Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913

Considering Rob Quist:

Forget the Party Lines

Today I visited Pass Creek School, a one-room schoolhouse north of Bozeman with eight kids. We talked about Montana artists and did an art project together. Most of them drew pictures of horses, or of moving cows, or their 4-H pigs. They were smart and polite and well-spoken.

For work, I visit all kinds of schools. I’ve visited a middle school with 500 kids in Bozeman and a schoolhouse with six kids in Yaak. I’ve been to Hutterite colonies and St. Labre Indian Catholic School. My favorite, though, are the one-room country schools. The kids are familiar. Even though I went to Glasgow schools, those one-room schoolhouses feel like home.

We were lucky in Glasgow. We had all the land and freedom you could ask for, but the Amtrak allowed access to cities. I rode it to Chicago, Seattle and Milwaukee before graduating high school. Our airport was always a key factor in getting my large family together for holidays.

The median income for Valley County, according to a five-year survey by the Census Bureau, is $49,141. Twelve percent of the population lives under the poverty line. Farmers and ranchers depend on government subsidies to make ends meet and many families depend on Healthy Montana Kids for healthcare. This is a description of a normal, rural Montana community – in fact, our income is a little higher and our poverty a little lower than the state average. We know what we need to survive, we know what our town needs to survive, and we do what it takes. The people in Valley County are dependable, honest and generous.

These things – Healthy Montana Kids, our airport, Amtrak, even my job where I teach rural kids about ideas and cultures they might not be otherwise exposed to – are all, in part, government funded.

Rob Quist is a man who understands what it means to be Montanan. He understands the struggles of the average Montanan because he has lived it. Born and raised on a ranch in Cut Bank, Quist went to the University of Montana. He raised a family in Montana and currently lives in Kalispell. He has been an active advocate for the state of Montana and served on the Montana Arts Council. These simple actions show values: a pride in our state and prioritizing a celebration of that state through art.

If you Google Rob Quist, a column of paid ads pile onto the top of the screen. One, a bogus “Voter Guide,” focuses on the negative traits of Democratic nominees of the current special elections. Two more are directly anti-Quist headlines, another is a “quiz,” designed to trick you into realizing he’s a fraud. Only one reads, “Rob Quist for Congress.”

Negative ads mean fairly little. They only tell me that someone has extra money to throw at the campaign. Quist, being a normal Montanan, doesn’t have cash like that, and he’s not being funded extravagantly by the DNC either.

Right now American politics are splintered. Legislation is stalled because the ruling party is split. Trump’s voting base is questioning his actions. Maybe they aren’t wishing they’d voted differently, but many do wish the outcome made them feel more comfortable.

Though he is running as a Democrat, Quist turned down the head of the DNC’s offer to tour Montana with him. Both of the traditional American parties are changing dramatically before our eyes, and in this time of change we have our chance to choose something new.

We can forget the outdated party lines and choose someone who will represent us in the fight to keep public lands public, so that my kids can have the same freedoms that I did. We can choose someone who will fight for a worthy replacement of The Affordable Care Act. We can choose someone with real incentive to represent Montana.

 

Reader Comments(0)

 
 
Rendered 03/29/2024 01:59