No I don’t have Rick’s address, I think he still lives in helena. He should be easy enough to find thru the MT GOP, they e-send me political MT news about once a week. Rick did real yeoman’s work in cleaning up the workman’s comp mess that the dems made. That’s what brought him to widespread popularity in MT, esp republican businessmen like my father. Incidentally, my father was one of the actual ELECTORS that voted for Reagan in 1980.
Rick has been out of the loop for quite awhile now. Have no doubt that baucus and his hate machine will hammer Rick’s age and eyesight problems. I did meet a fine young fellow from polson at one of Conrad’s campaign appearances : Bruggeman. He’s but one of many great young republicans that can take on baucus and WIN.
As for madmax, he stressed that he’d be the senior senator on the finance committee when the dems re-took the majority(in the 2002 election in which he trashed Mike Taylor). Well now they have the majority and MT hasn’t seen SQUAT from madmax yet. Talk, yes. Actual RESULTS, NO! Typical liberal.
The election is still 16 months away and even if Rick doesn’t run(or get the GOP nomination)I’m sure he’ll get out there and cheer on our nominee. A lot of old timers still remember Rick and the GOOD he did for MONTANA.
I’m not sure how much you know about the political complexion of Montana, it pretty much follows the national picture : big city dems, suburban/rural reps. To wit, missoula(liberal snake pit)butte, helena and great falls. Billings(biggest city)is also tending dem. Plus the indian reservations of course. Rehberg though is FROM billings(third generation)and so he’ll always carry it.
An anecdote : In the 2000 election for governor, Judy Martz(Marc Roscoe’s VG)was having her election eve party at the warbonnet inn in butte(her hometown). So, took mom down to it for a fun evening. Remember well the seesaw battle over FL. Anyway, in the early going we were running behind in the raw vote totals. Judy and I happened to be walking past each other and I asked her : are we going to lose this one Judy? Oh no she said, that’s just the early MISSOULA returns, the good precincts are still to come. She won by the usual 53% of course...same % as Rick Hill.
The real tragedy of her 4 years was losing Paul Sliter in a DUI accident(her own young advisor was the drunk driver). Paul was a natural shoo-in for governor, one of the nicest guys I ever met. His mother and I were in HS together. He would have TROUNCED BS for governor. We had what amounted to a state funeral here in kalispell for him. A truly great loss for Montana...almost as bad as tester slithering in with 1729 votes out of 250,000 cast; over Conrad. Still grieve over that...
The only thing I could locate online was 33 S Last Chance Gulch St, Helena, MT 59601. But it appears that was his old Congressional office. I don't know whether he still has a business addy or personal one. I try to use the former when writing folks (unless they're totally retired). I wanted to get his autograph, anyhow (I have a nice glossy photo of him from his days in Congress, but it was accidentally sent out to me unsigned).
"Rick did real yeoman’s work in cleaning up the workman’s comp mess that the dems made. That’s what brought him to widespread popularity in MT, esp republican businessmen like my father. Incidentally, my father was one of the actual ELECTORS that voted for Reagan in 1980."
Hey, that's not bad. 1 of only 4 lucky folks in MT (back when it still had its East and West districts !). BTW, your dad's bio is eligible to be listed on this website: http://politicalgraveyard.com/ Although I don't operate it, I have been contributing to it for over 8 1/2 years. It's a bipartisan website whose goal is a complete listing of those involved in running for or holding elective office at the citywide, state, and federal levels (you might check to see if your dad's name is listed on it already).
"Rick has been out of the loop for quite awhile now. Have no doubt that baucus and his hate machine will hammer Rick’s age and eyesight problems."
It would be beyond tasteless and disgusting to exploit his sight problems. The Senate has elected blind people before, including Thomas Gore, one of the first 2 Senators from Oklahoma (a distant cousin of Al's), who served 20 years. As for age, Baucus is 5 years older than Mr. Hill. In fact, as of January 2009, when Baucus is 67, he will have served more years in DC (34) than he was old (32) when he was elected in November 1974 to his old House seat.
"I did meet a fine young fellow from polson at one of Conrad’s campaign appearances : Bruggeman. He’s but one of many great young republicans that can take on baucus and WIN."
My concern is that we really need a name and someone with deep pockets to take out Baucus. Perhaps former Senate GOP leader Bob Keenan. I know the House Majority Leader Lange is going to take the plunge, but he's only been in his job for 6 months. Same for newbie Speaker Scott Sales and Senate GOP leader Corey Stapleton. Perhaps party Chmn Karl Ohs, fmr Sec of State Bob Brown or current SoS Brad Johnson. I leave out Marc Racicot for obvious reasons.
"As for madmax, he stressed that he’d be the senior senator on the finance committee when the dems re-took the majority(in the 2002 election in which he trashed Mike Taylor). Well now they have the majority and MT hasn’t seen SQUAT from madmax yet. Talk, yes. Actual RESULTS, NO! Typical liberal."
No surprise, there.
"I’m not sure how much you know about the political complexion of Montana,"
I've never set foot in your lovely state, but I've studied up enough on it that I'm fairly well-versed.
"it pretty much follows the national picture : big city dems, suburban/rural reps. To wit, missoula(liberal snake pit)"
Missoula strikes me as the Berkeley (or Boulder) of MT. It seemed to jump the shark about the time Dick Shoup (I'm presuming one of, if not the, last GOP Mayor of Missoula prior to entering Congress in '71) lost his House seat to Baucus back in '74 (unusual at the time that year was that the usually GOP East had a rodent Rep. with John Melcher and the Union Rodent Mountain West had GOP'er Shoup).
"butte, helena and great falls. Billings(biggest city)is also tending dem. Plus the indian reservations of course. Rehberg though is FROM billings(third generation)and so he’ll always carry it."
I've written a bit (somewhere in the FR archives) on the unusual dynamics of MT politics. It should be (key word: should) be federally GOP, but they've had chronic problems for years, especially with Senate races. Many people are often shocked to find out that only 2 Republicans have ever won Senate seats since popular elections were instituted in the 1910s, one being Zales Ecton in the 1946 GOP landslide (and that only because of the internecine battle on the Dem side that saw them dump the legendary Burton Wheeler), and he still couldn't hold onto the seat even with Ike at the top of the ticket in '52 (Ecton lost to a certain fella named Mike Mansfield, then a House member).
Not until 42 years later with Conrad Burns shocking John Melcher did we get another. Baucus's seat has NEVER elected a Republican popularly since the legislature did the picking (and that was Joseph Dixon in 1907). The GOP should well point out that a century of one party control of the seat is inexcusable. We've had umpteen heartbreaks in between, with the GOP getting within a single point or two of winning the seats over the years. Ironically, we've had far greater success with the Governorship, controlling it for 44 of the last 86 years (though none of the GOP Govs, except for Joseph Dixon, who had previously served in that Senate seat, have ever successfully made the jump to federal office). It's also been fun explaining to folks about how the rodents were able to audaciously steal the legislature for the '05 session through gerrymandering all because of a byzantine manner with which a special rodent-majority board gets to decide how the lines are drawn. And despite that, we busted the gerrymander, taking back the House last November. Of course, you know all this. ;-)
"An anecdote : In the 2000 election for governor, Judy Martz(Marc Roscoe’s VG)was having her election eve party at the warbonnet inn in butte(her hometown). So, took mom down to it for a fun evening. Remember well the seesaw battle over FL. Anyway, in the early going we were running behind in the raw vote totals. Judy and I happened to be walking past each other and I asked her : are we going to lose this one Judy? Oh no she said, that’s just the early MISSOULA returns, the good precincts are still to come. She won by the usual 53% of course...same % as Rick Hill."
I think you meant Denny Rehberg as Hill retired in 2000. Actually, it was closer than that, both Martz and Rehberg got 51% to O'Keefe-Williams (I didn't know until recently that that termite Pat Williams' wife was such a legislative heavy-hitter... of course, her dad was a former Butte Mayor, all gov't in their blood) and Rehberg's opponent, Schools Chief Nancy Keenan. That was a bit of an uncomfortable nailbiter. Being down here in Nashville, this was where Gore was running his campaign from, so all the freakazoids were downtown on an emotional roller coaster, defiantly screaming he won, then weeping uncontrollably when the media called it for Dubya. I remember the night well, because we had bad thunderstorms rumbling through, drenching the kooks (unusual, since it WAS November).
"The real tragedy of her 4 years was losing Paul Sliter in a DUI accident(her own young advisor was the drunk driver). Paul was a natural shoo-in for governor, one of the nicest guys I ever met. His mother and I were in HS together. He would have TROUNCED BS for governor. We had what amounted to a state funeral here in kalispell for him. A truly great loss for Montana...almost as bad as tester slithering in with 1729 votes out of 250,000 cast; over Conrad. Still grieve over that..."
I always felt badly for Gov. Martz. She seemed like a decent lady and trying to be motherly during that horrible incident, but it just blew up spectacularly in her face and she never recovered from it (and leaving it to the ghastly phony populist twit Schweitzer). I hope you guys are able to dump that jackass next year. As for Sen. Burns, most of us wish he had deferred to Bob Keenan. I can understand it was a personal point of honor for him to defeat the folks slandering his character, but he couldn't have picked a worse year to do it. And Tester is going to be there until (at least) January 2013. And if he ends up like most of his rodent predecessors, he could be there until 2019, 2025, 2031, or 2037, if he ties Baucus's 30 years, when he'd be 81. Ugh. No doubt Schweitzer hopes Baucus bows out before long so he can take his seat.