Stumbling as I did on Montana GOP chairman Erik Iverson’s mindless repetition of Sarah Palin’s mind-numbing talking points has led me to consider what Iverson used the canned line for in the first place.
Apparently, Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer gave a speech in July where he seemed to joke about intimidating Republican poll watchers and about holding the vote tally of the Democratic stronghold of Butte, Montana.
He included as an example a detailed description of how he had called Indian tribal authorities two weeks before the election and warned them to be on the lookout for people who would show up at the polls on Election Day to try to discourage people from voting by asking them for identification.
Then Mr. Schweitzer described how the tribal police had closed in on poll watchers who he said had shown up.
“ ‘You can either come with us in the back seat of our car, or you can both get in the front seat of your car, and we’ll lead you off this reservation and if we never see you again, you won’t go to jail,’ ” Mr. Schweitzer said, describing the encounters. Then he paused, and said, “We didn’t lose one single vote.”
The Indian vote, strongly Democratic, was important in Mr. Tester’s victory over Conrad Burns, a Republican incumbent who lost by about 3,500 votes of more than 406,000 cast.
In the speech, Mr. Schweitzer also described the county clerk and recorder in Butte-Silver Bow, Mary M. McMahon, as sounding “nervous as a pregnant nun,” when he called her late in the evening after the polls had closed, but before Butte reported its results.
Mr. Schweitzer briefly told the lawyers about the deep Democratic traditions of Butte, where the American labor movement cut its teeth in organizing mine workers decades ago. When Ms. McMahon came on the phone, he said in the speech, she told him the vote count would be ready in perhaps 15 minutes.
But that was not good enough.
“ ‘I want you to listen, I want you to listen close,’ ” Mr. Schweitzer said he told Ms. McMahon. “ ‘I’ll call you when you’re done counting — now do you understand it?’ ” The lawyers laughed. “She’s from Butte — she understood exactly,” Mr. Schweitzer said.
On Wednesday, Ms. McMahon and Mr. Schweitzer both said that she had refused to take his call that evening, and that she phoned him later with the election results.
I get that Schweitzer is folksy and gutsy and funny. And he seems to be doing a good enough job running Montana, with the press calling him one of the most popular governors in the nation (his ratings have been above 70%). But, clearly, that popularity has gone to the man’s head. I would put uttering such a statement right up there with claiming the fundamentals of the economy are still strong– stupid.
Now, the story about intimidating the Republican poll watchers on the Reservation was, in a “take that!” kind of way, almost amusing. Amusing because we have gotten used to reports of voter intimidation by these same watchers and “vote challengers” (case in point, the Macomb County GOP preparing an assault on voters whose homes were foreclosed on). Still, each party should have the right to observe. And we all want to believe in the right of observers to show up and do a good and honorable job.
As for the story about Schweitzer calling up the county clerk in Butte, it was clearly a ridiculous thing to say, even if you are lying (how often does a lie mitigate the alleged wrongdoing?). Schweitzer himself seems to agree; he now says that Ms. McMahon did not take his call on election night, which is one thing on which he and Ms. McMahon seem to agree.
The Montana GOP would like to see an investigation. Unless they turn up some real evidence, besides the careless, idiotic boasting of an over-confident governor, they may not get one (the Democratic Attorney General has said as much).
Wherever the truth is, as Mr. Iverson put it, none of this reflects well on the man from Montana who appears to have gotten “a little too big for his britches.”
Inform Your Consent 