Posted on 10/07/2015 10:20:10 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
BILLINGS, Mont. -- Dan Hutchings was ecstatic — after only six weeks, the official Team Trump 2016 Montana Facebook page had 398 likes.
Donald Trump, the surprise national front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, was doing twice as well as Hutchings’ was led to expect after contacting the “The Donald’s” campaign in September and volunteering to be the first Montana contact for the billionaire celebrity turned dark horse political candidate.
“We’re relatively new on the scene. We’re just starting to grow, and we’re getting 398 supporters?” Hutchings said. “We’re going real fast right now and we’re starting to get overwhelmed.”
Conservative, blue-collar, working-class Montanans are lining up behind Trump, said Hutchings, of Townsend. There also seems to be strong interest from veterans, he said. The one group with thin numbers is establishment Republicans. Team Trump Montana isn’t hearing much from the Montana GOP. Likewise, the party isn’t hearing much from the Trump campaign.
Ask the state Republican office for Trump contact information in Montana, as The Gazette did this week, and you’ll get none. The only known presidential campaign contacts in touch with Montana GOP headquarters are for Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, both of whom tapped Montana Republicans with lots of experience in the party establishment.
Rubio uses Mark Baker, a Helena attorney and one-time legislative director for former Republican U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns. Bush uses former Republican U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg.
Montana GOP Chairman Jeff Essmann cautioned that the party doesn’t endorse candidates in the primary. It wasn’t aware of a Trump Montana campaign, but it wasn’t opposing one, either.
Montana legislators approached by The Gazette could name no state lawmaker who supported Trump.
Former Yellowstone County Republican Chairman Rep. Doug Kary, R-Billings Heights, chuckled when asked in August if he knew of any Trump supporters in the Legislature. He went as far as suggesting that Trump wasn’t even Republican.
Ditto for Sen. Taylor Brown, R-Huntley, who said he knew no one in party politics who supported Trump, then suggested contacting the Tea Party and a few non-GOP types who vote conservatively.
Even Tea Party leader Eric Olsen said he knew of no solid supporters of Trump, although Olsen, the no-holds-barred anti-Obamacare orator of Courthouse Park rallies, admires Trump’s style. Tea Party folk have leaned toward Ted Cruz, the Republican firebrand from Texas, dubbed the “Cruz missile,” who has been courting Tea Party members for some time.
Strong party support hasn't been necessary so far for Trump and other political outsiders, said Joshua Poulette, political science professor at Montana State University Billings. Independent voters nationally now outnumber voters who identify as Republican or Democrat.
That outsiders like Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson hold 50 percent of the support of Republican voters in polls is significant, Poulette said.
If you want Trump supporters, you have to look outside GOP membership. There you’ll find guys like Bill Porta, a Billings real estate broker. He likes what a businessman like Trump brings to the table: confidence.
Porta said Trump is a billionaire capable of running a multitrillion-dollar federal government. The New York real estate mogul had Porta the day Trump descended an escalator in one of his posh properties to announce his campaign.
“As a business owner, if I ran my business the way the government is run, I would be out of business,” Porta said. “It makes a lot of sense to me that one of the biggest businesses in the United States, the government, should be run by someone who is schooled, who has the expertise to run a billion-dollar corporation. That’s what I see in him.”
Kurt Anthony, an owner of Mojo 92.5 FM in Billings, also likes Trump for his business experience and because he has a feeling "The Donald" says what he means.
“The reason I like Trump and the reason I support him, it’s pretty simplistic,” Anthony said. “I suspect if nothing else, this guy will do what he says he’s going to do. I think he’d rather burn in hell than not do what he says he’s going to do.”
Interesting article by town newspaper.
No wonder Rehberg lost a winnable Senate race.
Trump is going to (rightly) have to do in each state GOP what Eisenhower (wrongly) did in some in 1952, and that’s to upend and depose the sitting state party leaders and put in his own people.
Trump is a human pit bull and the establishment must feel a little hunted right now.
Montana is pretty much a machine politics state.
Something which probably accounts for about 50% of his appeal.
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