Libertarian explains his HD3 candidacy

In 2014, I decided to enter the political contest to represent Montana House District 3. Mostly I wanted to write about the broken American political process and suggest ways to fix it. Some problems have only a political solution. I’ve spent a lifetime studying politics, tried it once before as a young man and thought I’d try it one more time, as an old man.

My district is in desperate need for change. Jobs which used to sustain a vital local economy in the woods, in Glacier Park and at the aluminum plant were either gone or the once-good wages dropped. The building boom came, and largely passed the district by because of its industrial past, pollution and outsourcing — and then went bust.

The election cycle, the mid-term, historically heavily favors the party not the president’s, and this one promised to be the same. The Republican who won the last two elections in my district was facing the same Democrat who’d lost the last two elections. The people of the district describe themselves as “good conservatives,” almost universally. Many say they’d support a third party.

At the same time, many of the unemployed and under-employed in the district were denied the benefits of the Affordable Care Act because they were too poor to qualify for the subsidy. The remedy required the state Republicans to expand Medicaid, the cost of which would be entirely borne by the federal government — but they refused to do it. Their reason? I think it was because they didn’t want people who were already eligible for Medicaid, which requires state cost-sharing, to know they could go to the doctor. In my view, that is dishonest and immoral.

Also, there was recent news that the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. plant had toxic waste pits which were contaminating the local water table with cyanide and heavy metals, and a huge multinational conglomerate, Glencore, is unwilling to do anything about it.

The Republicans, with strong ties to industry, could protect Glencore from responsibility by refusing to fund the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, whose scientists and lawyers need to put together the case to force them to clean it up. They were willing to wait for the federal Environmental Protection Agency to get to it, and EPA’s funding was being stalled by a different group of Republicans, the U.S. House, for the same reason — corruption. Once again, I think it’s dishonest and immoral, and I’m willing to stand up and say so.

The Democrat seemed to favor the expansion of Medicaid, as well as be for getting the EPA to clean up the plant “sometime in the future,” but was unwilling to be activist about it or seek to empower DEQ to act faster. I decided to enter the race as a Libertarian, the only third party with automatic access to Montana’s ballot, with the strategy to be that activist, convince the electorate that their interests were more “progressive” than “conservative,” and rely on the electorate to choose.

Typically, less than 5 percent of the electorate is willing to consider a third party because the two major parties routinely use the third party as a “spoiler,” sometimes even by financing it, and the electorate knows it will be punished for picking the third party.

I got no support from either party, nor from the Montana Libertarian Party, who were happy with the Republican incumbent, a former Libertarian. I knew I ran the risk of being used that way, too, but I also believed that the Democrat had little chance to win this year without making big waves, something he seemed to be afraid to do. So I decided to mix things up, see what happens.

As predicted, most of the other state and local races went heavily Republican. In my race, it turned out to be very close, within 50 votes on Election Day. I am glad the Democrat won because it’s the best thing for the district. His votes and my votes together make a clear majority, and I will feel my activist efforts helped him win. Then I’ll encourage him to push for faster action on the CFAC cleanup using state resources. If the Republican had won, I would have had regrets, wondering if I should have withdrawn from the race and campaigned for the Democrat.

There are other important issues. The Libertarians, the Reform Party, the Green Party — all have good points to make. Election rules could change to enable the participation of the third party and eliminate the “spoiler” problem. That change would be a first priority of all third-party interests, especially those of people who would very much like to vote for the third party, yet feel they can’t.

But the Republicans and the Democrats won’t allow that; they’d rather lose to each other and stay in the game than give a third party a chance and maybe lose out completely, because both parties are owned by the same people who want to keep things as they are and don’t care which party or candidate wins — because it doesn’t really matter to them. What they care about is the big money which comes with political influence — and money is the “mothers milk” of politics. That fact remains unchanged these 40 years.

Chris Colvin, of Columbia Falls, ran as a Libertarian in this fall’s House District 3 race.