Candidate Rae Grulkowski’s lies were the subject of a New York Times article.
Both photos taken from individuals respective websites
County Commissioner Don Ryan
Cascade County Commission Race, District #3. Where facts are no match for fear!
The Cascade County Commission race between Don Ryan (Democrat) and Rae Grulkowski (Republican) is the only contested commission race this cycle in our county. Who are these people?
Commissioner Don Ryan was appointed in early 2021, after the retirement of Jane Weber. Don Ryan previously served in the Montana Senate for two terms and was elected four times for the Great Falls School Board. Ryan has been serving on the Cascade County Commission without any newsworthy problems. His website provides a long list of accomplishments during his tenure as commissioner…but what about his opponent Rae Grulkowski?
You might recognize the name from Grulkowski’s disinformation campaign against the National Heritage Area (NHA) effort in Central Montana. Based on conspiracy theory-filled information she gleaned from the internet, Grulkowski decided to fight the proposed heritage area in 2020. Her dishonest efforts were notable enough to make the national news, starting when she spent $1,300 to send out packets full of lies to hundreds of voters. According to the New York Times, Grulkowski told the voters that “the designation would forbid landowners to build sheds, drill wells or use fertilizers and pesticides. It would alter water rights, give tourists access to private property, create a new taxation district and prohibit new septic systems and burials on private land, she said. None of this was true [emphasis added].”
As noted in the article, Grulkowski did not identify a single instance of a property owner’s being adversely affected by a heritage area. What she is worried about is not anything specific, but “wide open things that could happened.” National Heritage Areas have been around since the 1980s. I guess nearly 40 years is not enough precedent for Grulkowski.
Emboldened by her success in spreading lies and conspiracy theories, she is now running for our county commission!
Aside from her lies on the NHA, what else can we expect from Grulkowski?
Luckily, the New York Timesarticle provides a nice summary of her stated beliefs for us:
“Outside of a poultry coop, as her chickens and ducks squawked, Ms. Grulkowski ticked through the falsehoods she had read online and accepted as truths in the past year: The Covid vaccine is more dangerous than the coronavirus. Global child-trafficking rings control the political system. Black Lives Matter was responsible for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The United Nations is plotting to control world population and seize private land. Mr. Trump was the rightful winner of last year’s election. Even in Cascade County, where Mr. Trump won 59 percent of the vote, Ms. Grulkowski argued that 3,000 illegal votes were cast.”
One of the greatest hits on her public Facebook posts is spreading the “Big Lie” about election integrity. In one example, Grulkowski wants us to “write to the Secretary of State, Legislators, and Congressman to encourage them to investigate Montana’s 2020 election.” What information is Grulkowski looking for? Does she think the elected Republicans she is asking people to write to were illegitimately elected? Did Trump not get 56.9% of the vote in Montana in 2020? Were Democrats robbed of their seats?
It really makes a person wonder. What kind of detachment from reality can we expect next if she is elected?
It’s been a banner year for Calumet, the company behind the oil refinery in Great Falls. Despite gross profits of over $70 million dollars in 2021, both the GF City Commission and Cascade County Commission continue to give Calumet massive tax breaks.
Property taxes are a key source of funding for our community, including our schools. Earlier this year, the City Commission approved a tax abatement to the tune of $2.77 million. That’s money Calumet doesn’t have to pay into property taxes. This means Calumet continues to enjoy prime river-front property and its increase in employees adds stress to our infrastructure, with almost no return on investment for the rest of us.
With no commitment to hiring locally, how do these tax breaks benefit us? The short answer is: They don’t. Although I fully support Calumet’s transition to more renewable energy, the company is absolutely capable of paying its fair share of property taxes.
As regular Great Falls’ families struggle with rising taxes amid extraordinary inflation, Calumet was given another property tax break, this time by the County Commission. A second gift to this million-dollar business, Calumet will pay only 50% of its property tax value for the next five years.
Highlighting the absurdity of these abatements, Great Falls citizens are currently being asked to pay higher taxes to support a public safety levy. Asking already-struggling families to suck it up and pay more while simultaneously giving the refinery a multimillion-dollar tax break is a hard pill to swallow.
As stress on our roads, schools, and housing market near a breaking point, its time that we all ask: Why the funk aren’t we making Calumet paying its fair share?
Last week, far-right blog E City Beat was seemingly shocked to discover that nobody considers them a legitimate news source. The blog’s history of unethical and misleading “reporting” is too numerous to list, but you can check out one recent example here.
WTF has highlighted Commissioner Tryon’s lack of journalistic ethics, and many candidates have long steered clear of promoting the hate-mongering of ECB’s authors. Now, the blog’s Republican base is realizing that aligning with extremism may not be the most electable course of action.
As pro-choice sentiment permeates the nation, Great Falls’ Republicans are afraid of losing their seats. Luckily, we already know where Republican incumbents stand on abortion. Every Great Falls’ Republican voted AGAINST choice last session, and we have no doubt they’ll do the same if elected again.
Now, the same Republicans that have benefited from ECB’s radicalism are refusing to answer a candidate questionnaire. A screenshot from ECB’s resulting temper tantrum confirms that R candidates don’t want voters to know their real stance on abortion. Luckily, we don’t need any survey from a mediocre hate blog to know where these candidates stand. A total abortion ban is a top priority for Montana’s GOP. If we want to protect privacy in Montana, we need to vote Democrat down the entire ticket.
As for ECB’s hilarious “demand” for local candidates to respond to their survey, I can’t help but enjoy the obvious sense of entitlement. I suspect were WTF to make similar demands, we’d quickly be called “snowflakes” and reminded that nobody owes us anything. I have no doubt that Democratic candidates will respond to questionnaires that come from actual journalists and news sources. In the meantime, we’ll continue to spread the word about where Republicans really stand on abortion. Truly, we never needed ECB for that.
Screenshot of Republicans’ response to ECB and resulting tantrum
Montana Republicans want to ban all abortion and more with their 2022 Party Platform
In July 2022, the Montana Republican party approved a new party platform at their platform convention. You might be asking yourself. What the funk is a party platform? Why should I care? Well, well, well, you’ve come to the right place and you absolutely should care.
What the funk is a party platform?
A political party platform is a formalized set of goals supported by a political party. By checking out a party’s platform you can see a party’s principles, goals and positions. This helps predict what legislators and leaders will actually do if they’re elected. For example, this data analysis found that “Overall, Democrats in Congress voted for positions that matched their platforms 74 percent of the time in the past 30 years, while Republicans did so 89 percent of the time.” This year the Montana GOP successfully introduced platform language to explicitly call on the Republican legislators to identify bills that link to specific elements in the platform and to pass at least 20 such bills in each chamber to ensure that “Party Platform goals become a priority each session.” We absolutely can expect the MT GOP platform to have a direct connection to the laws passed by Montana Republicans in the future.
What does a Montana Republican majority in 2023 look like?
Glad you asked! Let’s take a gander at what Montana Republicans have put in their party platform to see what kind of shit they’re bringing for us in 2023.
For abortion rights, the Montana Republican platform now states, “We support complete ban on elective abortion.” And yes, they mean a complete ban on abortions with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother. At the Republican convention, a couple of moderate Republicans tried to soften the language to provide exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother. Those attempted arguments were met with boos and voted down. Cheers were heard when Republican Derek Skees of Kalispell interjected, “I was involved in helping put this language in here: life begins at conception. Period.”
What other areas do we have to worry about? Too many to list. Here are some other areas with concerning language from the Republican party platform:
LGBTQ+ issues “We believe the ideal traditional family structure is a father and a mother….” “We support policies and services that preserve and strengthen the traditional family units as well as promoting the wellbeing and innocence of children and youth.” Where do these positions leave space for our LGBTQ+ citizens?
Undermining of public schools, “adopt school choice policies.” “Facilitating programs that allow money to follow the child for education opportunities…inside or outside the public school system.”
Inaction on climate change “we…oppose any regulation on domestic energy production or consumption. We oppose any and all parts of the Green New Deal, the ‘War on Fossil Fuels’, the Paris Climate Accord…”
Attacks on worker rights “We believe that membership in labor bargaining units should be optional.”
Wow.
I do not look forward to living in a state moving full speed ahead towards this agenda. Republicans have made it clear that they intend to reshape Montana into a Big-Government haven with no respect for individual privacy. If Republicans maintain their stranglehold on state offices, Montana’s future looks dystopian indeed.
