TIME: Why Montana Is Turning Blue

Monday, Apr. 25, 2005

Why Montana Is Turning Blue

The rowdy, red state of legend has changed. It's enough to make a cowboy cry
By WALTER KIRN


(snip)

The rowdy, roughriding Montana of legend has begun to civilize itself in ways that would have seemed unimaginable only a few years ago. The process started with last November's election. Although the state went to George W. Bush in the presidential race, coloring it red on the electoral maps, it also chose its first Democratic Governor since 1984, broke the G.O.P.'s hold on the state legislature and backed a pair of progressive ballot initiatives banning toxic mining practices and legalizing medical marijuana.

The biggest changes came just this month, however. First, in a frontal assault on the state's image as a vast frontier-era saloon where a person is free to lose his life to vice as long as he doesn't take other people with him, the legislature prohibited smoking in all public places, including bars and restaurants. Only 10 other states have passed such sweeping laws, including New York, California and Massachusetts--places that rugged, traditional Montanans not only revile as effete and uninhabitable but also will seldom confess to having visited, even if they have family members in them.

This spring's second insult to freedom-loving cowboy types was graver yet, although its implications might be hard to fathom for non-Montanans. The state's drivers, as of October, will not be allowed to drink alcohol in their vehicles. Outsiders may find this development astonishing. Drinking and driving was legal in Montana? Yes. And not only legal but rather popular. In a state that measures more than 700 miles from its southeast to northwest corners and where most of those miles consist of empty highway enlivened only by blowing tumbleweeds and the occasional bloated mule-deer corpse, a cold can of beer was viewed by some as a necessary, invigorating diversion.

The outlaw Montana that I moved to 15 years ago and that my Eastern friends had apprehensions about--many of them quickly dismissed once they visited and fired a few rounds from the target pistols I own or took a pickup down to a local bar with a poker table in its back room--is setting like the evening sun. Ragged former cow towns like Bozeman are turning into suburbanized high-tech meccas for Ph.D.s who like to go rafting and snowboarding. These immigrants have brought with them an exotic culture of dining spots that feature formal wine lists, bookstores that sell titles besides the Bible, sports that don't center on the killing of animals and taverns whose air is as clean and clear as the expensive vodka in their martinis.

But the old-timers are turning bluer too--perhaps as a result of choking on the polluted air that issues from the state's assorted smelters, refineries, pulp mills, oil and gas wells and non-emission-controlled exhaust pipes. The inevitable legacy of almost everyone doing pretty much anything he wished is a huge environmental mess, from the copper mines of Butte, where the water table is thick with heavy metals, to the asbestos mines of Libby, where laborers are dying in large numbers from chronic respiratory ailments. No wonder Montanans legalized medical marijuana last fall. The stuff is said to ease the pain of battling cancer, and up in Libby at least, that pain is great.

More..

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1050300,00.html

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

:toast:

I think that the new Dem governor of Montana (Schweitzer) should get our serious consideration for president.

Of course, he is inexperienced on national affairs as was Bush, but he's not anti-thinking the way Bush is. And he could choose a vice-presidential candidate like Wes Clark who's got a military and international background.

It seems that the most important quality for Americans is likeability and if Schweitzer has that quality, then that is important.

As you mentioned he has a lack of experience. I think he would be great as a VP candidate with a more experienced person like Wes Clark or Hillary Clinton at the top of the ticket. I'm a New Yorker, but I definitely like this new governor of Montana. He is truly a man of the people and has a spine of steel.

but suppose we lose in 2008. 2012 would be open, Schweitzer would have a second term under his belt. The guy knows how to win over regular folks. I don't think he's at all suited for VP: he's just too independently minded to play second fiddle, and I think he'd also be great at the top of the ticket.

Ignorant, rude, offensive. He's lived in MT for 15 years and never been to a bookstore, apparently. Montana has always been a progressive, Democratic state, up until the Reagan era. I hate this arrogant, interloping, ignorant writer.

and was very impressed by the city. Except for a need for all drive vehicle during the winter - or some other monstrosity.

Unless you live up an unplowed, ungravelled road--OK, there are a few here, 4WD vehicles are not needed. Anyway a semi-midsized Subaru station wagon, common here, is 4WD so monstrosities not necessary either. Except for those living in rural parts of western MT, most of MT gets not much snow and it tends to be very dry and wind dispersed off roads anyway.

You couldn't throw a rock in a Montana bar without hitting three writers?

Missoula is as liberal as Madison.

Well, technically AZ now....

First woman in Congress (actually, she was the first woman to get elected to any national legislature anywhere in North America or Europe), and only person in Congress to vote against both World Wars. Montanans tend to be damned proud of her, too.

When I was in HS I actually knew an old woman who worked with her! Frieda Fliegelman. She was a suffragette.

and growing up in Conrad, my all time favorite
senator was Mike Mansfield.

never existed.

Montana voted for Clinton in "92 for crying out loud.

Time is, as usual, dead wrong. Montana only went right-wing after WWII started.

When Oscar Wilde visited America and toured the west, he always got turnouts of hundreds of "cowpokes". Many of them were very well educated, and took jobs as cowboys during long depression after the Civil War. And almost half the cowboys were black. And there were also a significant number of Marxist cowboys.

Hollywood not only misrepresented the Indian, it misrepresented the Cowboy.

--p!

Montana didn't go to the right until Reagan. Democratic gov and legislature up until then, mostly.

Not the greatest article, but at least it recognizes progress. And yes, progress can be at the expense of tradition, both good and bad. But I have never been happier with the direction MT is going, even if I would like to have a beer between Big Sandy and Ft Benton.

oh, and Schweitzer is the MAN. :P
KJ

Miles City and Broadus, I could go on and on.