Graybill Campaigns in Glasgow for AG Nom

Raph Graybill has never held public office but that has not stopped him from seeking the Democratic nomination for Montana’s Attorney General seat and to be the “independent watch dog” for Montana.

Most recently, Graybill has worked as Governor Bullock’s Chief Legal Counsel in Helena effectively championing issues for the governor’s office in both state and federal court. One such case Graybill cited as pivotal in his decision to run for AG, was a case he took to the Supreme Court in Montana involving a ranching family that was using the Habitat Montana public access program to subsidize and maintain their family farm. As Graybill tells it, the Attorney General’s office penned an opinion that effectively gutted the program and eliminated the subsidies. Since the AG’s office had no intention of backing the law, Gov. Bullock tapped Graybill to defend the law in court and won.

“I remember after we won that case,” said Graybill. “Thinking about our attorney general, someone whose job it is to fight for us—for the people of Montana—had done the opposite here and really let us down… That was the moment I knew we needed someone different in this office.” Graybill said it weighed heavily in his decision to run for the post and refocus the position on advocating for Montanans.

In other cases, Graybill cited examples of taking on the federal government—namely the IRS on the issue of dark money in elections—and advocating in court via amicus briefs to defeat a Virginia-led effort to divert public school finances to private educations. He commented that both were indicative of the type of advocacy for the people of Montana he felt needed to be brought back into the justice department.

Other key areas Graybill hopes to take a lead in the AG’s office are in both health care costs and anti-trust laws. On the topic of health care costs, he focused mostly on prescription drug price fixing, which he points out the attorney general can take the lead in doing something about.

“Right now, there are investigations led by other states, not Montana, into how generic drug companies are fixing prices on generic drugs and making our copays go up and making us pay more. That’s already illegal now in the state of Montana. There is no reason we should be the 39th or 40th state joining someone else’s case, we should be in the lead on that and we can.”

On the issues of anti-trust laws, Graybill pointed out that the federal government has approved merger after merger of some of the “biggest and most powerful companies in the world.” He added that when these companies merge, they are not doing it to reduce prices or improve services but to make more money. “And if the federal government isn’t going to be a watchdog for us when it comes to fair competition laws, fair markets, preventing economic collusion then that’s going to be up to states’ attorneys general and historically it has been.”

In response to a question about current AG Fox’s support of Keystone XL in federal court, Graybill pointed out that the permitting process and the merits of that are handled by the state Department of Environmental Quality. On the public safety side of things, he pointed out that the DOJ could take the lead—and he believed they were—in coordinating several law enforcement efforts to plan for the pipeline. Specifically surrounding not only the protests but the increase in law enforcement services from the 6,000 people moving to rural Montana to build the pipe.

“Obviously, the right to protest is a core first amendment right and you have to protect that right,” stated Graybill. “I’m more concerned about what does it meant to have 6,000 workers come into rural Montana—not just for law enforcement but for infrastructure, emergency services, fire—I think some really good work led by the state DES is going on right now to make sure we have a lot of those questions answered.”

Graybill shifted the focus of the interview from Keystone to incarceration and substance abuse after being prompted by crime stats and inflammatory statements made by AG candidates in the Republican race.

“Montana has undergone a serious meth crisis before,” said Graybill, before adding, “I think we learned that just arguing to incarcerate everybody—more prisons, more jail time for everyone—just did not work. Particularly, when it comes to people who are caught up in a cycle of substance use.”

He went on to say that if the answer proposed is to just increase jail time for users then, “you’re not going to incarcerate your way out of that crisis.” He added that the state needs a whole community approach that takes prevention seriously, in the forms of treatment and drug courts, but that also stays tough on traffickers for pedaling the drugs across Montana. “But anyone who tells you that you’re going to incarcerate your way out of the meth crisis in Montana is ignoring history and is ignoring the evidence and is ignoring science.”

In response to a question regarding Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Graybill said that it is a “huge priority of mine” that he thinks should lead to an inquiry into why it took so long to become a focus for law enforcement and answer the question of, “why now, thirty lives in, are we just starting to talk about this?”

He said that DOJ could take the immediate step of promoting the Division of Criminal Investigation to be available immediately whenever any law enforcement agency—to include tribal agencies—calls to ask for DOJ assistance in a missing person or murder case. He called it the immediate fix.

“We kid ourselves though, if we think that immediate fixes are everything and that is going to solve the broader issues implicated here. I think that we—and I don’t have all the answers—but I think that we have to have a serious, candid and probably challenging conversation about programs for youth; about mental health, particularly in Native communities; about substance abuse; [and] about economic development. There are broader issues here that, if we are not honest about, band-aid fixes are not going to solve this crisis.”

Graybill pushed back on the notion that socio-economic conditions in Native communities were the root cause of the crisis. Instead he said the root cause was the, “history of colonialism in America, I mean, that’s the root cause. And it is how society has systematically mistreated Native Americans for centuries in Montana. I mean, we have to come face to face with that history in any policy relationship.”

Graybill rounded off his interview by arguing for his view of the AG’s office. Graybill believes that the criminal justice role of the DOJ is hugely important, but that he pushes back on that notion as “often too narrow.”

“I think that if you go back to what the framers of our [Montana] Constitution had in mind when they said we should have an independently elected attorney general… they saw this job as a real counter-balance to the impact of concentrated power, the counter-balance to government power, the counter-balance to private economic power, and I think the attorney general, at the job's best, works as that independent watch dog.”

Graybill is running against Montana Representative for District 94, Kimberly Dudik and bankruptcy attorney James Cossitt for the Democratic nomination. The primary will be June 2, 2020, and the general election will be Nov. 3, 2020.