Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

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 He says eight years ago he passed an Article V BBA, which was later rescinded.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.

No it doesn’t. Damn few things do. Term Limits through Article V is a no-brainer, but it still has to be sold.
I may have made a couple sales in Dallas, though I hoped for more. It’s a start. Rep. Wes Keller from Alaska was one.
And at a bar at the Anatole I ran into Don Huffines, his wife, and one or two of his sons. I found out later that he’s a very successful Dallas real estate developer.
He told me he just beat a twenty year incumbent in a State Senate primary. I asked him how much he spent, and he said his opponent spent $5 million — he spent about half that. I asked him how much he’ll make (his only opposition in the general is a Libertarian) — and one of his sons said about $700 a month. There are 31 Texas State Senators, each representing around 900,000 people.
We kind of hit it off, and I made the pitch for an Article V Term Limits amendment. My hunch is that he’ll do it — it turns out term limits is one of the things he ran on. I sent him a follow up email, and we’ll see.
So before I took off, I said, “Let me tell you something. When I got elected to the State Senate in Alaska, people said, ‘Don’t rock the boat’
“Bullshit.
“Rock the boat.”
I like this guy.

Looking good. Talked to House candidate Phil Regeski, and learned a lot. I knew there was a pretty bitter Tea Party vs. Establishment fight going on within the Republicans in the legislature. But it won’t hurt us, because both sides support us. This is great news, since there are so many Republicans in the legislature (Phil told me there were 12 D’s, total, House and Senate) that we can afford to lose some Birch/Eagle votes, as long as the main Tea Party type insurrectionists are with us. And they are.
North Dakota looks greased, so the one state I’ve got to concentrate on, and win, is Montana.
I can do that.