Tough day for the Montana Chamber of Commerce.
The Montana Chamber has always been a solidly Republican operation. A notorious example: In early 2008, when the Montana economy was peaking with record low unemployment and the largest growth and job creation in history, the Chamber, led by Webb Brown, Jon Bennion, Chelsea Fagen, and other Republican operatives, convened the Chamber's "board" to engineer an endorsement of Roy Brown for Governor.
The Chamber has also recently held conferences where "scientists" present evidence that global warming is not a threat, or economic forums where arch-conservative economists make presentations about how federal greenhouse legislation will bankrupt America and cost millions of jobs.
Cross posted at Left in the West. Those interested in communicating directly with the author may do so there.
The Chamber leadership also strictly opposes Democratic legislative proposals, even when most of the Chamber's small-business membership would want them supported--like, for instance, the attempt to eliminate the business equipment tax for 95% of Montana businesses. The Dems and the Administration tried introducing this measure last session, and even had the support of a few Republicans, like Ryan Zinke; it failed in committee, however, because Republican legislators took their marching orders from the Chamber, which opposed the measure on principle because the measure did not apply to the largest corporations in the state, like Exxon, who would (boohoo) still have had to pay business property taxes.
And then there are the Chamber Business Days events, revival-like gatherings in Helena at which speakers get up to the podium and rile up the audience (composed of many big-haired women left over from the Martz Administration, or their out-of-power Republican operative spouses) by trashing Montana as a place where nobody can make a buck, where there are no jobs, where the government spends too much money to allow for economic growth, where there is too much environmental regulation, and where you can't start a business, or succeed in business, because of this tax, that tax and the other tax.
And it's all the damn Democrats' fault. (A few years ago, Schweitzer even showed up, took the microphone, and played the role of wet blanket. "Please, guys, please stop trashing the Montana economy," he said, " because it makes it hard to recruit businesses here when you do that." The crowd did not like that.)
And so, this morning, it had to be a tough pill to swallow for the Chamber when the big headline across the state was that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (the national organization which, like it's state counterpart, is a Republican machine) has just rated Montana as the number one state in America for entrepreneurship, as well as for business innovation..
You can read about it in the Missoulian:
"While Montana's energy and mining clusters added a combined 8,400 high-paying jobs to the state since 2002, Montana's greatest source of national dominance came from the collection of arts, entertainment, recreation and visitor industries, perhaps a sign that the rest of the nation is beginning to discover the Big Sky Country. Montana is also beginning to see the emergence of smaller clusters in chemicals, apparel and textiles and fabricated metal products."
Of course, it should be noted that in all of the newspapers in Montana today that reported this story, nobody from the Montana Chamber has been quoted at all. That says a mouthful, it is quite shameful, and the leadership ought be fired for it.
The job of a Chamber of Commerce is to boost and promote it's state economy. But you can sort of understand why they are keeping a low profile. They are eating crow after six years of trying to help the Republican party convince Montanans that if Democrats are in charge, business must, by definition, be suffering.
There is another reason that those who read this blog and are active in politics should be enjoying this, and monitoring it:
The Chamber leadership is very much involved in legislative politics and legislative races. They have lots of resources, and spend them in many different ways. That's something that we should all keep an eye on as we go out this campaign season to help get Democrats elected.
And the positive message is the most important of all: In Montana, Democrats are good for business.