The Wednesday Read

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Happy Wednesday, folks! Here are the topics for today’s commentary:

*Election Administration Duties
*Montana Supreme Court
*Football Roundup
*One More Thing

ELECTION ADMINISTRATION DUTIES:

After almost seven hours of public comment on Tuesday, the Cascade County Commission voted 2-1 to remove election duties from the Clerk and Recorder’s office, which is currently held by Sandra Merchant.

The Daily Montanan reported it like this:

Election duties have been removed from Cascade County Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant after months of errors in recent county-run elections, at least two related lawsuits filed, and a federal election looming in 2024.

This was the right thing to do. I applaud County Commissioners Joe Briggs and Jim Larson for their votes and their leadership on this issue.

The funny thing to me was seeing and hearing Republicans attack fellow Republicans during this circus. They are kind of imploding over this little bump in the road.

I was amazed at how many people turned out to give comments and/or watch the circus. This is a good thing.

According to The Electric, the change is effective immediately and commissioners will appoint an election administrator while they post the position and hire the position as a county employee.

Check out the report from The Electric HERE and from the Daily Montanan HERE.

MONTANA SUPREME COURT:

I was happy to hear that current Broadwater County Attorney Cory Swanson last month announced that he is running for Chief Justice of the Montana Supreme Court.

I have known Swanson for over 25 years, and I don’t think you’ll find a person more qualified to be the Chief Justice.

Check out his website HERE.

FOOTBALL ROUNDUP:

It was a tough week for me in the NFL Pigskin Pick contest. I went 5-10. The good news is that this is a new week!

Friday night in the FCS Quarterfinal playoffs, the Montana Grizzlies beat Furman 35-28 in overtime. ESPN reported that about 21,000 attended the Friday night game and that was 83% of capacity. (Source)

This Saturday, North Dakota State travels to Missoula for the semifinals. North Dakota will be a tough test for Montana. Griz fans need to show up in force! The game begins at 2:30 p.m. It will be on ESPN2. (Source)

The other semifinal game has the University of Albany playing South Dakota State. That game is Friday evening at 5:00 p.m. on ESPN2.

The FCS Championship is January 7 in Frisco Texas.

We are already in week 15 of the NFL Season. As I mentioned last week, this time of year the schedule in the NFL gets funky. There are three games this Saturday. They are all on the NFL Network.

My Chiefs play Sunday against the Patriots. This has been a tough year, but we still lead the AFC West and are still in the running for the best record in the AFC. As for the “offsides” penalty against the Chiefs on Sunday when they were playing the Bills, I just wish that Kadarius Toney would have stepped back an inch or so. How can you be that dumb entered my mind, too. That play was historic.

The outburst by Patrick Mahomes on the sidelines was good in my opinion. I was happy to see some emotion in what has been a disappointing season. Years from now, Kansas City sports fans will be comparing Mahomes being pissed off to the KC Royals’ George Brett pine tar incident.

Don’t forget that Bowl season begins on Saturday. (Source)

ONE MORE THING:

One minute you’re young and fun. And the next you’re turning down the stereo in your car so you can see better. – Pinterest


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3 thoughts on “The Wednesday Read”

  1. It was pretty pathetic watching the Republican on Republican war yesterday afternoon, with the extremist right tribe banding together to attack Briggs and Larson as though they were Dems instead of fellow Republicans. Particularly pathetic was the ever predictable Republican Jeremy Trebas threatening legislative action to punish them with yet more top-down-control from Helena, for daring to sideline one of his extremist tribe. The tyrants so many invoked yesterday are truly Trebas and his ilk down in Helena.

    There were some sad moments too, including Grulkowski admitting the commissioners never communicate with each other (maybe they can’t – quorum rules?), and Merchant and one of her staff saying there was no communication between the commission and the C&R office. I don’t recall these sort of problems re: the county government before these two militant far right conspiracists assumed office. It seems the county government has become very dysfunctional with the addition of these two zealots. Can’t really fault Briggs and Larson for finally taking steps to resolve the problems.

    There was also all the crying and finger-pointing about how nobody ever trained poor Merchant on how to do the job she assured us all she was qualified to do when she was campaigning. Which was actually a powerful argument in favor of making this a civil service position with career staff and regular succession. When someone is elected on a partisan basis to an independent office they are pretty much on their own. Does not help when their first move is to carry out a political purge and sideline/clean out existing staff to replace them with political cronies. And is too proud (or ignorant) to ask for help from the state. The Pachyderm Club who elected her obviously failed as far as the transition support other types of candidates get from their campaign staff.

    The whole affair yesterday was in large part six hours of Festivus, airing political and personal grievances of the county covering the past 20 years. Recriminations, finger-pointing, insanity, name-calling, and too often downright nastiness. Chair Grulkowski called it a six hour lynching, which is accurate if one includes the lynching of the current commissioners and past officials that went on.

    But IMO Ms. Merchant and Ms. Grulkowski brought this on themselves by refusing to act as any kind of team players from day one, accept or deal with pretty much any criticism, respond to even routine queries from the public, press, and election stakeholders, reach out for help to the state SOS office, or correct simple problems in the elections office (like the overtly partisan signage which suddenly and miraculously was on the table yesterday). Instead everything was a war with them from day one. They occupy political positions. That requires political skills. They don’t seem to possess those.

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