Hamm stumps for Congress in Havre

Kevin Hamm, a democratic House of Representatives candidate for the Eastern district of Montana, spoke to local voters in Havre Tuesday night at the Hill County Democratic Party headquarters.

Hamm, a Helena small business owner, activist and community organizer, was introduced by Hill County Democrats Chair Lindsey Ratliff as a tireless advocate for human rights, including the rights of women and queer people.

Indeed, women's bodily autonomy and the rights of queer people were the first subjects Hamm talked about, contrasting himself with some of his fellow Democrats and saying there are some issues that they should not compromise on.

The right of women to access reproductive health care, including abortion and the rights of queer people are not things that are up for negotiation for him, he said.

He said there is plenty of room for disagreement on a variety of issues, and he doesn't know the best solution to many of the problems that the U.S. faces, but equal rights must be protected without equivocation.

"That sometimes makes me seem a bit antagonistic to people," Hamm said. "I don't care."

He said he and his democratic primary opponent Ming Cabrera are in agreement on many issues, but he believes he is the better advocate for issues like abortion, and that is one of the most important issues of the day, with many independent-minded Republicans finding themselves at odds with their party this election cycle.

Hamm spoke about a number of topics over the two hour event, most of them in response to questions from the audience.

Among those issues was immigration, which he said needs to be addressed with compassion and openness, but still done in a way that prevents people from entering the U.S. who may be a danger to it.

He said the U.S. as we know it was built by colonialism, and the idea that people should be excluded from the country arbitrarily or based on where they come from is absurd given that history.

"How many of you are Native American?" he asked the group. "So one person? Everybody else came over a border. ... If we really want America to be the greatest country on Earth, and I think we do and I think we can, we need to make sure that immigration happens in a smart systematic way, that doesn't have people coming over and having to fight razor wire at a river."

He said people constantly talk about how the U.S. is the greatest country on Earth and it shouldn't be surprising that people want to come here.

Hamm said the people seeking entry at the southern border are being driven out of their home countries by a confluence of economic, political and environmental factors, and the vast majority are willing to work hard for a place in this country.

To deny them for the sake of political theatrics, especially during a labor shortage, he said, is wrong.

He said he is in favor of student loan forgiveness, adding that post-secondary education needs to be made more affordable if not free.

Hamm said there is an ongoing shortage of skilled labor in the U.S. and there are plenty of people who could get the education and training to fill those positions, but that won't happen if the only way to do it is to go into crippling debt.

He said student loans need to be better regulated so people don't spend decades paying exorbitant amounts on the interest without ever touching the principal.

"While I'm very impressed with the brain that Einstein had, I'm really distressed with the number of people that had that same level of ability, but were locked into a job, or a factory, or whatever because they didn't have access to education," he said. "That limits us."

Hamm also said a consequence of having so much of the working population deep in debt is that none of them have money to put back into their local and national economies.

When payments were suspended during the pandemic, he said, people had the economic freedom to actually patronize local businesses, which was good for everyone.

Hamm also said low teacher pay throughout the education system is doing serious damage to student outcomes and that's a reason to vote Democrat in general, not just for him.

He was also asked about gun control, saying that he supports universal background checks and restrictions on the sale of particularly dangerous firearms, but he opposed more broad restrictions.

He hasn't always been an avid shooter, he said, but he's owned guns his entire life, as have many people he knows, and it can be done responsibly.

Hamm said people, even those with particularly dangerous automatic weapons should be allowed to keep them, but they also have a responsibility to prove they know how to handle and store them properly, for their own sake as well as everyone else's.

He said people need to be storing their weapons and ammunition in safes and maintain their knowledge and training of how to handle them safely.

Beyond any kind of regulation, he said people need to talk to each other about the subject and make sure everyone is being safe.

He said he supports buyback programs for guns that people no longer want, but people feel strongly about their right to own firearms and he doesn't want to put people in the position of feeling like they need to defend that right, which will only end badly for everyone involved.

In particular he encouraged people to offer or ask that a friend take their firearms when they are in crisis.

Hamm said the easier a gun is to access the more likely it is that it will be used in an attempt by someone to hurt themselves.

He said practically everyone has been in a state of distress intense enough that they consider seriously hurting themselves, and even the 60-plus seconds it takes for someone to unlock a safe and get a gun, will give people enough time to comprehend the gravity of the decision they are about to make and stop themselves.

He also talked about health care and the need for mental health to be a bigger focus.

Hamm said he doesn't think the private insurance industry is going anywhere, but he believes that everyone should have a public option, one that includes mental health care, which he considers as vital as any other kind of care someone needs.

He said Americans are spending exorbitant amounts for vital care, in large part, because the U.S. health care system is dominated by the profit motive.

He said the system is geared more toward providing care when things go wrong without a focus on keeping people healthy in the first place, which would be cheaper long term.

He also said he wants to eliminate drug patents held by private corporations, which, almost invariably, developed their drugs with the help of subsidies from the government, going on to make billions in profits.

Hamm was also asked about energy policy.

He said he supports efforts to move to green energy, but said it needs to be done in a smart way, making sure that traditional power generation isn't decommissioned before a suitable replacement is established.

He said green energy shouldn't be seen as an economic imposition, but as an opportunity for profitable new industries that will not contribute to climate change.

Hamm said if people want the planet to continue being a comfortable place for people to live, they need to start getting serious about moving to cleaner energy sources.

He said he supports the creation of small-scale energy storage for wind and solar energy, which will ensure weather can't interrupt power as easily and an increased focus on things that allow people and smaller communities to generate power without having to rely solely on the U.S. energy grid.

He also talked about infrastructure, which he said doesn't just need more funding, but a change in the structure of its funding.

He said many structures, bridges especially, were built without a long-term plan for how to pay for their maintenance and because of that so much of the U.S. infrastructure is long past its expected expiration date "held together with bubble gum and hope."

Discussion of infrastructure led into a larger subject about how the government functions.

Hamm said he believes the federal government is too reactive and restrictive when it comes to a number of issues, including infrastructure, with local governments having to fill out endless forms with extremely specific requirements to even have a shot at getting basic problems in their communities fixed.

He said the federal government can't know about every problem going on, but agencies need to be given the resources to start keeping better track of the state of infrastructure, so they know what needs to be done without having needing hundreds of pages of documentation from local governments that barely have the time or money to apply for grants.

He said he believes this should be the case with many things the government does, like veteran care, keeping track of records, injuries and the veterans themselves so that they can easily reach out to them and offer help when they need it.

Hamm said veterans often face a lot of problems reintegrating into society, and it's crazy to him that they so often have to seek out the VA, not the other way around.

He said the U.S. should be converting decommissioned military bases into housing for veterans who have difficulty living on their own, which will create a place where they can live and access the services they need to get back on their feet.

He said he realizes there is a risk of such a proactive government crossing over into being overbearing, but he thinks close collaboration between federal, state and local governments can ensure that doesn't happen, and that the U.S. government is helping, not imposing.

Hamm said a lot of the projects will require a great deal of funding, and people are naturally going to ask how it will be paid for, but the U.S. has plenty of resources to make these kinds of changes.

He said the U.S. government is subsidizing massive corporations that often pay next to nothing in taxes, and the country's billionaires are sitting on vast sums of money that they will never spend in their lives.

He said there is a place for government subsidies of course, but not for massive companies that can easily fund their own projects.

If a small telecom provider is asked to connect fiber to an outlying town that needs it, they're not going to have the resources to do that and stay profitable, and that's the kind of situation the federal government should be getting involved in.

He also said the U.S. does plenty of inefficient spending that can be redirected.

Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on more tomahawk missiles than the country can even store, why not spend it on the education or health care system, he said.

As for the corporations specifically, he said, the compensation gap between the highest and lowest earners has gotten incredibly wide in the past few decades, from a difference of 20 to 30 times, to sometimes over a hundred times now.

Hamm said if the U.S. wrote a law to limit that gap, CEOs could still make plenty of money, but the rest of the workforce would benefit from their company's vast profits.

The kind of economic freedom such a change would create, he said, would infuse more money into local economies and allow money to flow more freely throughout the economy, instead of just pooling among a relatively small group of executives.

The group of voters seemed largely receptive to Hamm, though some in the group were noticeably skeptical about some of Hamm's more ambitious goals, with many expressing concern about how he would sell some of these ideas to voters and to colleagues should he be elected.

Hamm said power in the House of Representatives is largely determined by seniority. The more time spent there, the more influence a representative gains, he said, but in the past few decades no one has really committed to the office, instead using it as a springboard for other political offices, like governor or senator.

That is something he will not do, he said, because he's in it to make a difference long term, and he thinks he will be good at that.

He said despite how he sometimes comes off, he has a long history of working with conservatives and getting them on board with his ideas, something informed by being brought up in a Republican household.

He said he's worked with local government commissions to make changes he thought were beneficial and he did it by anticipating their concerns, asking them about their opinion and directly engaging with what they think.

He said he will fight with people on the subject of human rights, but there are plenty of Republicans, Libertarians and conservatives who genuinely care about finding solutions, including public officials who not only want a solution to problems, but want their names on that solution, and he's always willing to give that to them if they can be part of such a solution.

Hamm said a lot of people lean conservative out of instinct because they are skeptical of change, often understandably, having witnessed too many things get worse when they were promised otherwise.

Unfortunately, a lot of people with understandable fears end up voting for people who don't have their interests at heart.

"We have a bunch of people who do not want the government to function that are in charge of the government functioning, and that's why it's not functioning," he said. "Stop voting for those people, stop letting those people ruin your lives."

Hamm said he doesn't know all there is to know, but he's always willing to listen to people who have unique struggles and try to help them.

He said he didn't grow up in agriculture and has no idea how to operate a tractor, but he doesn't need to know that to know that people want to live their lives their own way, and that he understands.

"I don't need to know about your lifetime to understand that you want your life to be yours," he said.