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Montana politics with Jon Bennion · A New Angle

• 0:00
  [music]
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  SPEAKER_02: This is A New Angle, conversations about how we're doing and where we're going.
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  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Justin Angle.
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  SPEAKER_02: This show is supported by the Headwaters Foundation,
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  SPEAKER_02: First Security Bank, and the University of Montana College of Business.
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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_02: Hey folks, welcome back and thanks for tuning in.
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  SPEAKER_02: Today I'm speaking with John Binion.
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  SPEAKER_02: In 2004,
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  SPEAKER_02: John published Big Sky Politics,
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  SPEAKER_02: a comprehensive history of Montana campaigns and elections.
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  SPEAKER_01: Politics and policy are not necessarily CNN crossfire.
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  SPEAKER_01: Like you need people who are going to step up that actually want to govern.
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  SPEAKER_02: And he is out this year with an updated edition.
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  SPEAKER_02: John is also the executive director of the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: John, thanks for joining me.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us where did you grow up and what did your
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: parents do?
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  SPEAKER_01: I grew up in Billings, Montana, the metropolis of the big sky state.
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  SPEAKER_01: And my dad was a dentist and he up and decided one day he wanted to go to medical school.
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  SPEAKER_01: So we moved away briefly to Nebraska and came back to Montana when he was done.
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  SPEAKER_01: So he's an oral surgeon.
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  SPEAKER_01: My mom raised six kids and that was definitely a full-time job.
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  SPEAKER_01: We kept her busy.
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  SPEAKER_01: And when did you get interested in politics?
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  SPEAKER_01: I kind of knew by high school that whether my dad was a doctor,
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  SPEAKER_01: dentist, whatever, that that was not going to be my path.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Bill Clinton actually came to Montana in 1995.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I skipped the end of school that day and went and saw our president speak.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I had actually went to Pioneer Park in Billings and watched President George H.W.
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  SPEAKER_01: Bush campaign for reelection back in 1992.
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  SPEAKER_01: So there are these experiences that I had with the highest level of politics
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  SPEAKER_01: that really made an impression on me.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I just, I was drawn to it.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: Talk about that impression.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, because those are two very different politicians,
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  SPEAKER_02: but both Carry a certain weight and charisma.
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  SPEAKER_02: Those must have been formative experiences.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we talked about my parents.
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  SPEAKER_01: I was raised correctly where we had a deep appreciation for our country,
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: for our system, all that kind of stuff.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so it really,
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: despite who the president was and I have a Republican background,
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  SPEAKER_01: my parents were Republican.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I just had a deep respect regardless of who was president,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: who was in control, that it was something that I was drawn to.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: And you mentioned your folks, you sort of grew up in a Republican family.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: What were some of the influences on your ideology and developing values at that point in life?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we, you know, a family of faith.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so those were things.
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  SPEAKER_01: And my dad's idea of work ethic and all of that,
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  SPEAKER_01: that like you really can,
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  SPEAKER_01: he didn't come He came from a huge means when he was growing up.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so the idea that, hey, you can really seek out and chart your own course.
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  SPEAKER_01: And though that hard work,
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  SPEAKER_01: that drive was really a big aspect of how I grew up and how I lived my life.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Were there politicians at that point that were starting to influence you
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: that you were drawn to in particular because of their ideas?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't necessarily particular politicians, I would say.
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  SPEAKER_01: This was the early 90s.
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  SPEAKER_01: This was Ross Perot at the time.
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  SPEAKER_01: He was kind of goofy, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: But he was also talking about things that spoke to me as well in terms of the budget.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Back then, I don't know what the...
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: National debt was, it was probably $5 trillion or something.
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  SPEAKER_01: And here we are, $40 trillion.
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  SPEAKER_01: And those were things as I was growing up, it's like, oh, wow.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what are our finances going to look like as a country?
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  SPEAKER_01: Can we afford things?
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  SPEAKER_01: And that had a deep impression on me, kind of some of those talking points from the early 90s.
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  SPEAKER_02: So as an undergrad,
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  SPEAKER_02: you started this project of trying to document Montana campaigns and elections.
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  SPEAKER_02: This is the origin story of your book.
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  SPEAKER_02: Tell us about it.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: So Montana, we're a small population state.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so when I went and looked at the resources that were available to understand Who won?
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  SPEAKER_01: Why did they win?
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  SPEAKER_01: That sort of thing.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's not a lot out there.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's a professor from University of Montana,
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  SPEAKER_01: Ellis Waldron, that had a compilation of elections that went up to 1976.
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  SPEAKER_01: And very brief summaries.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I had a copy of that, but it wasn't very detailed.
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  SPEAKER_01: And also it hadn't been updated since 1976.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't set out to write a book.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: I just set out as a nerd to do research.
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  SPEAKER_01: And that was in the basement of the Mansfield Library here,
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  SPEAKER_01: going through actual- Not as a class project, just
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  SPEAKER_02: of your own accord.
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  SPEAKER_01: This is what nerds do, right?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone else partying and here I am like looking at Now nerds launch podcasts, I suppose.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Here we are.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, nothing wrong with that.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Nerds unite.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I was doing that.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then eventually I got introduced to some people.
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  SPEAKER_01: One very important person to me in kind of how
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: the book came together was former Congressman Pat Williams.
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  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
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  SPEAKER_01: Also former...
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  SPEAKER_01: Republican Governor Tim Babcock.
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  SPEAKER_01: He was governor during the 60s.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then Chuck Johnson, who was kind of the biggest political reporter in Montana.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: I would talk to these people and I would find out what they had to say about history.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then when they found out what I was doing, they said, you should write a book.
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  SPEAKER_02: We tend to think of history as making a lot more sense when we look at it from
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  SPEAKER_02: the vantage point of the present.
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  SPEAKER_02: But it hinges on chance.
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  SPEAKER_02: It hinges on luck.
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  SPEAKER_02: It hinges on things that maybe didn't go according to plan.
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  SPEAKER_02: Like you think of the Bush-Gore election.
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  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that was essentially a tie in many ways.
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  SPEAKER_02: And then we construct an explanation of everything that's happened since as
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  SPEAKER_02: if it was sort of a Not a predetermined thing, but an election that made sense.
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  SPEAKER_02: Whereas in the moment, it seemed to me to not make a lot of sense.
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  SPEAKER_02: What I'm getting at,
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  SPEAKER_02: are there hinge points in that period of history that you covered in Montana
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  SPEAKER_02: where it could have gone either way and it just went one way?
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, you look at the year 2000, you talk about Bush v. Gore.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think that started kind of our national obsession about politics a little bit.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Many ways.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because right after that election, the election wasn't over, right?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's like every day there's developments down in Florida and people are kind
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: of tuning in every day to what's happening.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we had media that could serve us and like capture our attention every hour
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  SPEAKER_02: of every day as things were unfolding.
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  SPEAKER_02: So it was like this coalescence of real time Things happening,
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  SPEAKER_02: but also a media economy ready to seize.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: And talk about the media and how that changed.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to oversimplify it,
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  SPEAKER_01: but I want to say like in the 80s, we had like three broadcast stations.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's a little bit of radio, the daily newspaper, things like that.
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  SPEAKER_01: And everybody's kind of I want to say, though, in 2000, that was a
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  SPEAKER_01: That was an election that went very well for Republicans within Montana,
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  SPEAKER_01: but it was also the year where we had the lowest presidential turnout
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  SPEAKER_01: of any election prior to that and even since.
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  SPEAKER_01: So just people didn't come out to vote.
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  SPEAKER_01: That benefited Republicans.
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  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so on the outside, it looked like, wow, we were a Republican state.
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  SPEAKER_01: That's also where red state, blue state came in, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: You didn't hear about that before 2000.
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  SPEAKER_01: So again,
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  SPEAKER_01: like that obsessing about politics and putting But then Montana,
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  SPEAKER_01: and you could tell even in 2000,
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  SPEAKER_01: these Republicans, other than George W. Bush, didn't win by huge landslides.
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  SPEAKER_01: And by 2004, we elected a Democratic governor.
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  SPEAKER_01: 2006, a Democratic candidate beat a long-term Republican incumbent for US Senate.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then 2008 was kind of this...
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  SPEAKER_01: A high mark for Democrats in Montana,
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  SPEAKER_01: where they won nearly every election other than the congressional race.
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  SPEAKER_02: Do you have a theory of the case for why those sentiments changed?
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  SPEAKER_01: I think, just to plug the book, there's parts of our political DNA that go back to statehood.
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  SPEAKER_01: So for example,
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  SPEAKER_01: they delayed us entering the union for many years because Congress was controlled
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  SPEAKER_01: by Republicans,
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  SPEAKER_01: assumed that we would put two Democratic US senators And send them to DC.
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  SPEAKER_01: So they're like, whoa, we don't know if we want Montana as a state.
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  SPEAKER_01: You know, fast forward to the new deal with FDR.
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  SPEAKER_01: We voted for FDR all four of his elections and pretty solidly.
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  SPEAKER_01: And even Truman in 1948.
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  SPEAKER_01: And you look at the state,
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  SPEAKER_01: a lot of people familiar with Montana politics knows about the east-west nature.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of Democrats,
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: liberals,
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  SPEAKER_01: more so in the western part of our state throughout our history,
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  SPEAKER_01: more conservatives in the east.
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  SPEAKER_01: But you also look at some of the maps that are in the book and you see this north-south thing.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Where the High Line,
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  SPEAKER_01: the Golden Triangle,
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  SPEAKER_01: this Northwestern pocket of the state,
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  SPEAKER_01: also very Democratic,
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  SPEAKER_01: whether it was Farmers Union types or blue collar people in timber mills.
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  SPEAKER_01: Going back to your question,
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  SPEAKER_01: there's a lot of our political DNA that goes back to statehood,
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: the New Deal, all that, that carries into just around the turn of the century.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so why now for the second edition?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: What motivated you to take this step now?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: So the first edition came out in 2004.
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  SPEAKER_01: The last election in the first edition was 2002.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: So wildly out of date.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: I had a lot of people say, hey, you should update it.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we've had 20 years of elections.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: One thing One thing that I wanted to do was to go back even to the earlier elections
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: that are in the first edition and expand the narrative and the analysis.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: And there's lots of research tools out there now that I don't have to go into
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: the basement of the Mansfield Library and look through microfiche.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so the ease of research really helped.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: So there's two distinct eras that I feel like have happened since the first edition.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: So almost having some bookends on some of
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was kind of the catalyst
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  SPEAKER_01: behind this second edition is let's expand the narrative, let's add elections.
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  SPEAKER_01: I put the Montana Supreme Court in there that wasn't in the first edition.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's the results of the PSC, results of other statewide races.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Public Service Commission.
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  SPEAKER_01: That was important to me that I add value,
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: not just in updating it,
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: but also going back and providing more context for those earlier elections too.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't recall how the first edition was published,
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  SPEAKER_02: but in this edition,
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  SPEAKER_02: you've partnered with Montana Free Press,
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: which is a new entity since the first edition.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they didn't exist during the first edition and talk about changes to kind of
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: the media landscape since the first edition, just huge.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I've known John Adams a while back when he was at the Great Falls Tribune
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: and also at the Missoula Independent.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I approached him at one point and just say, hey, you've got great online news.
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  SPEAKER_01: How about publishing a book?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: And to his credit, he said, Yeah, sure.
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  SPEAKER_02: So let's pull out a couple themes from the new edition.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: If you had to focus on two or three themes that have emerged in the last 20 years,
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  SPEAKER_02: you talked about the bookends of a certain cycle,
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: but articulate those as themes, if you will.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mentioned the era that went from about 2002 to 2012.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of a mini democratic golden era.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for people that look at where we're at now,
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: which is a firmly red state,
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: just kind of up and down the ticket,
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  SPEAKER_01: there's no major Democrats left in Montana offices.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Montana Democrats can read the book and understand it wasn't too long ago
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: where they were actually...
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  SPEAKER_01: Dominating themselves.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I think learning those lessons
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: about how those people branded themselves differently from the national party and
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: the success that they had in many ways by uniting certain parts of the party
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: that were progressive and moderate to have strength overall on the ticket.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's an important thing for Montana Democrats to hear.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think we can attribute, at least this is my view, That period to an Obama effect.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're talking about John Tester, Steve Bullock, Brian Schweitzer.
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  SPEAKER_02: Those are big personalities that are quite distinct from – I mean,
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: there's certainly some overlap policy-wise,
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: vision-wise with what Obama was offering on a national level,
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: but quite different characters, if you will.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: No, you look at the 2002 race where Max Baucus handily won re-election
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  SPEAKER_01: and Max Baucus was the rising tide that lifted a lot of
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: the Democratic votes whenever he was on there.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: He invested in the party machinery and turnout and that benefited people all
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: the way down the ticket.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then came along Brian Schweitzer,
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: who had his own style, his own brand of what it meant to be a Democrat.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he was successful in the 2004 governor's race.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: John Tester came along 2006, dirt farmer from Big Sandy, rural part of the state.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he was able to win some of the counties that I talked about along the High Line,
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: the Golden Triangle, or at least close the gap.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: When Obama came around the 2008 election, I think he did help in terms of turnout.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think they had like 14 different field offices in Montana where John McCain had zero.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think if I remember right,
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Obama came within two or three points of actually winning Montana.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: The last Democrat to do that was Bill Clinton in 1992,
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  SPEAKER_01: and he was only able to do it by a plurality.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: But then by the 2012 election,
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: and that was Obama's reelection,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: it was actually not a bad year for Democrats,
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: but the writing was on the wall that there was trouble coming.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you look at some of these statewide officials that were incumbents,
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: well-funded, and they were just barely winning.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Fast forward to Yep.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Bullock was able to get reelected in 2016.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of a narrower margin for an incumbent governor.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then John Tester was able to get reelected in 2018.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: But really,
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: ever since 2012,
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: it's been a whittling away to where we're at now,
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: which is there are no statewide or regional Democrats in Montana.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: And do you have a theory as to The primary factors driving that shift in preferences?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can't mistake the fact that we have a nationalization of politics,
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: and that's not a Montana thing.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's national.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: So you see a lot of states going...
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Just one direction really hard, really Republican, really Democratic.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Also, you look at who's moving into the state.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: For a long time there,
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: during that mini Democratic golden era,
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: one of the counties,
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Gallatin County,
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: where we have Bozeman,
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of people coming in from out of state,
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: and it actually changed the makeup of that county.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Used to be a Republican county, became a Democratic county.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: And those margins of victory in Gallatin are oftentimes what delivered
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: the statewide margins of victory for people like Steve Bullock, John Tester.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: But then there were more people that came around COVID.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: In general,
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: they tend to be a little bit more conservative,
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: a little bit more right of center voting for Republicans.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: So some of the migration that's happened in migration that's happened in
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: the last seven, eight years has been more on the Republican side.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: But another factor is this realignment that we're seeing.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd like to point to Cascade County.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Cascade County really hasn't grown even over the last three or four decades.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: But what's happened is it used to be a pretty solidly blue county where many
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: of its county officials were Democrats,
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: its overall legislative delegation, Democratic.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: And since then, it's gone very Republican.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: And one interesting note is that no statewide Democrat has ever won an election
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: since statehood without securing Cascade County.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know you're going to run up the totals in places like Missoula, now Bozeman, Helena, Butte.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: But when you can't win Cascade County, that spells trouble for Democrats.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: We'll be back to my conversation with John Benyon after this short break.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: A New Angle would not be possible without the generous support of
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: the Headwaters Foundation,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: working side by side with Western Montanans to improve the health
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: of our communities.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: And you can't do that sort of work without access to capital and education.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: Two critical catalysts offered by First Security Bank and the University
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: of Montana College of Business.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: Hey folks,
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'd like to call your attention
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: to Climate Smart Missoula's fourth annual Climate Solutions Week,
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: running from September 26th to October 4th.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: This year's theme is Humming Along,
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: and the week offers over 20 free events to learn, create, and connect.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: Check out missoulaclimate.org for more information.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Joe Anderson.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: I am the CEO of Reflex Protect, and you're listening to A New Angle.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to A New Angle.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm speaking with John Bennion about Big Sky Politics.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: How viable do you think an independent candidate is?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: We have a prominent statewide independent candidate in Seth Bodnar for Senate this cycle.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: What do you make of that?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you don't see it too often, right?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a regional congressional race in 2002 that featured an independent.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then the last time a true independent filed was in 1990.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's a portion in my book where I talk about independents and third parties.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: And we have never had an independent win a statewide or major regional office.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: So-called independents where people filed as an independent back in the 40s and 50s
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: for the legislature, but they were really aligned with one of the parties.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really an uphill battle.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: And here's why I say it.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: If there is an independent in a race with both of
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: the major political parties represented,
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: then it's nearly impossible for an independent to win.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you take out the non-dominant political party and put in an independent,
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: it makes it a little bit more interesting.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's still an uphill battle,
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: but I would just say,
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: I guess we're going to find out more about how this goes because it's been
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: a generation almost since we've seen a statewide independent.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about your career a little bit more.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: We glossed over some points here,
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: but you worked in politics for a number of years,
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: a deputy attorney general with Tim Fox.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: You ran yourself for attorney general,
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: so you've tried to sort of put your money where your mouth is,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: if you will, like getting involved.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: Talk about that experience of working in the public sector,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: but also running for office, and would you do it again?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Going back to what I talked about those days of Bill Clinton, George H.W.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Bush, watching them and also working for candidates myself,
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of thought someday I might want to do that.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously not run for president or whatever.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know where I thought myself landing until I worked in the Attorney General's office.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: I worked under Attorney General Tim Fox.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think he's a great human being.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: He was a great boss.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: The mission of the Department of Justice is a very special one.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: I really got to know the people well.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: In Montana, we have term limits.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of eight years, I knew that my boss was going to be up.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be kind of now or never, just from a professional standpoint.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: I had my boss's support.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: I had the time to be able to commit to it.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Family-wise, it made sense.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I threw my hat in the ring.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: I did lose,
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: and I don't regret running because I think I would have always wondered,
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: was I too scared of losing to be able to get in there?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: What are some things about running for office that people might not understand as
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: the challenges?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean,
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: the challenge of driving yourself all around the state and just the energy involved
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: and going to rallies and stuff, I think that's pretty easy for people to grasp.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: But like behind the scenes, what are the challenges that people might not see?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you talk about money and politics.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: The one thing that people should probably understand is when you're running
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: for office,
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: the way that you get your message out there is through social media and
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: through radio or...
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that stuff isn't free.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: That stuff isn't cheap.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you end up having to dial for dollars a long time.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's one of the least fun things about running for office.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: But the truth is we need people.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Politics and policy are not necessarily CNN crossfire.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: You need people who are going to step up that actually want to govern.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Despite the fact that I don't see myself running again,
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: I really try and encourage people,
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: regardless of their ideology, hey,
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: if you're willing to put in the work,
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: if you really want to champion your ideas and represent your constituents,
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: then you should run for politics.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: Are there people you would cite as particularly inspirational exemplars of that type
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: of sensibility right now?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I want to point to people in the book and they've all passed.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so there are people today that represent that.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the things about the book,
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: and I tell this oftentimes to older audiences,
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: is you might know who Mike They might only see a name on a library,
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: a name on a building, or some kind of reference.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I say,
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: it's worth buying the book to give to your kids,
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: to give to your grandkids,
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: to understand this guy,
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Mike Mansfield,
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: who's the longest serving U.S.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Senate majority leader in our country's history during a very tumultuous time,
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: the civil rights era, Vietnam, Watergate.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he had a deep respect for even the freshmen coming into the body.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like,
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: if you were elected by your state,
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give you that respect regardless of these seniority rules.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think there are some great examples.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: We punch above our weight, I like to say, in Montana.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: We've sent some pretty amazing people to DC.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: We've had some great governors and things like that.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so there are some great examples in the book where I feel like people need
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: to learn about them,
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: especially in the younger generations,
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: because they're seeing a lot of bad examples today.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: We haven't talked at all about your day job,
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Executive Director of the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: Just in our remaining moments, what is the foundation?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: Why are you dedicated to its mission?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Dennis and Phyllis Washington, I think a lot of Montanans know them, respect them.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: I have tremendous respect for kind of the companies that they started here,
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: just starting with nothing.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that all kind of took place in Missoula, but then it's grown.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's grown around the state, the Pacific Northwest.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Even up into Canada with shipyards and tugboat, commercial ferry and rail.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: So they've had a tremendous success in the business world and they have translated
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: that into tremendous philanthropy in the state and in those areas that I just talked
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: about.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we do a lot in terms of You know,
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: people with disabilities,
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: at-risk youth,
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: socially and economically disadvantaged people,
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: and then in the areas of education,
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: community service, human services, and arts and culture.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a privilege of a lifetime to be able to be executive director of that kind
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: of philanthropy.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: The person that did it before me, I just want to give him a shout out, Mike Halligan.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: He was a great mentor to me.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: He was a great statesman in Montana politics, and he did it for 22 years.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's a tough act to follow,
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm doing my best to be a slightly more Gen X version of Mike Halligan.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: Very good.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: John, tell us about the last time you changed your mind.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, speak of the foundation, I meet with people all the time.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of, I try and keep an open door because that's what Mike Halligan did.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of times people reach out and they say,
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: hey, I want to visit with you about this project.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: And right then and there,
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: with their little summary,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of times they give you a glimpse of something and you're like,
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that really aligns.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: But that's why we keep an open door and we just say, hey, we want to visit with people.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: If there is an alignment, I try to be honest about that.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I would say on a weekly basis,
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: I meet with somebody where I learn something about Montana,
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: about philanthropy in Montana, and that is something where I enjoy changing my mind.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: The book is Big Sky Politics, Campaigns and Elections in Modern Montana.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: The new edition covers 1945 to 2025.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: John, what a pleasure to get to know you, your work, and tell our listeners about it.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for doing it.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: And thanks for all your contributions to civil discourse and political functionality
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: and all the good things we need more of.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Justin.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening to A New Angle.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: If you like what we do and want to support us directly,
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: please consider a subscription at anewanglepodcast.com.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: A New Angle is recorded at Studio 49, a generous gift from UM alums Michelle and Lauren Hanson.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: Our presenting sponsor is the Headwaters Foundation,
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: working side-by-side with Western Montanans to improve the health
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: of our communities.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: We are also supported by First Security Bank and the University of Montana College
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: of Business, with additional help from CED, Drum Coffee, and Montana Public Radio.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: Keely Larson is our producer.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: John Brownell, Jeff Ament, and John Wicks made our music.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks a lot, and we'll see you next time.