I Cogitate

Big Sky governor has big dreams

By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
November 18, 2005

CHENEY -- A sky-high dreamer from the Big Sky State, Gov. Brian Schweitzer aims to make Montana government a lobbyist-free zone and to "create the new energy center of the world."

The mint farmer and cattle rancher -- he once exported bull semen -- has already accomplished a near impossible task. He has revived the Democratic Party in an inland-west state snubbed by his party's presidential candidates.

A statewide poll released last week by Montana State UniversityBillings gives Schweitzer an approval rating of 68 percent, compared with 45 percent for President Bush. Schweitzer is getting noticed in nearby states.

The Montana governor whipped off his bolo tie for auction recently at a Spokane fund-raiser for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. It went for $2,500...

...he governor is no fan of the Democratic Leadership Council -- the centrist outfit, once headed by an ambitious Arkansas governor named Bill Clinton, that is populated by Washington, D.C., lobbyists and funded by their corporate overlords.

"Washington, D.C., is a giant cesspool filled with special interests," Schweitzer said. "Unless we change the culture of Washington, D.C., we're not going to change the country."

In Helena, Schweitzer has adopted a policy of not allowing any lobbyist to serve on a state board or commission.

Montana is a state with a strong -- almost ornery -- sense of independence. The attitude has been spawned by a history of rough exploitation.

Railroads lured 19th century homesteaders to land that was too arid for farming. Mining companies left a legacy of polluted streams and, in the town of Libby, workers dying from asbestos-related cancers. Timber multinationals stripped miles of forests from private land.

Montana has gotten its fill of lobbyists, or "manure piled around government," in Schweitzer's words. Lobbyists were behind an energy deregulation bill that allowed Wall Street to strip Montana Power of $2.7 billion in power assets, leaving the company bankrupt and its investors out in the cold...

...The Iraq war has galvanized Schweitzer, who in his youth spent seven years working on irrigation projects in Saudi Arabia.

"It isn't U.S. senators, the secretary of defense or the secretary of energy who go to funerals when bodies come back from Iraq. It's governors," he said. "I recommit myself, at every funeral, to energy independence.

"Unless we do that, governors will be going to funerals for 30 years. Unless energy security is under our control, our communities are not safe."

"I'm a pragmatist. I'd be more than happy to go to Afghanistan and put Osama bin Laden's head on a stick. Why, though, fight an energy war when we have the solution right at hand?"...

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