Posted on 10/30/2007 5:43:24 PM PDT by Montana Headlines
State Sen. Roy Brown, R-Billings, said Monday he is a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor in 2008.
He is the first GOP candidate to announce a challenge to Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who has announced a re-election bid next year.
Brown will formally announce his candidacy on Thursday with a six-city fly-about and a 50-towns-in-10-days ground tour beginning Monday.
Elected to the Montana Senate in 2006 after serving four, two-year terms in the Montana House, Brown has held several GOP legislative leadership posts. He said he was "compelled to run because state spending is completely out of control."
The budgets in the past two legislative sessions have increased more than 40 percent, he said.
"If there is a blip in the economy, the taxpayer-funded surpluses will not be there to fund the new spending," he said. "There are automatic escalators written into those spending increases. That means there will be calls for tax increases and history says that does not work."
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Advancing a four-point program, Brown said he will work for long-term real property tax relief; elimination of the business equipment tax now frozen at 3 percent; a return to accountability and integrity in campaign finance and openness in government; and the enactment of responsible state spending.
(Excerpt) Read more at billingsgazette.net ...
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Well, good - to me, that’s just one state east,I’ve heard alot of Montanans complain about the Democrats in office over there - that’s a state that has turned a little blue, but shouldn’t be written off.
Howz his STANCE on the issues?
Sounds like he has run up against the term limit and must seek another job. That seems to be the main motivator for our Republicans out here.
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Well, this is Montana.
So, he is either a “liberal Republican” or a “right-wing crazy” — depending on which extreme ends of the spectrum one comes from.
Truth? He’s conservative: on taxes, on spending, on economic development, on moral issues, the works. The people who are his big supporters are very conservative.
Very solid. We’re lucky to have him running.
Roy Brown sounds like a credible candidate, or at least a respectable one. I wish him well. I think he could make a race of it.
“Sounds like he has run up against the term limit and must seek another job.”
Actually, no. He term-limited out of the House, but is only in his first term as a state Senator, so he could easily have waited to run for the open governor’s seat in 2012, when he would be safely in the middle of his second Senate term.
Obviously, Brown is a serious candidate who wouldn’t run if he didn’t think he had a chance of upending a popular incumbent Governor. Still, it is a long shot, and he seems to be doing this in no small part because he understands that unless the governor has a strong opponent, we will suffer heavy losses in the legislature.
In other words, old-fashioned as it sounds, he is doing it at least in part out of a sense of duty, and taking one for the team.
Yes he is — and he can. We will need to get money into his campaign, of course. One of the good things about his being from Billings is that this is traditionally the heart of Republican fund-raising country in Montana.
We know that while Schweitzer will get plenty of out-of-state money, we can’t expect the national GOP to come up with any money for us in this race.
So, Roy has a lean and hungry look! It’s encouraging; Republicans could even get name recognition again.
Anyone but Brian Swizzler
You just voiced the opinion of probably 40% of the Montana population.
A recent poll had him in the 60’s in approval ratings, but when asked whether he should be re-elected, the number dropped to 57% against a generic Republican opponent.
Roy Brown has high name recognition and is a tireless campaigner who will not be underfunded. Schweitzer won Yellowstone County (Billings) in the last election, but was running against a rather liberal Republican from the western part of the state.
Brown should carry Yellowstone County, and that alone will put him in a very different ball-game.
So I’d estimate that Brown easily is starting at no more than a 55-45 disadvantage.
That’s a winnable race.
Brown needs to win in the Flathead and in Missoula; both large liberal locations.
Actually Flathead tends to vote pretty solidly Republican.
Missoula is a very different matter.
Tough, but winnable.
I would have to see the numbers on that. In the past that may have been so, but the valley has changed. Lots of liberals in whitefish as well as many transplanted libs from lib states.
I assume a lot of trust fund babies making their dollars run longer out there? Just curious about the demographics...
Yes — but also just solid citizen retirees cashing out on their houses on the coasts who can make their retirement dollars last longer.
The more recent influx is more liberal, but Republicans haven’t always done a good enough job of making the party attractive to newcomers, always, either.
Part of the GOP dominance in the 1990’s was fueled by conservatives fleeing the West Coast for Montana. I believe that there are even more who may be on the way.
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