Considering Greg Gianforte:

The nation is watching Montana as one of the first weathervanes in a post Trump-coming-to-power world. A special runoff election for the sole congressional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives is the 25th of this month with a kickoff of mail-out ballots hitting your mailbox this week. Competing to replace the respected Ryan Zinke, now our Secretary of the Interior and first Montanan in a cabinet position, will the Democrats be able to generate a pushback to the Trump-style Americana that has taken over the nation or will the Republicans keep their majority in Congress and press forward into 2018 and beyond? Last week, Republican Greg Gianforte campaigned with Donald Jr. and Democrat Rob Quist is campaigning with Bernie Sanders in the upcoming days to help spread the word.

Republicans everywhere got a shot of joy and optimism reading that last sentence. The far-left progressive politics of Bernie Sanders were rejected last year by millions of voters. His own party couldn’t wholeheartedly get behind his policies. Luckily, Greg Gianforte couldn’t be any farther from that; his foundation is built on common sense.

I’ve met with Greg at least five times over the last two years. Unlike many candidates, he’s been to Glasgow several times on his own accord. The man is driven, humble, self-made and constantly dedicated to Montana. One of his companies has brought 500 high-paying jobs to our state. For decades, he and his wife, Susan, have made Montana their home along with their children. He truly gets the idea of engineering Montana into a place where our kids can prosper while preserving our way of life. Since he is independently wealthy, he can’t be bought and will have a laser-like intensity for draining the swamp in Washington.

“I will fight for MT values... we don’t need another out of touch liberal who’s going to create a national gun registry,” Greg proclaimed at a recent campaign event. He’s right, to even flirt with the idea is a no go in Montana. On top of this, he’s promised to reign in out of control regulations that are killing our coal and timber industries as well as give more control of our public lands to the state and local communities.

In broader terms, Greg has other common sense objectives for Washington. He believes that Congress shouldn’t get paid unless they pass a balanced budget. As a nation above 20 trillion dollars in debt, there is no judgement more sound than that. Being a political outsider, he sees the value of setting term limits for our leaders and since this was never his day job his unique perspective carries persuasion.

If elected, Greg can help keep the Trump train on the tracks for Montana, whose population voted with a margin of over 20% of victory over Hillary last November. Greg would best represent the people, our values and has a proven record of doing just that. Not only has he fought for Montana in Helena behind the scenes for the last ten years, but has given millions of dollars to charities in our local communities. In a few weeks if the polls are correct and he wins by a landslide, Greg will continue to strongly fight for our state, the last best place.

Michael Burns is the Finance Chair for the Valley County Republicans Central Committee.