Once again during the congressional recess Montana Sen. Steve Daines chose to duck face-to-face meetings with his Montana constituents (you know, the people who employ him). Daines instead holds “telephone town halls,” which are a cop-out where he doesn’t have to look fellow Montanans in the eye and answer questions. Questions like: Will he take away a constituent’s medical coverage for pre-existing conditions, or deny access for women’s healthcare? Whether or not he will vote to privatize Medicare and/or Social Security? Will he vote to give your tax money to private schools? Does he believe in science and where does he stand on climate change? What about opening up federal land to unregulated exploitation? (Your land and my land.) Feel free to come up with your own questions.
Recently Steve touted the quick approval of Neil Gorsuch for Supreme Court Justice. Do Montanans know that Gorsuch was promoted by a $10 million ad campaign funded by the Judicial Crisis Network, a 501(c)4 dark money group? So where is Steve to answer the question of where he stands on “Citizens United” and where he thinks Gorsuch stands after being the beneficiary of dark money. Oh wait, Daines has been nowhere to be found to ask (or answer) these and other questions. (Note: He has been available for various photo-ops and campaign appearances, most recently with Donald Trump, Jr. and Greg Gianforte.)
Daines, and now Gianforte imply that they are the arbiters of Donald Trump’s philosophy and ideology. We must emphatically point out that Steve Daines was elected to represent all the people of Montana and if he can’t bring himself to meet with us in person maybe he should be looking for another line of work.
Since Daines has been a no-show, the next best thing is to ask the above questions to Gianforte in a public forum and also ask if he can please get “phone it in” Steve to stop hiding behind a telephone.
Jack Thomson Lakeside