Held campaigns for Congress in Havre

Democratic candidate for Montana's eastern U.S. House seat was Steve Held was in Havre over the weekend in a campaign swing through the district.

Held is among the Democrats running for Montana's Second Congressional District, a campaign with a crowded primary field that does not include the seat's current occupant, Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont.

In the Democratic primary, Held faces Kevin Hamm, a Helena community organizer and activist, as well as retired pharmaceutical rep Ming Cabrera of Billings, and former Montana lawmaker and writer John Driscoll.

Among the Republicans running are Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen, Montana Auditor Troy Downing, former Republican state lawmakers Joel Krautter, Ric Holden and Ed Walker, along with Montana State Sen. Kenneth Bogner, R-Miles City, former Motana Rep. Denny Rehberg, former Drug Enforcement Administration official Stacy Zinn and Billings Republican Kyle Austin, formerly of Havre.

Rosendale - who for less than a week was in the race for Sen. Jon Tester's seat before dropping out after former president Trump endorsed his primary opponent Tim Sheehy - also dropped out of the race for reelection to his House seat, citing alleged death threats made to his family and rumors being spread about him.

Held, a fourth-generation Montana rancher, motel owner and former professional actor from the Broadus area, said he's never identified with either political party, but running for the seat required that he make a choice, and, unfortunately, he said, the Republican party is dominated by too many extremists to be a viable choice.

He said the GOP has demonstrated a willingness to hurt people for the sake of getting elected, and no where was this more apparent than it was with the recent "debacle" over the U.S. southern border.

He said Democrats bent over backward to give Republicans practically everything they wanted in a bill that would have addressed the border crisis, but they killed the bill anyway, because they wanted to keep the issue alive as a wedge in the upcoming election cycle, a display of politicking that Held described as "disgusting."

He said there are well-meaning people in the party who want to solve problems, but they hardly ever get anything done because the reins are in the hands of people who don't.

"That party is broken right now, and that makes me sad. My dad is a Republican," Held said. " ... The good people in that party are not going to get heard."

He said this has been a problem for some time, such as when Republicans opposed the Affordable Care Act for political reasons, despite the fact that it was modeled after health care reforms championed by Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, but it's gotten completely out of hand as time's gone on.

Recent Republican efforts to restrict access to health care for women and transgender people is another manifestation of this extremism, he said.

Montanans, regardless of their political party or identity, he said, should have the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies with their health care providers, which he considers a matter of personal privacy.

Held said a lot of Republicans publicly express support for these restrictions but, when pressed, will acknowledge the troubling implications their position has for Montanans' right to privacy, a matter that they take very seriously.

As for the Democrats, he said, he's the only one on the ticket that he feels can effectively represent the interests of Eastern Montana and he wants to get Congress moving on legislation like the Farm Bill.

He said the Farm Bill is a vital piece of legislation, and Republican efforts to prevent its passage, all for the sake of winning political points, are hurting countless people in the agriculture industry, and that needs to stop.

Held said the Republicans' lack of interest in addressing climate change is another problem they're making for the agriculture industry, as the effects of the crisis are now plainly visible for all to see.

He said even during the Trump years, a strong majority of Americans believed the government must do something to address the issue, and that number has only grown, so it is clearly a priority.

Held's daughter, Rikki Held, was the primary plaintiff in a successful lawsuit against the state of Montana saying the plaintiff's constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment was not being maintained by the state, resulting in the first legal opinion of its kind, which spelled out the environmental harms caused by greenhouse gas emissions as well as the effects of climate change on the physical and mental wellbeing of young people.

The ruling may have wide-reaching implications for Montana energy policy, and Steve Held joked that it's made his daughter much more famous than he is.

He also said Congress is facing an issue that continues to damage its legitimacy, with multiple members of both parties being credibly accused of insider trading.

Held said people in Congress have access to information that can be used to illegally play the stock market, and while there are measures in place to try to prevent that information from being used or passed on to others who can use it, it's not difficult to circumvent them.

He said this is blatantly corrupt and needs to be addressed immediately.

He also talked about increasing access to affordable health care and affordable housing, saying the government will likely need to intervene to help provide that.

Held said he understands that people don't like taxes, and neither does he, but there are things the government needs to do to help people who are in need, and that costs money.

However, he said, that money can't come solely from the middle class, and the wealthy need to pay their share.

He also talked about little things the government can do, like raising awareness about soil health, which could really help out Montana agriculture producers.

He said despite the dangerously polarized times "most Americans agree on most parts of most issues," and Democrats need to be willing to find common ground with those Republicans who do want the best for the U.S. and Montana, and ignore the extremists in their own ranks.

Held said in his travels around the state he's had a great many conversations about issues going on for people and he's found that he has some kind of personal or family connection to all of them, which he thinks is an indicator that he can represent people's issues effectively.

He said extremist Republicans represent a danger to Montanans' safety and rights, and if he's elected that is a worry that no one in the state will need to have.