Month: August 2014

Art Wittich is the MT Sen. Majority Leader. He’s running for the State House. He’s the guy our guru, Rob Natelson, said I should talk to. He says he passed an Article V BBA in 2007, only to have it rescinded later. I was going to ask him to be our sponsor. Matt Monforton talked to him today, and he doesn’t want to try again. The Birchers are just too strong.
So, after feeling so chipper yesterday, I’m worried again. But, in politics, you should always worry.
I’ll be running a political campaign in Montana, from my home in California, without any money to speak of. Against the Montana John Birch Society.
Let’s get it on.
I do feel a wind at my back — out of Ferguson, Missouri. The Democratic Party used to be the party of the working man. But a white workman today sees a party that’s out to get him. The Democrats are willfully dividing this country along racial lines, and the political lines that follow. Through no fault of its own (it doesn’t even have the guts to publicly campaign against affirmative action) the Republican Party is becoming the party for white people.
I don’t expect this to happen overnight. And if the Kentucky House doesn’t flip in November I’m all wrong.
The wave of 2014 may not be the big one.

It’s fun to bullshit people. It’s no fun getting bullshitted. Matt Monforton bullshitted me that the R’s were going to get a majority, but that it might be 51-49 or 55-45.
Bullshit. I looked up the primary election results and it’s clear to me that it will be somewhere between 60-40 to 67-33.
Anyway, I feel a lot better about Montana.
Spent most of the day ramping up Project Montana.
A good day.

I’m going to have to work closely with soon-to-be-former Senate Majority Leader Art Wittich, a Bozeman attorney. He says eight years ago he passed an Article V BBA, which was later rescinded. We didn’t know this. That was how quiescent the movement was back then.
He’s running for the House, and he knows targets — legislators and districts where the dreaded Birchers are holed up. My son Brendan will cold call supervoters in those districts, asking them to ask their legislative candidates to support us. He’ll also call NFIB members in those districts, if we can get the names.
Son Darren Pettyjohn, Chairman of Montanans for a Balanced Budget will be pitching our bill on the four conservative talk radio stations in Montana. His boss, Scott Wolfe, has agreed to pay the bill — a great and generous gesture on his part.
I’ll be interviewed on those four stations (having paid the price of admission).

Spoke with outgoing Senate Majority Leader Art Wittich, who is switching to the House — he says because the Democrat Governor will be on offense, and the House is where to stop him. He says he knows Article V better than any one in the legislature. (Prof. Rob Natelson referred me to him). He didn’t offer to help — he’s skeptical. He says the Birchers will be coming on strong to stop us.
It’s an uphill fight, on foreign ground, for me. If I don’t do it, no one will. We’ve got to have Montana, or this whole thing goes up in smoke. I’ll give it all I’ve got — all I can. I may spend a week or more in Helena, in January, lobbying individual legislators.
In the late 80’s Reagan wrote a letter to a Montana state legislator, asking him to support the same Resolution I’ll be pushing. I’ve asked Lew Uhler to get a copy.
That’s one idea. I’ll come up with others.

I assumed the establishment R’s were with us. They are everywhere else. And the outgoing House Speaker, Lubnau, signed the RSLC pledge. I met Rep. Norine Kasperik in Dallas, and she said the next Speaker is going to be Majority Leader Kermit Brown, a 71 year old Laramie lawyer. There’s a tradition in the Wyoming House that if you’re elected Speaker you retire from the legislature after your two years in the chair. So this is it for Brown.
I called him and he was practically hostile — claimed that balanced budget amendment would hamstring the feds in national emergencies. Turns out, in my mind, that wasn’t his problem. He hates the Tea Party, and he thinks we’re aligned with it.
These two groups of R’s in the Wyoming legislature really hate each other, and we cannot be identified with either side. But the Tea Party people, so far, have enthusiastically embraced us — and we can’t spurn their embrace. This is tricky. Tomorrow I’m calling NFIB’s Wyoming lobbyist, Tony Gagliardi, to help me figure this out.
Nothing’s easy.