24 September 2022 — 1852 mdt
County commissioner candidate Jack Fallon
gives Flathead voters a second bite at the apple
By James Conner
Primary election voters rarely get a second chance to vote for a defeated candidate, but Jack Fallon, who lost the recounted Republican primary for Flathead county commissioner to incumbent Pam Holmquist by 42 votes, is giving them one. He’s running for commissioner as a write-in candidate, having filed the paperwork in early September after dithering all summer whether to do so.
He faces daunting, but not impossible, odds against winning. After reviewing his biography, his platform, and why he believes the voters should fire Holmquist, this post looks at those odds and how me might overcome them.
Fallon — from Boston to Kalispell via Missouri and Idaho
Fallon, 68, who graciously spent an hour on the telephone with me last Saturday, was born in Boston, where he earned his high school diploma. He earned his baccalaureate in forestry from the University of Missouri at Columbia (the first public university west of the Mississippi) after studying finance for more than a year.
He leveraged that degree into a job with Plum Creek Timber, in St. Maries, Idaho, where he served on the city council. When a shift in corporate policy squeezed him out of that position, he moved to the Flathead, settling in Evergreen, which is adjacent to eastern Kalispell. He became a successful financial advisor, and continued involving himself in his community.
Community infrastructure. In 1987, he was elected to Evergreen’s water and sewer board. In 2007 he was elected a trustee of the Evergreen Fire District.
School board trustee. From 1996 to 2002, he served on the District 5 school board.Four years later, he was elected to School District 5’s board again.
Sports officiating. Although he no longer referees soccer following a hip replacement, he still officiates hockey games (skating is a lot easier on the joints than running).
Firefighter. His Red Card and CPR certification are current. He still works as a fighter of forest fires, most recently serving on the Lemonade Fire west of Kalispell that smoked-up the Flathead in August.
Fallon married Maryruth in 1979. They have three children and an unstated number of grandchildren.
He made a remarkable recovery from a heart attack suffered in 2021.
Fallon’s 3-plank platform
In his own words from his campaign’s website (fallonforflathead.com):
Pipes. Adequate infrastructure to accommodate growth and maintain a clean water supply is critical to preserving Montana’s Last Best Place.
Plows. We need to get back to the basics and stop the reckless spending of taxpayer dollars and return our focus to plowing roads and fixing potholes.
Public Safety. By prioritizing pet projects over public safety, the Commission has defunded law enforcement. Tax dollars should be invested in more Sheriff’s deputies, not buildings.
Why Fallon believes Holmquist must go. In a nutshell, he told me, it’s because he thinks she’s unduly influenced by engineer Jeff Larson, and his wife Ardis (a member of the county’s health board) and surveyor, and occasional Libertarian candidate for federal office, Rick Breckenridge. Fallon is not the first Flathead resident to express these concerns.
Everyone who talks to Fallon quickly realizes he will be his own man as county commissioner. That’s how he carries himself. That’s the prime takeaway — the only legitimate takeaway — from his three decades of community service in the Flathead. He listens to people, he˚s open to advice, open to fact and argument, but he’s not a rubber stamp for developers. His test: what consistent with our values produces the greatest good for the greatest number while providing the greatest help to those who need it most. Don’t vote for him if you want another puppet on the commission.
Why winning a write-in campaign will be hard
None of the candidates for the Republican nomination for county commissioner received anywhere near a majority of the vote. Holmquist won with a 35.4 percent plurality. Approximately two of three primary voters opposed returning their party’s two-term incumbent commissioner to office. She probably would have lost a ranked choice election or a runoff between herself and Fallon.
But Fallon only received 35.2 percent of the votes. Therefore, approximately two of three primary voters opposed nominating him. In a ranked choice election, would he have received enough second place votes to win? Possibly, but we’ll never know.
What we do know with reasonable certainty is that approximately 3,000 Democrats, for whom there was not a Democratic candidate on the ballot, voted in the Republican primary (see my 11 July post for the details). Those voters will write-in his name, provided they know he’s a write-in candidate and know how to cast a write-in vote that counts.
To win, Fallon must hold the Republicans and Democrats who voted for him in the primary. He must win close to 100 percent of the votes that Democrats will cast. He also must win the Republican votes that were cast for Friess and Parce, and probably get a few hundred Holmquist voters to change their minds and use their second chance to vote for him. That’s a tall order. And there’s not much time to fill it. Absentee ballots will be mailed starting 11 October.
Between now and then, Fallon must:
- Make all voters aware they can cast a write-in vote for him.
- Persuade virtually everyone who did not vote for Holmquist in the primary to vote for him.
- Teach voters how to cast a valid write-in vote (blacken the oval by the write-in line, then write Jack Fallon on the line).
There’s not time for him to knock on all the doors. He has but an ad hoc organization. His word-of-mouth campaign is active, but it won’t be enough. Winning requires sending to every registered voter his “why you should vote for me” case and his “here’s how to cast a valid write-in vote for me” instructions, and providing the same information via television, double-truck newspaper advertisements, and the internet.
That will be expensive. He hasn’t time to raise that amount of money himself. But a pot of money that big could be raised overnight by the Flathead First political action committee that raised almost $100,000 to oppose Holmquist and support, successfully, moderate Republicans in the primary.
I’m voting for Fallon. I urge you to do the same, and to help his campaign if you can by donating dollars and shoe leather to it.