Here’s the “nut graf”:
Gianforte’s six-point victory last summer came partly because much of Montana’s vote had already been cast via early voting when he attacked Jacobs.
Let’s hope the voters in this district know what kind of monster they are voting for this time. Another crypto-Nazi who believes a free press is the enemy of the people.
People need to keep in mind that Montana’s Governor is Steve Bullock, who was re-elected to his second term in 2016.
He’s a Democrat.
His opponent in 2016? Greg Gianforte.
In 2016, Bullock got 255,933 votes. Gianforte got 236,115.
In the special election in May, 2017, Gianforte got 189,473 votes, a falloff of almost 20%.
The problem is that the Dem candidate Rob Quist got only 166,483, a falloff of 35% from Bullock’s total just six months earlier.
89,450 Montanans who took the trouble to vote for Steve Bullock against Greg Gianforte in November of 2016—plainly, they didn’t like Gianforte—couldn’t be bothered to perform the same heroic task just six months later, even though it meant Gianforte was going to be their representative. The guy they just voted against.
And before some knucklehead starts blabbering about Dems needing to run fewer neoliberal shills who are in the pocket of Wall Street argle bargle blah blah blah, Rob Quist is one of the few Democrats that Bernie Sanders has campaigned personally for, in the location where the campaign is taking place. So much for that.
It’s turnout in non-Presidential elections that is the Democratic Party’s primary problem. Yes, voter suppression is a big issue in a number of states, but it wasn’t in Montana in 2017. Yes, Quist was a non-traditional guy and wasn’t the ideal candidate, but we’re talking Greg Gianforte here, the ginormous asshole who was just rejected by the same electorate.
Fundraising off of an arrogant bragging about his “beating” others? It’s come to this???
That’s real helpful. As a Montanan who works for Democrats and who has run as a Democratic candidate, your comment strikes me as both ignorant and bigoted. On the other hand, I hope it reflects some irrational abiding hatred of a state I love and will keep you from ever visiting here.
Leftist media like the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Bunch of big city communists, right?
Don’t jump to too many conclusions. here. As BluestateDon noted, the difference in the general and the special election was stark. Montana is a real set of contradictions to itself, politically. Having been born and raised there, and my father made his living in advertising (specifically political advertising), I had a front row seat to a lot of the oddities in the 70s and 80s that continue today.
Democrats Mike Mansfield and Max Baucus,between them, held one of the two Senate seats for the state from 1952 through 2013. Given Montana has had only 1 representative in the House for most of that time, i.e. the same statewide electorate as the Senate seats, its conspicuously odd that the house seat has been dominated by Republicans. Democrats have controlled the Governor’s Mansion the last 13 years, and will for another 3.
Montana politics is personal, not party oriented. Jon Tester, like Max Baucus, would hardly be described as “liberal” by anyone outside of the mountain west. In fact, Baucus was one of the obstacles to single payer when the ACA was created. But, both have clearly resonated with their constituents. In a state of right around 1 million people, it can be more personal. I wouldn’t worry about Tester’s re-election, particularly given the R’s haven’t found a decent candidate to run against him yet.
Though he barely beat Gianforte in the general, Governor Steve Bullock is a Democrat.
Jeeze, I hate articles like this. Next thing you’re going to tell me is people who get drunk just act like a drunk version of themselves instead of like a totally different and new person who bears no responsibility for what they did while they were drunk. I mean, do we look like morans or what?
And before some knucklehead starts blabbering about Dems needing to run fewer neoliberal shills who are in the pocket of Wall Street argle bargle blah blah blah, Rob Quist is one of the few Democrats that Bernie Sanders has campaigned personally for, in the location where the campaign is taking place. So much for that.
Ahh, the condescending know-it-all attitude and honey-thick smugness, using the swiss cheese argument, with more holes than Trump’s Wall.
Let’s see how they lined up before you blame Sanders:
Republican Greg Gianforte, 55, multi-billionaire who co-founded a Bozeman software firm in the mid-1990s and sold the company for $1.8 billion in 2012, reported 2016 income ranging from $2.3 million to $15.7 million – and assets valued between $65 million and $315 million.
Rob Quist, 70, is a co-founder of the Mission Mountain Wood Band in the early 1970s and a member of his own band, Great Northern, has made his living as a musician and songwriter. Last month, it was reported that Quist incurred about $27,000 in unpaid debt and property taxes the past decade, which he said stemmed from financial problems when he had high medical costs related to a botched gall-bladder surgery in 1996. Quist said he has $275,000 to $565,000 in liabilities, in the form of a mortgage on his home, a second mortgage and a line of credit – and no other assets.
Quist ran on legalizing cannabis, renewable energy, universal HC, a national gun registry, and higher taxes on the wealthy, in a blood red state of one million which Trump won by 20 points.
Election Results:
Gianfornte Rep 189,473 50.1%
Quist Dem 166,483 44.1%
Wicks Lib 21,509 5.7%
Populism is alive and well in Montana. And so is Sanders.
Bolsheviks, I’m tellin’ ya! Fuckin’ Bolsheviks!
“That’s an interesting turn of phrase for Gianforte, who won his race last year even after tackling Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs, breaking his glasses in the process, after Jacobs pressed him on his stance on the GOP’s Obamacare repeal plan.”
It was a chokeslam (or a choke bomb).
Anyhow, I miss Cowboy Johnny Mantell analysis and seeing how Gianforte didn’t learn his lesson…
Or, as the career mentor of the less celebrated White House employee to lose his job last week over wife beating would call them…
Excellent points, beautifully and accurately stated.
Serious question: did this asshole explicitly and repeatedly condemn Moore and Porter and the Nazi guy? If he hasn’t, he can be taken to support them. Therefore run ads saying as much, with graphic images and a trigger warning.
“If you think that the Holocaust is fake news and that preying on children and violence against women is acceptable, vote Greg Gianforte. If you think they’re unacceptable, vote [D].”
Take. The. Fucking. Gloves. Off.
This is why you press charges when you are assaulted.
And he should have been prosecuted also for lying to the police about the incident.
This is all you need to know about this degenerate millionare scum is this:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2017/05/26/gianforte-retirement-not-bible/
Makes you wonder why this filth redact their Bibles to remove their “camel through the eye of a needle” passage.
Should be in jail, not congress…which arguably could have a higher percentage of criminals…
Bully, braggart, pushy, stupid and a liar. Trump ilk.
We have 2 very good alpha male candidates running in the Democratic primary for that MT-AL seat. They’re both worlds better than the hapless Rob Quist. Gianforte can be beat. We’re gonna beat that muthaf***er in November.
So in other words, you’re confirming exactly what I said—that Rob Quist isn’t a neoliberal shill, and Greg Gianforte is a jackass.
One of the points of my comment which you predictably ignored is that Montana isn’t so crazily red that it can’t elect Democrats. And Quist did reasonably well for somebody with no previous political experience, little name recognition outside of musical circles, very little money, and personal financial issues. The fact that you’re disingenuously implying that there’s no consistent complaint from the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party that Democrats lose only because they’re not progressive enough doesn’t wish away that fact.
And the ultimate point of my comment of course went completely over your head, and it’s a point that also applies to electoral history over the past decade in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and just about every other location where elections are held in non-Presidential years: Democratic voters are happy to turn out in good numbers in years divisible by four, but upwards of 40% of them can’t be bothered to show up just two years later, regardless of the particular political orientation of the Democrat running and even the active support of Bernie Sanders doesn’t seem to change that unfortunate pattern. I was fervently hoping that Sanders’s active campaigning for Quist would be enough to turn the tide, because the last thing we need is another gigantic rightwing science-denying asshole billionaire like Gianforte in Congress.
The one good thing to have developed politically since the election is that there are obvious signs that Democratic voters have finally gotten it through their heads that there is no substitute for voting in off-year elections. And if you’re wondering, I strongly believe that Barack Obama, Rahm Emmanuel, Tim Kaine, Debbie Waste of Space Schultz, and the rest of the maladroit clowns running the DNC from 2010 through 2016 all bear huge responsibility for the absolute cratering of the Democratic Party at the state level across the country.