Rumors about Bullock, O’Leary leap from blogs to newspaper

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 1 Comment
What's going on between Governor Bullock and this big check?

What’s going on between Governor Bullock and this big check?

Here’s a fun game: try to name the most prominent policy idea of the 2016 Montana governor’s race. Republican Greg Gianforte wants to improve the economy by—wait for it—lowering taxes and lifting regulations. Governor Steve Bullock wants to continue being governor. If ideas were glue, these two couldn’t build a model plane. But it doesn’t matter, because they’d gouge each other’s eyes out before they got all the parts out of the box. Their almost purely negative campaign got even darker last week, when NewsTalk KGVO ran this story, ostensibly about Bullock’s use of the state plane but also about how he uses it to take trips with cabinet member Meg O’Leary.

Rumors that there is something untoward about their relationship have circulated on conservative blogs for some time. Until last week, you never heard about it in the mainstream press, probably because there’s no evidence. But then KGVO ran the headline “Governor Bullock Brought Meg O’Leary to Paul McCartney Concert Instead of First Lady, State Plane Use Questioned.”

As usual when a headline uses the passive verb “questioned,” they omitted the phrase “by us.” A subsequent story in the more scrupulous Billings Gazette contradicted several of KGVO’s implications.  It seems like the original piece was pretty thinly sourced. It didn’t say much that hadn’t already been said—also without substantiation—in various right-leaning blogs. So why run it now?

Maybe it had something to do with the news that Oracle was moving 100 jobs from Bozeman to Texas. Gianforte sold his software company RightNow Technologies to Oracle in 2011. His success in creating high-wage jobs has been a major selling point of his campaign, but this layoff undermines that. Is it possible KGVO ran the O’Leary story to overshadow the layoffs? Although Gianforte’s communications director, Aaron Flint, has a friendly relationship with KGVO, it would be irresponsible to say he nudged them. I mean, what are we—KGVO?

You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, in which I challenge the candidates to come up with some idea—any idea—related to policy. The voters of Montana deserve something better than a choice between negatives. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links, hopefully including a fun surprise.

Tim Fox puts Montana back on the wrong side of history

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment
Montana Attorney General Tim Fox and his little badge, which isn't like tucking your jeans into cowboy boots at all

Montana Attorney General Tim Fox and his little badge

It’s been a long time since Montana was on the wrong side of a civil rights debate. Since 2014, when Attorney General Tim Fox withdrew his appeal of a circuit court decision that declared our ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, you hardly ever see Montana in lists of states that begin “Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi…” Fortunately, President Obama’s directive that transgender people be allowed to use the public bathrooms of their choice has given us a new civil rights issue to be wrong about.

Last week, Fox filed suit against the federal government over Obama’s directive, putting Montana in cahoots with a couple dozen other states whose governors and attorneys general are deeply concerned with staking out territory on meaningless social issues during an election year freedom. Obviously, this is an issue that affects all of us, in the sense that we all have opinions about it even though it affects a small number of people. National estimates of the number of trans people in America are famously hard to come by, and estimates of the Montana trans population don’t exist. Here’s the New York Times on what we can glean from Social Security Administration data:

Since the Social Security Administration started in 1936, 135,367 people have changed their name to one of the opposite gender, and 30,006 also changed their sex accordingly, the study found. Of Americans who participated in the 2010 census, 89,667 had changed their names and 21,833 had also changed their sex.

Ninety thousand is probably a low estimate, since many trans people presumably do not officially change their names or genders with Social Security. Still, these numbers put the lowball estimate of transgender Americans at about .03% of the population. If we work from that estimate and assume Montana’s trans population is improbably identical to the national ratio, we can expect to find about 300 transgender people in the whole state.

And how many of them attend K-12? Fox’s lawsuit focuses narrowly on how Obama’s directive affects public schools. He may have taken the historically bad bet of using his state office to sue the feds over a civil rights issue, but at least he’s chosen an issue that is extremely minor. I think trans people should use whatever bathrooms they like, and I don’t mean to suggest that their rights are unimportant. But the effect of their rights on non-trans people is unimportant. I submit that transgender bathroom use is a purely theoretical idea for cisgendered Americans, particularly in Montana.  You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, in which I praise Fox for his bold action. It’s ironic. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

Zinke agrees to five debates, perhaps wisely

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 1 Comment
Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) endorses Donald Trump.

Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) endorses Donald Trump.

When former Navy SEAL and then-state senator Ryan Zinke ran for Montana’s sole congressional seat in 2014, he did not embrace debates. Under pressure from his opponents and a dozen local newspapers, he grudgingly participated in three, and he briefly pulled out of the last one. But that was a different election. Now Rep. Zinke is an incumbent. His Democratic opponent, Denise Juneau, challenged him to six debates in a May press release. The Zinke campaign was silent for a month, and we opinion-havers of Montana settled in for a reprise of the commander’s earlier reticence. But last week, just hours after Juneau issued a second press release noting his silence, he agreed to five.

Five! It pretty much doubles last year’s total of two and a half. It’s unclear exactly why Zinke’s attitude toward debates has changed, but in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, we’ve got some ideas. For one thing, he’s got a maniac at the top of his ticket. It’s going to take some nuanced messaging to convince voters that Zinke’s tough foreign policy and outsider image are different from Trump’s mindless aggression and general ignorance. Also, Commander Zinke’s “I’m a soldier, not a politician” theme gets less powerful with each incumbency. Now is a good time to add depth to his political image, and I’m glad he’s seized this opportunity. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

Amid budget cuts and enrollment collapse, UM president wins award

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment
University of Montana president Royce Engstrom

University of Montana president Royce Engstrom

During the five years Royce Engstrom has served as president of the University of Montana, enrollment has fallen by almost a third. Last week, the College of Humanities and Sciences announced cuts of 30% to its teaching budget and 50% to its operations. The last five years have seen a federal Department of Justice investigation into the university’s handling of sexual assault, the publication of a book titled Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, and the payment of a $245,000 settlement to former quarterback Jordan Johnson. Meanwhile, the Montana Associated Students has named Engstrom its 2016 Administrator of the Year.

At first I thought they were being cruel. But MAS really means it: they gave Engstrom the award for how well he has handled the process of “realigning the workforce so that the budget reflected the institution’s current enrollment.” Essentially, he has been publicly commended for overseeing the collapse of the university.

That collapse may not be Engstrom’s fault, but it has coincided with his tenure. Enrollment was at a record high when he took office. He may have inherited many, many scandals related to sexual assault, but he also was in charge during the botched investigation for which the university just paid Johnson a quarter million dollars. If Engstrom is the best administrator in the state, who was the second best? And what meteor were his students crushed beneath?

You can read smart remarks such as these in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. I don’t want to be too hard on Engstrom, because many of the problems that have blossomed during his administration were planted in previous ones. Still, we should not pretend that the University of Montana is in a good position right now. Nor should we tell ourselves that it is being run well when it continues to fall apart.

Judge overturns Montana contribution limits, making politics fun again

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 4 Comments
The whole state of Montana until yesterday

The whole state of Montana until Tuesday

You can’t hear it, but someone is lazily picking a banjo. The buffalo no longer roam, having decided one place is as good as another. The deer and the antelope play video games. Montana politics is sleepy, so sleepy. But then look what happens: a federal judge rules unconstitutional several elements of our campaign finance law. Suddenly, the dog sits up. As of Tuesday afternoon—three weeks before the primaries—political parties can contribute unlimited amounts to individual candidates. Judge Charles Lovell’s ruling seems to indicate that limits on donations from individuals and corporations are lifted as well, but Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl believes he must only revert to the limits in place before the ones Lovell struck down, in 1994.

Anyway, the last time this law was briefly overturned—for nine days in 2012—Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Hill accepted a $500,000 donation. Our easy slumber may have just been broken. I, for one, welcome the impending rush of cash into Montana politics. The 2016 campaign needs a shot of adrenaline. Why, just this week in the Missoula Independent, I wrote about how Bullock versus Gianforte has been a clash of tepid negatives. But the potential for political action committees of all kinds to spend unlimited amounts of money say unlimited amounts of speech ensures a vigorous exchange of ideas. So pander to me, boys. I’m all napped up.