The thought of giving thanks this holiday season seems more unpalatable given our national political dividedness. Yet we’d better work to get along. When most everyone else is busy arguing, only the few succeed.
I’m thankful voters chose Gov. Steve Bullock to serve as a final backstop to the bad legislation that’s surely to flow down from the third floor of the state capitol come January.
After elections, Republican caucuses chose veteran leaders like Speaker of the House Austin Knudsen and President-elect of the Senate Scott Sales to lead the decisively GOP-controlled Legislature next year.
A decade ago, I served in the state House when Sales was speaker of the lower chamber of the Legislature. That’s the session where Sales allowed the breakup of the governor’s proposed state budget from its historically unified approach to a piecemeal plan.
When Sales was last in charge, the 90-day Legislature failed to enact the law that funded public services like education or highway patrol. Sales’ piecemeal funding scheme failed, no Legislature has tried it since.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer swiftly called a special session to extend that Legislature. A group of responsible Republicans promptly helped pass most everything the governor requested, including a $400 per household property tax refund check.
In the last Legislature, Knudsen successfully blocked Bullock’s multi-million dollar infrastructure plan that was funded by both cash and bonds. Knudsen failed to stop the governor’s campaign disclosure law or expanded health insurance for people earning poverty wages.
Sales and Knudsen will do a strong job driving the upcoming Legislature. Hailing from Bozeman and Culbertson, their leadership will bring their regional perspectives to policy.
Neither Sales nor Knudsen own a political track record of compromising on policy. A no-compromise attitude would serve everyone poorly. Bullock is governor through the 2019 Legislature.
Neither Bullock nor Schweitzer was afraid of the veto pen. Schweitzer recently mentioned that he still owns the veto brand, which was registered with the state Department of Livestock, if Bullock needs help with a rambunctious Legislature.
I’m thankful voters in the Columbia Falls area sent Rep. Zac Perry back to Helena to represent their interests. Perry’s 5-point reelection margin is a great signal to the direction the fast-growing community, adjacent to Glacier National Park, is headed.
Columbia Falls has grown and is electing more community-minded leaders at all levels of local government. That’s good news.
Whitefish again sent a Democrat to represent our House district in Helena, now with a 13-point margin at the polls. I’m thankful that Rep.-elect Dave Fern, after decades of local service on school boards, is headed to the capitol.
Perry and Fern, working with Bullock, will give the north end of the Flathead the support that all in western Montana deserve. Everyone deserves to get some stuff done over the next several years.
I trust this upcoming Legislature will be as rambunctiously loud and policy kooky as ever. Perry, Fern and Bullock can offer much calm and needed balance. Democrats likewise chose Rep. Jenny Eck of Helena and Sen. Jon Sesso of Butte to lead the minority party.
I’m thankful that Sen. Jon Tester said he’s seeking reelection. Congress deserves at least one farmer in Washington to help to steer the nation.
Hopefully, Thanksgiving and the holiday season bring us together, as family and as community.
I’m thankful I took the opportunity to visit my distant nephews and brother, along with my parents and family. I’m thankful to be back home in Montana.
I’m thankful that you, the newspaper reader, valued these kinds of words for many years. I appreciate that you take the time to consider another individual’s opinion. Nobody owns all the answers, yet maybe collectively we can move all Montanans forward.