“Who is this Gianforte—some kind of slacker?”
Ask a Montanan whether he supports preserving access to public lands, and he’ll jam his eatin’ spoon in your eye until he feels it crunch. He didn’t understand the question, and you startled him. To make some kind of meaning from all those empty words, people need a concrete example. My apartment has fallen into abstraction lately, so it’ll take me as second to hunt up a good—here we go. This thing Republican candidate for governor Greg Gianforte did works nicely:
In 2009, Greg and Susan Gianforte sued the Montana department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, seeking to get rid of a fishing access point that residents of Bozeman had used for almost 40 years to go fishing on the East Gallatin River…The spur led not only to the river but to an entire riparian area of 75 public acres, protected by FWP for the enjoyment and general use of all citizens. But the easement also ran over the far end of the Gianfortes’s property, and so…they viewed it as a trespass.
Props to Ben al-Fowlkes for the link. The Gianfortes filed their lawsuit through a limited-liability corporation called East Gallatin LLC, headquartered at their home in Bozeman. They retained as counsel in the matter of East Gallatin LLC v. Father-Son Fishing Trip one Art Wittich, attorney-at-law in the Bozeman area and R–Belgrade in the Montana State House. The crossover is delightful. It’s like Captain America: Civil War except they’re on the same side, against Montana Cowgirl.
