Election: Gil Jordan seeks balance in county

Balance is everything to Flathead County Democratic commissioner candidate Gil Jordan.

Whether he’s running a marathon or running for political office, the Coram resident aims to strike an even keel in all of his endeavors.

His campaign slogan — “Bringing balance and reason to Flathead County.”

“Balance is my favorite word in the world,” Jordan said recently at his office in Kalispell at the Northwest Montana Historical Society where he works as the executive director.

Jordan faces Republican candidate and interim commissioner Cal Scott in the upcoming election for the District 1 commissioner seat. The winner will fill the final two years of the late Jim Dupont’s term.

Jordan, 66, is an avid runner who has completed 35 marathons, most recently the Boston Marathon. He estimates that he’s tallied more than 25,000 miles in his lifetime.

He holds a master’s degree from the University of California in Los Angeles and a bachelor’s from California State Polytechnic University.

He moved to the Flathead Valley as a full-time resident in 1985 and owns a log home near Coram with his wife of 34 years Kimberly Pinter.

Jordan was a technical director for seven years at La Mirada Civic Theater in Southern California and worked as a social worker for 13 years with the Western Montana Mental Health Center. He was the debate coach at Whitefish High School for seven years.

Jordan says he is running for commissioner to bring balance to the county.

“It’s all 90,000 people who live here,” Jordan said. “It’s important to not have one political philosophy determining all of the important things the commissioners decide. If elected, I pledge to be a voice for everybody in the valley, regardless of their political point of view.”

Although Jordan has been accused of being a far left-leaning Democrat, he says he’s more of a moderate.

“I’m characterized as being just to the left of the radicals of the 1960s,” he said, “but I’m really a moderate. I’m more of an Independent than a Democrat, but I’m running as a Democrat because they asked me.”

“I’m not going in there as a liberal Democrat. I’m as distrustful of people on the far left as I am of people on the far right.”

If elected to represent District 1 Jordan acknowledges that he’d be representing a wide variety of constituents, which could be a challenge when making decisions on planning and growth policy. Yet with balance, he says, growth and planning can be a “win-win” for everyone.

“You can’t have a strong economy in an unhealthy community,” Jordan said. “You have to have a balance of a clean environment and a healthy business climate. If you just focus on one element, you’re going to hurt all the others.”

Jordan says he’s not anti property rights.

“People should be able to do whatever they want on their private property as long as it doesn’t effect their neighbor’s and their community’s health and safety.”

Defining health and safety is where it gets tricky, he said. It’s in between the extremes where the real issues come up.

Jordan says growth is virtually impossible to shut off in the valley, nor should it be.

“It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world,” he said. “People will be coming here and we need to encourage that. The key is reasonable planning that optimizes business and individual opportunity and doesn’t destroy the place we live in.”

He likes the idea of “cluster development.”

“We should put like functions together instead of allowing them to be spread randomly,” he said.

He says proposed changes to the 2007 county growth policy are “bad ideas.”

“They will make for more congestion and less safe streets,” he said. “They’re not going to be helpful.”

He says years of hard work is being thrown out in the name of over-regulation.

Regarding jurisdiction of the Whitefish two-mile planning doughnut, Jordan says mediation could be a solution.

“I’d say ‘Let’s sit down and talk about this,’” he said. “It’s never too late to sit down. Right now we’re both spending thousands of dollars on an issue reasonable people should be able to come to a conclusion about.”

“People should not be paying taxes and have no representation. Whether that comes from the county or city of Whitefish is an agreement that needs to be hammered out. Right now, people are standing on two sides of an issue and yelling at each other.”