic candidates talk platform, opponents and voting

At a “Get Out to Vote” Zoom rally held in Hill County, Democratic candidates for offices on the state and national level talked about their priorities, platforms and the differences between themselves and their opponents, as well as encouraged people to get out and vote as early as possible.

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who is facing Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., in the race for U.S. Senate, made his appearance and said growing up in Montana has been a gift, and working in politics in the state makes him lament the state of politics on the national level and criticized his opponent’s track record.

“If Washington, D.C., worked a bit more like Montana, I think we would be in a much better position and I don’t think Steve Daines will represent us well,” he said.

Bullock criticized Daines for supporting excessive tax cuts, and obstructing bills that would allow the government to negotiate lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, which he said, is especially egregious during a global pandemic.

“It is insane to me that Costco can negotiate prescription drug prices, and the largest purchaser, the federal government can’t,” he said.

Bullock said there are existing proposals that he could work on in the U.S. Senate to reduce health care costs and increase access for Americans and Montanans, which he said is especially important because more than half of the businesses in the state have at least on employee on Medicaid.

He also emphasized the importance of kicking dark money out of elections, and passing increasingly strong campaign finance disclosure laws in lieu of preventing spending that would otherwise be illegal if not for the Citizens’ United ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010.

“I’ve traveled to every corner of Montana, not once has anyone said ‘Gov. Bullock, the problem is there’s just not enough spending in our elections,’” he said.

He also criticized Daines for taking money from big pharmacy companies and the Wilks brothers, and that the bosses of elected officials should be the people who put them in office by voting, not by the ones who write them checks.

He also expressed dissatisfaction with Bureau of Land Management Acting Director William Perry Pendley, who he said continues to occupy the position in defiance of federal law and has been terrible for public lands in general.

Bullock said his experience leading a state with a majority Republican Legislature has given him experience on how to work with the opposing party to get things done and focus on results.

Kathleen Williams, who faces Republican state Auditor Matt Rosendale for Montana’s one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, said that being the daughter of a World War II veteran and her marriage to another veteran have instilled in her an appreciation of the importance of public service.

She said having spent 37 years working on natural resources issues and working with people of all stripes to protect those resources has given her plenty of experience in keeping conversations going and getting results.

“You’ve got to be able bring folks together keep them at the table, dealing with passionate opinions about cultural economic and family issues, and come out stronger on the other side,” she said.

She said she hopes her three years in the Montana Legislature will allow her to take bipartisanship to an increasingly divided Congress.

She said her platform is rooted in the stories told to her by Montanans.

“The farmer who’s sacrificing food and utilities for insulin, the single mom who dropped her health care because she couldn’t afford it, the veteran who expressed concern that the world is hurdling toward tyranny, the crow businessman who wanted to start a bank to help native entrepreneurs, I mean story after story after story,” she said.

Williams said these stories mainly fit into three categories, the largest being ones that demonstrate the need to fix a patchwork and expensive health care system, something she said she has personal experience with because she cared for a parent who couldn’t care for themselves before she became a teenager.

She said the pandemic has made it clear that the American Dream isn’t accessible to everyone, and said she is deeply frustrated with the chaotic approach on the federal level to dealing with COVID-19.

Williams said she is dedicated to protecting public lands and recognizes the need to address climate change.

She said she also takes issue with Rosendale, in her words, “reinventing himself” into a champion for public lands despite his track record of wanting to transfer their ownership.

Montana Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney, who is running for governor with Montana House Minority Leader Casey Schreiner as the and lieutenant governor candidate, facing Montana Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., and attorney Kristen Juras, said most of the Montana races are close, with a 1 percent difference between himself and Gianforte.

Cooney criticized Gianforte’s history of moving to privatize public education and said public education needs more funding, not less.

“We need to be making investments in our public education,” he said.

He also said history indicates that Gianforte will not support expanding health care for more Montanans or the protection of public lands, which he said are threatened by the rich and corporations that want to take ownership of them.

Cooney said Gianforte’s recent rhetoric about being a champion for public lands is part of history of dishonesty.

“This is the same guy who lied to the police (about assaulting a reporter), why do you think he would be telling the truth now?” Cooney said.

Schreiner said this campaign should be a message to a man who he said has been trying to buy public office for years by vastly outspending his opponents.

“Our state is not for sale; Montana is not for sale,” he said.

Schreiner said Montana need people in office who know what life is like as a normal people.

“He doesn’t know what it’s like to have 40 grand in student loan debt,” he said, “He doesn’t know what it’s like to have emergency health care situations.”

Schreiner said, with his experience as someone with special needs children, he knows what it’s like to have a son only just born and already be worrying about medical debt.

“I was worried if that was going to impact our entire future, and this was at a time when I was a new dad, just trying to figure out how to be a father and I’ve got to worry about paying for that,” he said. “It’s crazy.”

Bryce Bennett, who is running for Montana secretary of state against current Deputy Secretary ofr State Christi Jacobsen, said there are far too many people on Montana’s capital, his opponent included, who only see public office as a method for personal gain, stepping stones, or trophies.

“We’ve seen the worst of that as my opponent has led a Secretary of State’s Office that has been plagued by corruption and incompetence,” he said.

He said this corruption includes the hiring of family members, contracts going to donors, and the abuse of government vehicles.

He said a secretary of state needs to advocate for Montana’s outdoor economy, which he has benefited from since childhood, and people who attempt to block access should face significant fines.

Bennett said his opponent has expressed uncertainty about what the Bureau of Land Management even does and that’s something she should know after four years in office.

He also touted his endorsement by former secretaries of state from both parties, including Bob Brown and Linda McCulloch.

He also said, if elected, he would make efforts to fight voter suppression, and assured Montanans that voting by mail is safe.

“Voting by mail is safe and secure no matter what you’re hearing from a bunch of D.C. pundits or even from people in this state, your local clerks and recorders are working overtime to make sure your voices are heard and your vote is counted,” he said.

Superintendent of public instruction candidate Melissa Romano, who faces incumbent Republican Elsie Arntzen in a rematch of the 2016 election, provided her own credentials for the post she hopes to, in her words, return competence to.

“I’m a product of Montana’s public schools,” Romano said. “I am not a career politician, but I am an experienced, accomplished and very proud public school teacher.”

She said she would advocate for children of all ages and making sure schools are properly funded in order to maintain and improve their quality, and while her opponent says many of the right things she never follows up on them.

Romano said Arntzen has undermined public schools in many ways, including speaking next to Betsy DeVos at an ALEC conference, going to privatization events, and applauding a budget proposal that would have cost 30 million dollars from Montana Public Schools.

Romano said she would fight for public funding and against public funds going to private and religious schools.

Governor’s Counsel Raph Graybill, who, faces former Republican Speaker of the House Austin Knudsen, the Roosevelt County Attorney, spent much of his time in the Zoom meeting criticizing the Republican National Committee and the Trump re-election campaign’s recent lawsuit against Bullock for his directive allowing counties to use mail-in ballots in the 2020 General Election, saying it is a thinly veiled attempt to take people’s right to vote away.

“They want to make you choose between your right to vote and your safety and that is unacceptable,” he said.

Graybill is Bullock’s lead counsel on the case, and he said the lawsuit is being joined by the lawyer who represented Citizens’ United, which he said a sign of desperation on the part of Republicans.

“They’re the worst of the worst, but you know when they’re bringing in the Citizens’ United guy, they are really scared,” he said, “And they’re scared because ultimately you have the power to decide who leads our state and they’re afraid of you using your right to vote.”

Graybill said the attorney general position is like the public’s lawyer, a counterbalance to keep power in check, and improve people’s lives in tangible ways, but he said as attorney general he is first going to have to play defense, as there is an imminent threat to people’s health in the form of a lawsuit aimed at repealing the Affordable Care Act constructed by other states’ attorneys general, whom he called extremists.

He said the United States decided as a nation 10 years ago that it wasn’t acceptable for insurance companies to use pre-existing conditions as an excuse to take away coverage, and that he would intervene to stop that lawsuit, which he said his Montana Attorney General Tim Fox believes is a disaster.

Montana State Auditor Candidate Shane Morigeau, who is running against Republican Big Sky businessman Troy Downing, said he brings a unique perspective to the position having been raised on a reservation which made him acutely aware of many issues Montanans have trying to get health care.

“I grew up on the Flathead reservation, I’ve seen that our rural communities need more access to healthcare and as auditor I’m going to fight to keep you costs down,” he said.

Morigeau said he would crackdown on predatory insurance companies, which he said his opponent is promoting during a pandemic which he described as gross.

He also said he would support propose legislation to give his office more authority to make sure rules regarding the providing of behavioral and mental health are followed, which he said is especially important as he has seen far to many without sufficient care.

He also criticized his opponent for skirting the bounds of legality with numerous champaign violations.

“I feel like he treats Montana like the Wild West sometimes,” he said.

He also criticized the current auditor Matt Rosendale for letting insurance companies cut corners when it comes to health coverage and undermining honest companies.

Krystal Steinmetz, who is running to replace state Rep. Jacob Bachmeier, D-Mont, as the representative for House District 28 and faces Republican Havre School Board member Ed Hill, said that while she is a newcomer to politics, her experience as a middle-class worker and journalist living in Havre since 2004 have given her an understanding of what average Havrites face in their day-to-day lives.

“I’ve been paying on medical debt since the first time my husband and I had miscarriage,” she said, “And we’ve had insurance that entire time but we’ve been paying medical debt since then … for 12 years.”

She said she chose to live in Havre back in 2004 to be with her husband, who had a job here, and it took time to get used to a small-town atmosphere, but now she loves it.

“It’s our home and I want to make sure it stays a good place,” she said.

However, over the years, she said, she’s met lots of people who have not been able to find a good-paying job and have left the state and having worked for minimum wage as a journalist she understands how they feel.

She said she remembers her parents, who she said worked as hard as they could to give her a better life, having to use the money they wanted to use for their children’s time in college to put food on the table in tough financial times.

“When you’re struggling there should be things to fall back on, I kind of thought that’s what governments were for,” she said.

Steinmetz said she also worked for Bear Paw Development Corp. and her experience their helped her learned about public funding and the practical implementation of ideas, and said she would represent her district with competence and empathy, putting local priorities over abstract political ideology.

Bachmeier, the chair of the Hill County Democratic Central Committe, endorsed Steinmetz, who he said has put his mind at ease by running for his seat, which he said has been difficult.

“She understands what everyday people in Montana are going through,” he said.

He encouraged people to get out and vote and thanked everyone present for their support during his time in office, particularly his constituents.

“There’s been no greater honor in my life than being able to listen to the hearts of my constituents and go to the legislature and fight for their values,” he said.