If you are losing count of the number of folks who are lining up to run for Montana’s open House seat in 2012, you are not alone.

It looks like there are five now after State Sen. Kim Gillan of Billings announced that she was running on Tuesday. She joins Democrats State Rep. Franke Wilmer of Bozeman and Dave Strohmaier of Missoula.

On the Republican side, we have 402nd  generation Montanan Steve Daines (just joking, I think Daines claims he is only a 5th generation Montanan).  Folks are now saying they think Daines will stick to the U.S. House race (he was running for U.S. Senate).  And we have the GOP candidate that nobody wants to be associated with, John Abarr, who reports say once worked as a Ku Klux Klan organizer and is auditing the nights (or knights) at local hotel in Great Falls (sorry, that was a night auditor and not auditor of the nights or knights).

Since the Democrats have folks from Bozeman, Billings, and Missoula running, it would be nice if they would get candidates from Great Falls, Helena, Butte and Kalispell to make it a true free-for-all.

Two of the Democrats are women (Gillan and Wilmer)– which is refreshing.  The Democrats claim that Republicans are anti-women anyway and since they don’t have a woman running for the At-Large Montana House seat, this gives that claim some traction.  Also, we know that if either of these women is elected, “When It Comes to Scandal, Girls Won’t Be Boys” at least that is according to the New York Times.

But something interesting happened yesterday with the announcement of the Kim Gillan of Billings; the Montana GOP noticed and sent out a “Kim Gillan Fact Sheet.”

At least one of their friendly GOP-associated blogs noticed and “used” the GOP Fact Sheet to write their post.  Some GOP folks who I am still friends with noticed.  They made some remarks about where she was born and her higher education (neither which was on the sacred ground here in Montana).

So I thought, “Oh my – what is it about her that garnered all that attention?” Maybe the Montana GOP did “issue something” when the other Democratic candidates announced and I missed it.  If so, forgetaboutthiscolumn.

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