OK, if you’re running for Congress and you don’t even have the vaguest of a position on Iraq or illegal immigration, it’s a little hard to take your candidacy seriously. That’s the approach that is coming from the Amanda Curtis (D-MT) senate campaign in Montana, even though Curtis is a state representative who has already served in the legislature. Curtis is claiming that she is simply a math teacher.
I imagine this is not the unapologetic openness The Missoula Independent was hoping for in their latest issue.
KGVO radio’s Jon King has this: Amanda Curtis Gives First Public Campaign Speech, Focuses on Education
Follow up questions on her previous hesitance to comment on issues like immigration and the situation in Iraq were met with the statement “you have to understand that I’m a high school math teacher and I’ve been on the campaign trail for eleven days.” Curtis said she was travelling Montana to find out what the public thinks about issues. When asked what other topics she planned on covering in the near future, Curtis said “you’ll have to wait and see.”
After the speech, Curtis was asked a number of other questions, including a few from Montana Public Radio about her familial connections to the Industrial Workers of the World union. Reporter Edward O’Brien quoted the IWW Preamble noting that the phrases “take possession of the means of production” and “abolish the wage system” sounded like “contemporary communism.”
Curtis did not deny connections to IWW or that it had a somewhat “communist” message.
The repeated dodging of questions on keys issues must come to the bewilderment of The Missoula Independent which earlier this week printed this column: Curtis provides Dems a rare chance to avoid pandering
For the next nine weeks, Curtis gets a statewide platform with virtually no incentive to pander. She can shape discourse in the state of Montana, and she is freed from the pressure to win. The Democratic Party and candidate Curtis have a chance to put ideas in the newspapers and in our heads with little concession to what we might want to hear. So will they take it?
After she was announced as Walsh’s replacement, the Washington Post introduced her as “a gun control-supporting vlogger.” While in the legislature, Curtis made a series of videos documenting each day of the 2013 session, some of which contained irony and/or her candid opinions of other representatives’ arguments.
The future between now and November looks like a crisis, but it is also an opportunity. The state party should seize it. It should follow Curtis’s lead and start saying what it really thinks.
Comments
Mel in Whitehall
Friday, August 29, 2014 9:00 PM
Are WE being played here? Someone is “named” to run as a Dem for one of our 2 US SENATE seats — Does that party not feel that WE, the People, of Montana deserve to know/hear what their POSITION is on such current and pressing events? The Candidate’s position can be one thing, while the party line can be another, eh?… We are grownups and can sort out the wheat from the hulls ourselves.
This is starting to look like the democratic party thinks we need to hear all about gun control and commie/socialist ideas, like we were little kids in a classroom! This is starting to look like an insult to all Montanan’s.
Why should any news source waste their time/effort and their readers’/viewers’ time with such drivel?…Why should such a fringe loon be awarded any air time/play whatsoever; with such empty headedness coming in response to serious questions?
A vote for this one must be viewed as a vote tossed in the trash can – without meaning.
Perhaps this is why we have NOT heard of anyone backing her, or any PAC/Group sending her donations, eh?.. Playing Power Ball would seem to be a better choice, there you “might” win “something”.
vinny in Livingston
Monday, September 01, 2014 12:39 AM
Compared to Amanda the Anarchist, Barack Hussein Obama was highly vetted thru the contested primary and election process. He too got his Illinois Senate seats in contested primaries and was actually defeated 2-1 by Bobby Rush in a U.S. House contest..
Remember how the divorce records for Jeri “Seven of Nine” Ryan and Jack Ryan were released from court seal to force Ryan from the U.S. Senate race?
Does Montana really want an unvetted Senator?