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By Rep. Llew Jones
I have knocked on a lot of doors in more than twenty years of doing this. Folks out here will tell you exactly what they think, usually before you get up the second step. That is how it is supposed to work. You show up, you listen, and you earn the vote or you don’t.
This past spring I got a close look at the other way to run a campaign. Outside groups spent more than a million dollars against me in a primary for a state Senate seat, in a district where most of us know each other. Nearly all of it was negative. Much of it traced back to addresses in Maryland and Virginia. Paid door knockers told my neighbors lies about my wife of 45 years. The people who wrote those checks never had to put a name on any of it.
I won, so this is not sour grapes. But I have watched what that kind of campaign does. It gets ugly and personal. It turns neighbors against each other, and it convinces good people that serving on the school board or in the Legislature is not worth what it will do to their families.
In all the doors I have knocked, I have yet to have one constituent tell me they want one more nasty text, one more nasty voicemail, one more attack ad on television or one more dark flyer in the mailbox. More often than not, what they ask me is, “Please make it stop.”
This is not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. Both sides have their dark money, and both sides use it. The people it lands on hardest are the ones who think for themselves and put their conscience and their constituents ahead of the donor line. Step out of line and the mailers show up.
I have done my share of complaining about the people who play the game this way. Complaining will not make it stop. The rules allow it, so it keeps happening, and it will keep happening in both parties until the rules change.
Montana has been here before. In 1912, with the Copper Kings buying elections outright, Montanans went to the ballot and passed the Corrupt Practices Act. It stood for a century, until the U.S. Supreme Court struck it down in 2012. In 2015 I worked with Republicans and Democrats to pass the Disclose Act and put some light back on the money. It helped. The money found a way around it.
That brings me to Initiative 194 on this November’s ballot. It would take corporations, nonprofits and the other paper entities that dark money hides behind out of the business of election spending in Montana. Real people could still give and spend. So could political committees, which have to report where their money comes from.
I will be plain. I-194 is not perfect. Nobody I know has a problem with the Stockgrowers or the Farm Bureau weighing in on an election. We know who they are and who they speak for. Under this measure they would do it through a political committee, and some good organizations think that goes too far. That is a fair argument. It will be tested in court, and the Legislature will have work to do around the edges. I am also working with other legislators on a true source bill for next session, so the money can be followed back to whoever really wrote the check.
But the system we have is badly broken, and I-194 is a real effort to fix it. Montanans do not mind neighbors pooling their money to be heard. What they mind is the flood of out-of-state money that pours in, turns our races into something none of us recognize, and leaves without anybody knowing who paid. If somebody wants to spend a million dollars saying ugly things about a Montanan, they should damn sure have to put their name on it.
When I first went to Helena in 2005, we could still work across party lines, solve a problem and go home. Too much of the job now is spent looking over your shoulder at the next election and the next attack. I would rather have legislators listening to the people who sent them than worrying about who is paying for the next mailer.
One measure will not restore trust in politics. That takes effort over time. But Montana has stood up to powerful interests before, and we have a chance to do it again. I support I-194. It is a good place to start.
Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad
