The John Edwards for president campaign rolled into Missoula Montana yesterday, with Governor Brian Schweitzer introducing the candidate. Nearly 700 people showed up at the evening event held at the University of Montana. It's a rare event to have a presidential candidate from any party show up in Montana, which holds its primary in June of an election year, one of the last primaries in a presidential election season. But Governor Mitt Romeny has already visited the Montana at the state's republican convention last spring, and Governor Schweitzer's endorsement is viewed as a valuable commodity with western democrats on the move.
Long viewed as "fly over country" Montana's three electoral votes have only gone for two democratic presidential candidates in the last fifty years; Bill Clinton in 1992 and Lyndon Johnson in 1964, although Michael Dukakis gave a good showing in 1988. Republican presidents and presidential candidates have made a point of stopping by much more frequently than democrats, and Dick Cheney has visited way too often from his neighboring home state of Wyoming. John Edwards is the first democratic candidate to visit since the the 1970s.
Matt Singer and Jay Stevens have more details at Left in the West. Singer also notes that Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post speculates on who will recieve Governor Schweitzer's endorsement, and why western governors are being courted much more avidly than in previous elections.
Govenor Schweitzer says that if he had to endorse today, it would be for fellow western governor Bill Richardson, a personal friend. But Schweitzer notes that he agrees with Edwards on the influence of lobbyists. More from Schweitzer in the Washington Post:
Edwards "says out loud what I say every day here" when it comes to the overpowering influence of lobbyists on the legislative processs. "Lobbyists are not the fourth branch of government," said Schweitzer. "They don't run the government, but they act like they do."
The Missoulian covers the event in detail here.
Some choice quotes from Edwards in the Missoulian article:
"No more secret prisons ... no more torture," he said.
Moments later, he said: "It's amazing I have to say that."
More on Iraq:
The war, he said, needs to end.
"We don't need a surge in Baghdad, we need a surge in New Orleans," he said after noting foreign news headlines that belittled the government's response to Hurricane Katrina.
Americans, he said, need to "be patriotic about something other than war."
Hopefully, this will not be the last visit of a democratic presidential candidate to Montana this election season, although it will be hard to win the state's three electoral votes. But with Howard Dean's fifty state strategy, at least we will not give up without a fight!