Today, there’s a story and a couple of editorials about Governor Brian Schweitzer’s speech to a group of trial lawyers where he basically told them how he tampered with the 2006 election that lead his friend, Jon Tester, to a narrow victory.
The first, “Horse sense: Schweitzer speech bizarrely hands issue to Brown, GOP”
“And the advantage is, you know, when you’ve got a governor on your side, whoa!” Schweitzer says in the speech. “You can turn some dials, and we did.”
We may never know just how far Schweitzer turned those “dials” because fellow party member and current Montana Attorney General, Mike McGrath, has refused to investigate. Talk about circling the wagons…the Montana media needs to call McGrath out for his desire to kill the request for an investigation.
Then we had an editorial from the Missoulian called, “Governor’s remarks an insult to state”
Did Schweitzer in fact use his influence in an attempt to sway an election? Or did he just say so to make himself out as a deep pool in a shallow ocean?
Either way, his “joke” insults residents of the state’s seven Indian reservations by suggesting they had to be guarded from Republican poll-watchers. It insults elections officials of Butte-Silver Bow by suggesting they manipulated the release of county votes. And he insults everyone in Montana when he portrays us as backwater naifs easily exploited by a savvy political mind.
No kidding.
Finally, for now, we have the Daily Inter Lake of Kalispell chiming in with their editorial, “Gov let his ego do the talking”
But others are taking his remarks very seriously. Schweitzer told the trial lawyers a story about tribal police officers chasing Republican poll watchers from reservations with trumped up threats of arrest.
First we have Schweitzer contacting the Tribal police to remove Republican poll watchers. Then Schweitzer contacts the election official in Butte during the counting of votes – who knows what happened after that contact. Then he contacts the Associated Press to call the election. Wow!
One thing that is interesting is that a couple of these contacts have been verified, but nobody actually decided to report it – until the speech was found on the internet. One must wonder what else Schweitzer did to win the election for Tester.
Nonetheless, these are all fine pieces of writing about the Governor turning “some dials” for his pal. It’s dirty and cheap politics to say the least.
