Page 14 - Flathead Beacon // 2.25.15

14 | FEBRUARY 25, 2015
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WHO’S PULLING THE STRINGS?
As out-of-state interest groups mount a growing front around the 2015 Montana Legislature, both on the ground and within the walls of the statehouse, outside influence is playing into state politics at an unprecedented rate
BY TRISTAN SCOTT
On Feb. 5, when 100 Flat- head Valley residents crowded into a confer- ence room at a Kalispell hotel, the head of the Montana branch of Americans for Prosperity was gearing up to make the same, carbon-copied pitch against Med- icaid expansion that the group has been peddling across the nation.
Instead, the town hall meeting – advertised through a flurry of attack flyers targeting Rep. Frank Garner, R-Kalispell – lurched into a tailspin as residents mostly ignored the anti- Medicaid presentation and stood up in loud defense of the local lawmak- er, questioning why the group had singled him out.
Garner, the former Kalispell po- lice chief and the lone legislator in attendance, had driven four hours from Helena to defend his stance on Medicaid reform, despite not hav-
ing received an invite to the meet- ing, and asked why, if the group’s intentwastoinfluencestatepolicy, had they taken aim at him through a blitz of attack mailers rather than simply ask him to the table.
The reason, explained Zach Lahn, state director for the Montana chapter of Americans for Prosperity (AFP), is that Garner refused to sign the group’s blanket pledge card in opposition to Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, a stunt the group had performed on other Republican law- makers whose views on Medicaid re- form didn’t align with the hard-right faction.
Over the course of the previous week, Lahn and AFP had covered the state organizing similar town hall meetings, advertised through identical mailers, in other legislative districts in which Republican law-