27 March 2017

Why I’m still standing with Rob Quist

Democratic congressional candidate Rob Quist had a rough time on the campaign trail last week. His personal finances dominated the news, an unwelcome distraction that won him no votes, and I didn’t do him any favors when I roasted him for letting his campaign staff weaken the energy plank in his platform.

Nevertheless, I’m still voting for him — and still urging that my fellow Montanans vote for him, too.

Why? Donald Trump. Paul Ryan. Mitch McConnell. If Republican Greg Gianforte wins the election, he’ll help the Trump Trio try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, gut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, cut funding for science and the arts, spend more money on the military, and make life harder for all but the filthy, filthy, rich. Like Mitt Romney, Bozeman entrepreneur Gianforte’s lost touch with the 99 percent.

Quist has not. Music is an honorable, sometime glamorous, occupation, but a journeyman musician’s life is hard. The life on the road through which Quist acquired his formidable political skills, his ability to relate to people across cultural line, was hard, sometimes not much more profitable than busking, and it took a toll on his health. He made a living, but it wasn’t easy — and he learned through searing personal experience how serious illness can turn a man’s financial life upside down and put him in a deep hole.

Digging out of that hole hasn’t been easy, but that’s what Quist’s been doing — and he ought to be given credit for that. At Bigsky Words, Greg Sandberg observed:

Amen.

That’s why Quist still has my vote.