At a seminar in Chicago in the late 1980s shortly before local elections, the local news was covering a window smashing/shooting incident at a candidate's campaign headquarters. A local said to us out-of-towners, “Welcome to politics, Chicago style.” He went on to joke about their fine traditions of ballot box stuffing and party machine politics. This was simultaneously bizarre and horrifying to someone like me accustomed to tame and clean elections. I'd long known that politics and elections were different in the west from that in the south, east, and Chicago, but how and why were one of those mysteries that I didn't give much thought to except to note occasionally seeming anomalies. For example, why was Kansas once a hot-bed of progressive politics? How could the Californian Republican Earl Warren have been the Chief Justice of the most progressive Supreme Court ever? And what's the deal in Montana that lobbed a shot (spitball?) at Citizen's United
As the 41st state, Montana was a relative latecomer. In 1889, the same year Washington achieved statehood and before:
Idaho: 1890
Wyoming: 1890
Utah: 1896
Oklahoma: 1907
Arizona: 1912
New Mexico: 1912
Natural resource, “cowboys & indians”, and/or Mormon territories. And populations in tune with the rising progressive movement of that time. For example, woman's suffrage had been established in Wyoming before statehood and retaining it was a non-negotiable condition for joining the union.
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