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Political Note #286 Kathleen Williams MT CD AL
2020 General Election
In 1916 Montana elected Jeannette Rankin the first female Member of the United States Congress. Kathleen Williams https://kathleenformontana.com is trying, for the second time, to be Montana’s second female Member of Congress.
Kathleen Williams is a distinctive character who could only come out of the American West. She hunts and fishes. She skis, hikes and canoes. She is a gun owner. For fun, not for show. She spent her career working in conservation, protecting Montana’s natural resources. She’s a widow. She married conservationist Tom Pick in the rotunda of the Montana Capitol. He had been a contractor during the Iraq War and had two adult sons. They were together for fifteen years.
After graduate school, Kathleen Williams worked for the US Forest Service. She moved to Montana and worked for the Environmental Quality Council — a committee of the Montana legislature. She became Water Program Manager for the state’s Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks and then Executive Director of the Instream Flow Council, a US and Canadian non-profit. Conservation and sport fishermen. Not a bad combination for Montana and the West.
Kathleen Williams ran for the state legislature, disgusted by its chaotic effort to create and pass a budget. One of her achievements in the state legislature was negotiating a water rights compact with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The agreement required Congressional ratification. Neither Montana’s Republican Senator nor its first term Congressman, Greg Gianforte, was willing to move the agreement forward.
Kathleen Williams moved forward on her own. She ran for Congress. She was late to the campaign in 2018. But she was good at it. She had a flair for the dramatic. Despite having substantial less money for her campaign than the two men who who seemed to be the strongest candidates, she attracted attention and won. She had traipsed all over Montana in an old pick up, pulling a camper behind her. Democrats loved her campaign.
Kathleen Williams is demonstrating her flair for the dramatic again. She opened her campaign marching with 400 Native Americans in Yellowstone County. She argues she is particularly effective working on both sides of the aisle. She fended off proposals to exempt wells and septic systems from environmental regulations with a legislative approved study. She negotiated the tribal water compact to avoid a lawsuit. She advocated and obtained passage of a law to exempt home cooked foods sold from home or farmers’ markets from taxes. She negotiated practical, non-partisan solutions in a partisan atmosphere.
Kathleen Williams’ reputation for effective non-partisan work, her promise that Montana would finally have a successor to Jeannette Rankin, her travels across the state in her pick-up truck towing a camper behind, her post-Parkland proposals for banning bump stocks, universal background checks, and limiting semi-automatic weapons to controlled shooting ranges, and, most important, her promise to return civility to Congress won her the primary. Despite her startling lack of financial resources.
How Blue can Montana get? Before this 2020 election, Montana had one Democratic US Senator and a Democratic Governor. The popular Governor, Steve Bullock, is running for the other US Senate position. Two strong Democrats want to be the nominee to defeat the current Republican Congressman in the race for Governor. And Kathleen Williams https://kathleenformontana.com is trying to make up the 5 points she lost by in 2018 – the closest a Democrat has come to being elected to Congress in Montana for decades. Help her do just that. Donate to her campaign.
Below are Congressional seats Democrats are trying to flip from incumbent Republicans. The ones with asterisks ran in 2018* In 2018, Democrats flipped 40 Republican seats in the House. Let’s flip 20 more.
Congress
Arizona 06 Hiral Tipirneni* to beat incumbent David Schweikert
Arkansas 02. Joyce Elliott to beat incumbent French Hill
California 50 Ammar Campa-Hajjar* to win this now open Rep seat
Florida 16 Margaret Good to beat incumbent Vern Buchanan
Illinois 13 Betsy D Londrigen* to beat incumbent Rodney Davis
Indiana 05 Christina Hale to win this open Republican seat
Iowa 04 JD Scholten* to beat incumbent Steve King
Kansas 02 Michelle De La Isla to beat incumbent Steve Watkins
Michigan 03. Hillary Scholten to defeat incumbent Independent Justin Amash and the Republican nominee
Michigan 06 Jon Hoadley to beat incumbent Fred Upton
Minnesota 01 Dan Feehan* to beat incumbent Jim Hagedorn
Missouri 02 Jill Schupp to beat incumbent Ann Wagner
Montana AL Kathleen Williams* to win this open Republican seat
New York 02 Jackie Gordon to win this open Republican seat
New York 21 Tedra Cobb* to beat incumbent Elise Stefanic
New York 24 Dana Balter* to beat incumbent John Katko
Ohio 04 Mike Larsen to beat incumbent Jim Jordan
Pennsylvania 10 Eugene DePasquale to beat incumbent Scott Perry
Texas 02 Sima Ladjervardian to beat incumbent Dan Crenshaw
Texas 21 Wendy Davis to beat incumbent Chip Roy
Texas 22 Sri Preston Kalkuri to win this open Republican seat
Texas 23 Gina Ortiz Jones* to win this open Republican seat
Washington 03 Carolyn Long* to beat incumbent Jaime Herrera Beutler
Wisconsin 07 Tricia Zunker to win this open Republican seat in a special election on
May 12
