She has a camper truck, he has a private jet – can a Democrat take Montana?

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Kathleen Williams is the Democratic nominee taking on one of the wealthiest members of Congress for the state’s sole House seat, which the GOP has held for nearly three decades.

It’s 90 minutes before daylight on a late summer day when Kathleen Williams loads up her camper truck with signs and stickers and hits the campaign trail, today a 200-mile drive across southern Montana to Crow Fair, one of the largest Native American powwows in North America.

For Williams, the 57-year-old Democratic nominee for Montana’s lone congressional seat, the Crow Indian Reservation just north of Wyoming is unfamiliar territory. She’s driven 35,000 miles all over the state stumping for votes this year, many in this truck but most in her electric hybrid car, with her dog Danni, a spring-loaded german wirehaired pointer and the star of Williams’ first campaign ad .

Kathleen Williams stands alongside her Republican opponent, Greg Gianforte, center, and representative Bruce Westerman of Arkansas at the Crow Fair in Montana.
Adam Sings In The Timber for the Guardian

The Crow tribe, whose revenue depends on coalmining, endorsed her Republican opponent last year against another candidate. But when Williams rolls into the maze of teepee camps that ring the festival grounds, she gets a warm greeting from the first people she meets. Two middle-aged women sheltering from the rain under an open car’s hatchback flash her double thumbs up and shout: “We’re voting for you!”

Out among voters, where she campaigns every day but for a half-day off on Sundays, Williams is well-liked, attentive, full of policy ideas and plans. At a cafe stop at Crow, she spends 10 minutes talking alone with a woman who recently lost her son in a drowning accident. She is neither rushed nor rehearsed. Later, she delves down into the weeds on environmental policy and economic development.

She is running against the Republican Greg Gianforte, one of the wealthiest members of Congress. She has a camper truck. He has a private jet and near-unlimited resources to self-fund his campaigns.

Beyond the funding gap, she’s running for a seat held for nearly three decades by Republicans, against a solid glass ceiling that has only been breached once in Montana history. And yet, she’s rarely described as a long shot.

Kathleen Williams speaks with Crow
tribal member Ken Real Bird.
Adam Sings In The Timber

Montana sent the first woman ever to Congress, but it hasn’t sent another since. Jeannette Rankin, a Missoula suffragette and pacifist, was elected to the US House in 1916 – four years before the 19th amendment giving American women the right to vote.

Rankin’s Republican primary opponent, Eldon Jacob Crull, was so devastated by unceasing taunts about getting beaten by a woman that he took his own life.

“Jacob Crull of Roundup, Montana, swallowed muriatic acid on the steps of an undertaking establishment here early today,” the New York Times reported. “‘I’m heartbroken,’ was all he could say.”

After Rankin, women were mostly shut out from top-tier elected offices in Montana and to some degree across the Rocky Mountain west, where no woman has been elected to the US Senate.

Montana has elected one female governor, Republican Judy Martz, who served a disastrous term from 2001-2005 marked by tone-deafness on issues affecting women. She once joked to a crowd of hundreds in her home town: “My husband has never battered me, but then again I’ve never given him a reason to.”

When Martz died last year, I rethought her troubled tenure, which I had covered as a state reporter. Yes, she was prone to appalling jokes and downplaying the problems women face. She boasted about driving home on weekends to do her husband’s laundry. But her biggest scandals were created by a phalanx of men she hired who seemed to steer the political novice in all sorts of terrible directions.

The governor barely escaped criminal charges for evidence tampering when a top male aide drove drunk and wrecked a car, killing the house majority leader. Another man moved evidence at the scene. Martz spirited the aide out of the hospital without police permission and washed his bloody clothes . (Later, she told me she was doing what any mother would do in that situation.)

Since Martz, several women have tried but none has breached the wall of top-tier Montana politics. Williams is certain she’ll be the one to do it this year by deploying a mix of tenacity and civility, and talking about critical issues like healthcare and land conservation to beat Gianforte – a novice congressman perhaps best known for assaulting Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs on election eve last year, then going on to win.

Williams’ primary victory this spring took many by surprise, especially the mostly male political pundits who rely on fundraising data to make their predictions. Even the conversation around Montana politics is still dominated by men, and Williams was considered a long shot. She never saw it that way.

“Montanans vote for the person,” Williams says. “I think they appreciated how much we were getting out across the state. I kept hearing the word ‘authentic’.”

Americans seem to be ready for more women in office. A study by the Pew Research Center released this week found that 61% of Americans (including 68% of women) believe more women in politics is good for the country.

JoRee LaFrance rides in the parade during the 100th Annual Crow Fair Celebration Powwow.
Adam Sings In The Timber

In the pouring rain at Crow Fair, Williams pulls up to the muddy rodeo grounds, where a rodeo will commence in an hour. Crow artist Ken Real Bird walks over to her truck to talk economic development on the reservation, where a lack of jobs means nearly 30% of people live in poverty.

Real Bird wants a representative in Congress who will find a way to help the Crow move away from “dirty coal”, rather than leaning into a dying, polluting industry. He’s pushing for a bank that tribal members can go to for credit since they can’t use their land allotments as collateral elsewhere.

“The young people on this reservation, a lot of them leave. They’re ready to do creative things, but they don’t have the funding,” says Real Bird. “That’s the kind of change we need.”

Williams pulls out a notebook and jots down what Real Bird says. She stops him to ask questions about specifics, then nods along. When he finishes, she thanks him and I ask about the notes. This is her third notebook from this campaign so far. She uses the logs to do research, develop policy platforms and collect contact information from potential constituents.

What’s prompted her to run is, in part, the same mix of things that has made this a record year for women in politics. According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, more women than ever before are running for office at all levels of government. Misogyny and a political climate dominated by angry rhetoric have pushed women to campaign all over.

Delaware sent its first woman to Congress last year, while Mississippi did the same a few months ago. Only Vermont has yet to put a woman in the House.

“We don’t have a single story or a single reason for why all these women are running. We are fairly certain for many progressive or Democrat women, the 2016 election served as a catalyst for their candidacy,” said Kelly Dittmar, a research scholar at the center.

Crow Tribal member and Women’s Crowstyle
traditional dancer Lanissa Don’t Mix dances
during the grand entry procession of the
100th Annual Crow Fair Celebration.
Adam Sings In The Timber

In the Rocky Mountain west, women led early but remain underrepresented. Back in Jeannette Rankin’s day, women did men’s work out of necessity, so perhaps electing them to office was a natural extension. Dittmar says their low numbers in office now probably have to do with smaller populations in these states, hence fewer political offices.

“It’s a reminder that the progress of success of any one woman doesn’t mean you disrupted and changed wholesale the gender biases of these political institutions. Gender norms are really stubborn,” Dittmar says.

Williams doesn’t focus on gender, but she does hear about it from voters, who worry a woman can’t win. She tells them: “Well, not if people keep thinking like that.”

On the trail she hears more from Montanans about healthcare costs than any other issue. She wants to bring the focus back to the work, not rhetoric. She supports an early Medicare buy-in and shoring up the Affordable Care Act. Elsewhere, she has drawn national attention for distancing herself from the Democratic House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi – a favorite target of Republicans nationwide, no matter their actual opponent. Williams says Pelosi has become a symbol of hyper-partisanship.

“That’s part of my role. That’s why I’m running. We need to get back to solving problems, rolling up our sleeves and getting things done, not the talking points du jour.”

Boy’s Crowstyle dancer Jacoby Little Light, center, dance.
Katheleen Williams/Adam Sings In The Timber

By mid-afternoon at Crow Fair, Williams is ready to line up for Grand Entry, when indigenous dignitaries from across the Great Plains don regalia and fill the arena with spectacular color, drumming, singing and dancing.

Just then, someone nudges Williams and she looks up to see Greg Gianforte, who was not expected here today, walk in. Undaunted, she strolls over and welcomes him. They walk in together, he in a cowboy hat and she in a shawl made for her by a member of another Montana Indian tribe.
Nevada could make history with first female-majority US state legislature

As the line thins, leaving the political opponents alone in the middle of the arena separated only by a visiting congressman from Arkansas, the emcee introduces Gianforte, who gives a 30-second spiel to the crowd, saying he’s happy to be back.

Williams, his political challenger, gets the mic last, the spot for the most important speaker. She tells a personal story, one she has only begun to reveal to voters, about the death of her husband two years ago. The single star in her campaign logo, she explains, represents him, guiding her in her travels across Montana.

“I’m so struck by the importance of culture, family, history, in my conversations as I talk to folks around the camps,” says Williams. “Know that I will be there for you like your families are for you, and my family has been for me.”

Maybe it’s the order, maybe it’s the message. But this crowd, whose leadership previously endorsed Gianforte, who is standing only a few feet away, gives their biggest round of applause of the afternoon to the woman running against him.