PEOPLE, WE CAN WIN THIS RACE!
IT WOULD BE A TRAGEDY NOT TO GO BIG ON IT.
After reading IowaNiceinDC’ s post, www.dailykos.com/… I thought it was worth another diary on Rob Quist’s excellent chances in Montana.
Quist's opponent, Greg Gianforte, just lost a statewide governor's race five months ago, after campaigning on bringing a wildly unpopular sales tax to Montana. He's also very rich in a not in my backyard kind of way, (he doesn't want Montanans fishing on his property), and he's originally from New Jersey, where he apparently learned his manners at the Chris Christie Charm School.
Now we'll get to see if Kossites can get off their urban elitism, and actually step up to help elect a new Democratic Congressman from the same, (not backward), state that gave the United States Mike Mansfield, the longest serving US Senate Majority Leader in history, as well as current US Senator and all-around great guy Jon Tester, as well as just-retired U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus--who's also a six-term former U.S. Senator--as well as former U.S. Congressman and raconteur supreme Pat Williams.
When Howard Dean was DNC chair he had field organizers in Montana, learning Montana two years before the election. It wasn't just a bunch of DNC lawyers showing up a month before an election and trying to tell the locals what to do. As a result, Jon Tester got elected to the Senate and beat a three-time incumbent Republican, Brian Schweitzer got re-elected as governor, Max Baucus got re-elected as Senator, and we had a Democratic Secretary of State and State Superintendent of Education. Heck, Obama campaigned hard in Montana and only lost by 3 points. A little money goes a long way in rural America.
And this is another reason to get heavily involved in this race: The Mission Mountains en.wikipedia.org/...—which also are the inspiration for the wildly popular Mission Mountain Wood Band that Rob was a member of for many years.
If the DNC doesn't support Quist, it will just be exhibiting the same rural blindness that just lost them the U.S. Presidential election: If we don't message into and contest rural elections, we'll also continue to get our assets/asses stolen from us because of the inordinate and imbalanced Republican infusion of more money and superior rural messaging in state-wide elections in potentially progressive states with large rural populations like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota and, oh, BTW, Montana.
Here’s Rob’s fundraising page: secure.actblue.com/...
But another way to get the message to where it needs to go is to donate to the DNC on one of their matching fund requests, but demand that the money go to the Montana race.