U.S. House candidates stand out on issues
Pundits say this year’s race for Montana’s lone U.S. House seat lacks name recognition, but sharp differences between the candidates could help voters make up their minds.
Montana went from two House members to one in 1993. Republicans have held the lone seat ever since Democrat Pat Williams retired in 1997 after nine terms — Rick Hill for two terms followed by Denny Rehberg for six terms. Hill is now running for governor, and Rehberg is running for the U.S. Senate.
The candidates are:
• Democrat Kim Gillan, 60, of Billings, served 16 years in the Montana Legislature, both in the House where she was the Minority Leader and the Senate where she was the Minority Whip.
She has a bachelor’s in psychology from the University of California-Los Angeles and master’s in regional planning from Cornell University. She has worked as a workforce development coordinator at Montana State University-Billings.
Gillan’s record in the legislature includes establishing an insurance mandate to cover autism and diabetes treatments, creating a job-training program for small businesses, raising fuel standards for state vehicles, leading an effort to close corporate tax loopholes, revising campaign disclosure laws to improve transparency and supporting private property rights in eminent domain disputes.
In Washington, Gillan hopes to strengthen Medicare and protect Social Security, make the tax system fairer for middle class families, close loopholes for corporations that ship jobs overseas, cut waste and fraud, and build a smarter, not bigger, government. She also supports pro-choice positions for women.
• Republican Steve Daines, 50, of Bozeman, has yet to hold elected office. His political career started in 2007 with a radio and Internet campaign encouraging legislators to rebate half the state’s $500 million budget surplus to taxpayers.
Daines ran as Roy Brown’s lieutenant governor in 2008, but the Republican ticket was defeated by Schweitzer and Bohlinger by more than 2-to-1. Last year, Daines switched from the Senate race to the House race after Rehberg announced he was running against Sen. Jon Tester.
Daines graduated from Montana State University with a chemical engineering degree and went to work for Procter & Gamble, running a plant in China. He returned to Montana and worked in the family construction business before landing a job with RightNow Technologies, a startup software company in Bozeman. He rose to a management position before the company was bought by Oracle for $1.5 billion this year. Daines left in March to campaign full time.
His conservative platform includes support for a balanced budget amendment, repealing President Obama’s healthcare act, establishing a voucher plan for Medicare, and overturning the Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling. He has expressed support for the budget plan drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate.
• Libertarian Dave Kaiser, 52, of Victor, attended St. Cloud State University, in Minnesota. He said he came to Montana three years ago to get into the restaurant business. He has never held elected office.
Unlike his two opponents, Kaiser says he will not be beholden to a political party rather than the citizens of Montana. He blames gridlock in Washington, D.C., for the condition of the U.S. economy.
Kaiser calls for more transparency, telling voters that through his Web site, “You would follow my every move or vote, better yet you would advise me.” He calls for balancing the federal budget by eliminating all federal spending that can be handled by the states and letting Montana voters decide which programs to preserve.
He opposes Obamacare, supports the Keystone XL pipeline, wants U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, believes government should stay out of abortion and homosexual issues, wants supply and demand to determine alternative energy development, and says it’s wrong for corporations to spend unlimited money on election campaigns.