By Gov. Brian Schweitzer

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer

As part of a recent panel discussion on “Fighting the Hostile Takeover in America’s Red States,” at the AFL-CIO building in Washington, D.C., Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer discussed his historic election and how his support for working family issues made it possible for him in 2004 to become the state’s first Democratic governor since 1988.

Below are edited excerpts of Schweitzer’s presentation.

In places like Montana, we don’t get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say, well, off to another day of work in a Red State. We don’t look at the world that way. In fact, in Montana, about 41 percent of the people call themselves Republicans, about 30 percent, Democrat, and the rest are Independents. The Independents decide these elections. I can predict how 85 percent of the people are going to vote in the next election based on their last election. You can too. Politicians do that all the time.

Now, let me tell you the background in Montana. It had been 20 years since we’d elected a Democratic governor. It had been a generation since the Democrats had controlled the House or the Senate. There’s no reason why I should have expected a guy who had never been elected to anything to win this office. In fact, that’s probably that’s why I had a chance even to run because most Democrats just didn’t think this was a winnable race.  We just went to work.

First, we said, you know, we’re not going to take any PAC [political action committee] money. We’re not taking a doggone dime from any political action committee because there’ll be nobody who buys their way to the front of the line. But I also said to the people of Montana, we’re going to change a few things around here. Number one, we’re going to generate our energy from alternative sources, wind power, clean, coal technology. We’re going to generate our energy from bio-diesel and from ethanol. Yeah, Montanans kind of like the sound of that. Then we went out and made a deal with the people of Montana, really made a deal because we shook their hand.

You know, there’s only 920,000 people in Montana, so you can actually meet all the people who are going to vote in this election, even the last 15 percent. You’ve got to work at it, though. They don’t go to the Rotary meeting. They don’t make it to the school board meeting. You’ve got to stand in a lot of lines where there’s a lot of people and shake their hands. You look then in the eye and you ask them, can you support me? 

All right. So, here’s what happened: George Bush got 60 percent. Kerry got 38 percent in Montana. And then they voted for me for governor. And then four out of five of the state-wide elected offices in Montana went to Democrats. We took back the Senate. We took back the House for the first time in a generation.

But you can’t just start celebrating. You’ve got to deliver something. So on the day I was sworn in, the legislature came to town. And in Montana, they meet for 90 days every other year. So, we had to make some progress. In 90 days, we put together the most progressive package in America. We put more money in K–12 education than any time in history. We put more money in higher education than any time in history. We created the best and brightest scholarship program so kids that came from lower middle class families like me would have an opportunity to go to college. In many cases, they’d be the first one in their family to go to college like I was. That gives them hope and opportunity.

We passed these alternative energy bills so Montana will have 15 percent of our electricity from wind power by 2015. We passed an ethanol bill so when we’re making the ethanol in Montana, 10 percent of our gasoline will be ethanol. And we passed a bio-diesel bill so that farmers and ranchers who would like to make their own bio-diesel get targeted tax credits so they can make that bio-diesel.

We said it’s important in Montana that every school child understands and knows the rich cultural history of the people that have lived in Montana for 12,000 years. So unlike every other state in the Union, Montana going first, we have Indian education for all so every child from grade 1 to grade 12 will now know the rich, cultural history of the Crow, the Cheyenne, the Blackfeet, Salish, Kootenai. We have seven Indian nations that were nations in Montana before Montana ever became a state. We added a dollar per pack tax to tobacco­­—a dollar a pack. And then we use that to pay for the children’s health insurance program so that Montana was fully invested in the child health insurance program and we created a health insurance plan. 

Sounds like a pretty progressive agenda, right? A red state? How could something like that happen in a red state and boy they’re going to throw the rascals out. No. Not exactly.  According to the Chamber of Commerce—they poll from time to time every year and in Montana when asked, is Montana on the right track or the wrong track? By a three-to-one margin people say Montana’s on the right track.

We have the lowest unemployment in history and for the first time in history, Montanans by a margin of 40 to 30 say they’re more likely to vote for a Democrat in the state legislature than a Republican in that ruby red state of Montana.

Look, I guess the point here is there aren’t Red and Blue states. There are states where people raise families. There are families where both parents are working. There are families that pray every night that they’ll find some way to be able to buy health insurance. And they also pray that somehow, some way, somebody in their family will be able to go to college. They’re not Red and Blue. These are just families all across America. And Democrats will win elections when they find how to talk to those families.