Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
That question occurred to me, and occurred to me more sharply after reading Mike Dennison’s report on the the initiative’s demise. It’s backers, assuming they would come up short, did not submit any signatures to county elections offices. They said they ran out of time — but faced with a tough campaign, did they also run out of faith that Montanans would approve I-170? Dennison’s story concludes:
However, [Healthy Montana Initiative president Kim] Abbott also acknowledged that even if I-170 had made it on the November ballot, it likely would have faced a well-funded effort to defeat it.
State Republican Party officials have said the planned an organized campaign against it and private, conservative political groups also had indicated they might get involved in an anti-initiative campaign as well.
The only thing worse than failing to get I-170 on the ballot would have been getting it on the ballot and losing the election. If that happened, even a legislature sympathetic to expanding Medicaid likely would be loath to tell the voters they were wrong. If that specter seemed a real possibility, ending the campaign and not submitting the petitions was a wise decision that preserves the option of expanding Medicaid in the 2015 legislative session.