8 August 2018 — 1605 mdt

Election notes & stand down advisory

Stand down advisory. Flathead Memo will stand down tomorrow and Friday, and possibly over the weekend as well.

Election notes

Ohio’s 12th congressional district. One hundred percent of the precincts have been counted, but as of daybreak approximately 8,400 absentee, military, and provisional, ballots remained to be counted. Republican Balderson leads Democrat O’Connor by 1,754 votes. O’Connor would need to receive more than 60 percent of the uncounted ballots to win by a single vote. That seems unlikely. Trump carried the district by 11 percent, so the outcome does not augur well for Ohio’s Republicans in November.

Kansas governor. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the GOP’s patron saint of voter suppression, and a Brownbackian deciple of supply side economics, a doctrine repeatedly discredited by experience, including Kansas’, has a 190 or so vote lead over the incumbent Republican governor. Several thousand absentee and provisional ballots remain to be counted. The outcome is uncertain, although Kobach has the lead and seems likely to prevail.

The voters of Kansas have a penchant for voting to commit civic suicide by recklessly cutting the budget for public services. They appear to have learned nothing from the damage done by Brownback’s pathologically parsimonious regime.

Montana’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Greg Gianforte held an official hearing, on wildfire and forest management, in Hamilton earlier this week. Only invited witnesses were invited to testify. That’s standard procedure. Nevertheless, he reportedly received an informal earful from detractors inside and outside the hearing. Although the hearing was official, it was also, as everyone knows, an event engineered to help Gianforte’s re-election campaign by presenting him as a U.S. Representative executing his sworn duties.

Meanwhile, his challenger, Democrat Kathleen Williams, announced she would chair a non-partisan private hearing to obtain comments on Montana’s Wilderness Study areas. I’m not as enthused about this as her campaign is.

At Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Montana’s U.S. House seat remains listed as leaning Republican despite the June Gravis poll that reported a six point lead for Williams. I agree with Sabato, but note that if Williams can raise enough money, she might have a chance.

Montana legislature. Montana’s governor, Steve Bullock, is heading east again, probably to pursue his dream of becoming president. Every hour he spends doing that is an hour he could have spent stumping for Democratic candidates for the legislature in Montana. If Republicans control the legislature again, he’s going to be Governor Veto again, and it’s hard to imagine how that would improve his résumé. Bullock also needs to stump the state for I-185.

Initiative I-185. The tobacco industry, which plans to spend millions to defeat this measure, which would raise tobacco taxes to pay for expanded Medicaid, which the initiative would extend, is asking Montana’s supreme court to change the ballot wording to something more to the cancer caucus’ liking. I think I-185 will pass, but the people supporting it had better not take anything for granted, and had better wage a strong campaign relentlessly.