Mullen stumps in Havre for secretary of state

Secretary of state candidate Jesse Mullen, a Democrat, campaigned in Havre Tuesday, meeting with local officials as well as a group of voters, as well as sitting down for an interview with Havre Daily News.

Mullen, who owns Mullen Newspaper Company, said his experience as a reporter helping hold governments and their officials accountable was one of the things that influenced him to run for office against an incumbent, Republican Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, he said is unfit for office.

He said his time as a business owner whose company is built on understanding the mechanisms of government, including the Montana Land Board and the work of notaries public, makes him uniquely qualified for the position.

"I can't think of a background better suited for secretary of state than being somebody who has personally spent decades holding elected officials accountable for their actions and who thoroughly understands the electoral process," he said. "Who also owns businesses and understands, in detail, the Business Services aspect of it, who uses and loves our public lands and understands how they're funded, and who also just so happens to have notaries public on their staff."

The position, he said, is an independent office elected to represent the people, not the governor, which he said Jacobsen doesn't seem to understand.

"I like Ryan Busse, but I am not running to work for Ryan Busse," he said at his campaign event after the interview. "... I'm running to work for you."

In the interview, he said there wasn't any one event that spurred him to run for this office, but a confluence of little things he experienced in his capacity as a journalist and a business owner that made him extremely concerned about the lack of effective leadership in that position, and they built to the point that, when he was asked to run, he considered it a moral obligation.

Mullen said there are a number of serious problems he sees with Jacobsen's leadership, but the most obvious is her handling of election administration.

He said there have been many instances in the past few years that were egregious, including in 2022 when her office was funding advertisements saying that same-day registration was illegal.

It was not, and Mullen said he believes she knew that, but did little to correct the blatant misinformation her office was putting out.

He said that and the recent debacles that took place in the wake of a botched rollout of the state's new election software, which he said was obviously not ready for implementation but was mandated by the state anyway, has damaged the relationship between the counties, which do the real work of running elections, and the state, which should be supporting them.

"I've spoken to 20 county clerks and recorders," he said later that day at a campaign event. "I hope to speak to all of them. All they want is support, and for the state to not undermine them by putting out misinformation."

In the interview earlier Mullen said this style of "ruling by mandate" is ineffective and doesn't allow counties to do the work they need to do.

More than that, he said, there is a disturbing amount of misguided distrust of the voting system in general, something he said Jacobsen and her political allies have contributed to.

Voting is an expression of people's will, he said, and when politicians like Jacobsen erode confidence in that system, based on no evidence, they undermine the people's voice under the pretence of protecting it, opening the door to extremists.

He said one thing he remembers vividly was in 2020 when he went to a county commissioners' meeting only to find a group of people dressed up in revolutionary war attire and Guy Fawkes masks screaming at election officials.

Having covered local politics for many years at that point, he knew these officials and knew that all they wanted was to run an election fairly, and to see them treated that way, egged on by politicians who knew better, made the gravity of the situation abundantly clear.

Whether or not these politicians, Jacobsen included, are encouraging this for political expediency, or incompetence, ultimately doesn't matter, Mullen said, the consequences are what matters.

Another aspect of the secretary of state's job is managing business services, and the consequences of his opponent's lack of leadership in that department can be attested to first hand.

He said tasks that should take minutes take days, with people jumping through bureaucratic hoops that serve no purpose, in part because the department's leader doesn't understand how it works, and apparently doesn't care to learn.

Mullen said the department has seen nearly its entire staff turn over under Jacobsen, losing decades of institutional knowledge that allowed the office to run largely without issue for years.

"If I'm successful as secretary of state, especially in the business services portion, you'll never hear about me," he said.

If nearly the entire staff leaves under a single leader, that is evidence of the leader's failure, not the people of that department, Mullen said.

He also criticized Jacobsen's influence on Montana Land Board, which he called one of the most important bodies in the state, one that is meant to protect the public lands of Montana, but one that has become little more than a rubber stamp for a governor who clearly doesn't care about these lands beyond how they can help a small group of politically well-connected friends.

As for other aspects of the office, Mullen said, as someone who's worked for years holding governments accountable, he knows the importance of transparency, and under his leadership, the office will put out regular press releases, honor Freedom of Information Act requests in a timely manner, and will respond to the press quickly, so people know what is going on.

He also said that while he certainly has his personal political opinions, he will not allow partisanship to play a role in his decision making, something he said Jacobsen has done repeatedly.

At a campaign event later that day, he said accountability in government is more important than ever in an age of declining traditional media.

He said many papers around the state are cutting back, leaving people in places like Missoula and Great Falls getting only three newspaper issues a week.

Mullen said he views the office of secretary of state much the same as he views his newspapers, as institutions that predate and will outlive him, institutions he will have the temporary duty to take care of until the next generation comes along.

"I might 'own' the newspaper, but I don't really own it, Deer Lodge does," he said. "(Havre Daily News owner) Gary Stevenson, God bless him, I know Gary Stevenson, but he doesn't own the Havre Daily News, Havre owns the Havre Daily News. It is my job to be a caretaker for (my) business. And when you elect me to be secretary of state for an eight-year period, it is my job to be a caretaker. I am not the important one there. My job is to make sure that this state, that was here 100 years before I was born and has had people live in and for tens of thousands of years, continues on ... and that I leave it better than I found it."