Ayres, Lanier face off in Hill County Commission election: Libertarian Hill County Commission candidate Sam Ayres

Libertarian Hill County Commission candidate Sam Ayres said that, while he is not from Montana, he loves the state and wants to protect its values.

"I genuinely think Montana is the greatest place on Earth," he said in an interview with Havre Weekly Chronicle. "That's a hill I will die on. .... I'm here because I love the Montana way of life."

He said he has roots in the state, with his family settling here in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and though he grew up in California, he always wanted to live here.

"I'm not trying to pretend like I was born here, like I've been living this lifestyle my whole life, but it's what I'm passionate about is what I want to live, what I want to do," he said.

Ayres said he was born in Long Beach, California, and, after talking it over with his parents, was home schooled for his high school education.

He received a Bachelor of Arts of Communication Design with an option in Media Arts from California State University, and spent a year in Ireland.

He said he wanted to work in advertising, and having taught himself web design in elementary school and junior high school decided during a summer internship that he could combine the two. He was offered a job working as a project manager for a digital agency right out of the internship and did that job for nearly 15 years.

He said he got burned out on that and a friend got him into the music industry for a while, working on a number of events and numerous music festivals around the country.

"But that's not something I wanted to dedicate my life to, I wanted to hunt and fish and and raise chickens," he said.

He moved to Montana, including living in Belgrade for about two years, but wanted to find somewhere else, he said.

He now lives some 40 miles north of Havre on a seven-acre property "with a workshop where I can make my knives, a barn, where, you know, I've got goats, and chickens, and ducks, and geese, and this, and that, and the other," Ayres said.

He said after he left the music industry, he decided to start his own business. He had been doing a podcast from Los Angeles Calle Living Country in the City, and made some connections with small outdoors industry businesses and worked with them. He then expanded that to small businesses in general.

He also sells the eggs from his place in town as the Havre Egg Wrangler, and also tends bar in town on the weekends.

Ayres said he wanted to run as an independent, but when he went to file he found out it is a partisan position. He said he filed as a Libertarian because that is the party he is registered with.

"I've always Identified with those kind of policies of individual freedoms and and reducing government interference with our day-to-day lives," he said. "It's always kind of resonated with me and so, you know,I didn't want to stick with the standard R or D next to my name and so I went with the Libertarian."

But, he added, he thinks requiring a local position like county commissioner to be partisan is "absolutely ridiculous.

"I think that the fact that most any of our county employee positions are are partisan is kind of crazy to me, especially say, sheriff and commissioners," Ayres said. "It Really shouldn't matter what letter is behind your name, what your party affiliation is.

"You know these local positions, it's about serving the people, it's not about grandstanding and, you know, on party lines or anything like that," he continued.

He said people started telling him at the start of this year's election season that he should think of running for county commissioner.

He said he told them he wasn't a politician and didn't have the right personality to run for office.

"I'm abrasive and blunt and don't tell people what they want to hear, I tell them what my actual opinion is. ... I'm probably entirely too blunt for my own good," he said. "... I just don't have time to sugarcoat things and so I give it to people straight."

But, he said, people encouraging him to run said that was exactly what the county needed. He could cut through to real issues.

He said the fact that he has lived In the county less than three years might also seem like a problem, but he sees it as an advantage.

"I'm not coming in with all these preconceived notions about this is what Hill County needs and this is how I'm going to fix it," Ayres said.

He said, however, some of his values as a Libertarian translate to being a county commissioner.

"I would rather tax people less and let them spend their money on what they see is important," he said. "You know, you want that pothole fixed outside your road, you can get together with your neighbors rather than having the government take all that money and decide where it goes, which is very rarely where you want it. ... Taxing you less lets you keep your money and you can pool it where you believe it needs to go."

Ayres said he knows issues need to be addressed, issues with roads, with the detention center, with water for agriculture, but he won't make any promises as a candidate.

"I take that back, I'm promising one thing," he said, "and it's it's transparency and accountability. That is that is my biggest goal going into this office.

" ... What I'm going to do, personally, is just be absolutely transparent with the county," Ayres said. "... It's too much work to hide things. It's easy to be transparent."

He said, for example, his schedule and work calendar always will be available so people always know where he is. Everyone will be welcome to find him, in the courthouse or wherever, and talk to him.

He also wants to find ways to get more information out to the residents of the county, for example, starting a Facebook page for the commission, including having livestreams of meetings and so on on that page, and posting things like board openings, meeting minutes and notices.

"I just think it need more of a concerted effort needs to be made to present this information to the public," Ayres said.

One way to do that would be to present easy-to-digest reports to the public about the county finances. That could be released once-a-month, or maybe once-a-quarter, he said. The reports might not always be positive, Ayres said, but people would know what is going on and see where the money is going.

"And that way, the public can hold us accountable," Ayres said "There's a lot of he-said-she -said that pops up. You know what? With that transparency, it's gonna be really obvious what's going on."

That also will help rebuild trust with the county commission, he added, saying issues that have come up over the last several years have eroded that trust.

Ayres said part of rebuilding that trust is knowing what it is people want. His work as a project manager dovetails with that, he said.

As a project manager, he said, "it's not my job to know everything. What my job is, and I see this paralleling with job of the county, commissioner, my job is to understand people, to know who I need to go to, who I need to talk to find out what's important to them, and then go talk to more people find out, discuss with the experts. So meet with the people find out what their priorities are."

But, he said, his main goal is to try to make things better for the county.

"You know, people hate the word change," Ayres said. "I don't want to change what's good about this community, I want to bring positive change. I want to see this community growing."