7 March 2016

Gianforte taps obscure county commissioner as his running mate

Her name is Lesley Robinson, a rancher who sits on the commission of tiny Phillips County (Malta), which of today has 2,559 of Montana’s 634,127 registered voters (0.4 percent). Phillips county is so small it does not seem to have an official website.

Robinson seems an odd choice, especially compared to Billings Mayor Tom Hanel and Republican heavyweights whose names have been mentioned.

Three possible reasons for choosing her come to mind:

1. As a woman, her presence on the ticket will somehow remind voters of the Angela McLean fiasco, encourage Democratic feminists to defect to Gianforte, or innoculate Gianforte against charges that he's bad news for women.


2. She shares some special bond — religious, social, ideological — with Gianforte that makes him more comfortable with her than with any other candidate for lieutenant governor.


3. No one else would join his ticket. I favor this theory.

The Gianforte-Robinson pages should have been ready yesterday and uploaded to his campaign’s website the moment his 1000 MST press conference today ended. But as of 15:34:18 MST Gianforte’s website had not been updated to include Robinson. To me, that suggests sloppy staff work and/or that Robinson was a last minute choice.

Having selected John Walsh and Angela McLean as his lieutenant governors before smartening-up and appointing Mike Cooney, Steve Bullock is in no position to argue that Robinson’s a lightweight unfit to be a heartbeat away from being governor. But others can and will make that case.