That power was restored on Tuesday night, when two Democrats and an Independent swept into office over three Republican candidates. The vote came as the board moved from three to five members, a change approved last November by voters dissatisfied with the current board.
November's election was a clear sign that change was on the horizon in the Bitterroot Valley, as voters approved the commission change, an open space bond and an emergency zoning regulation limiting development. Tuesday's results simply cemented that change in place.
Small waves have been lapping at the shore for a while, as the county has grappled with being one of Montana's fastest-growing counties. It was clear that county government needed to step into the fray, but it did so only at a snail's pace, critics charged.
“People get frustrated by how long it takes government to do things, but part of it is the nature of the thing,” said current Commissioner Greg Chilcott, a Republican. “I know people were frustrated by the growth policy, but we felt it really had to be responsive to as many needs as possible, and that took a long time. It's clear that that made some people mad.”
Although the Bitterroot is often thought of as a bastion of conservatism, it's really waffled back and forth over time. As early as the mid-1990s, Democrats ruled the county commission, with Steve Powell and Alan Horsfall constituting the majority. Jack Atthowe, the county's last Democratic commissioner, was appointed to take Horsfall's place when he quit, and a Democrat hasn't been elected since Atthowe retired in 2003 and was replaced by Chilcott.
The valley has had its share of Democratic legislators over the years as well, but the trend lately has been solidly conservative in the land of Lee Metcalf.
Most recently, county government has been firmly entrenched with the Grand Old Party. Only two Democrats, County Attorney George Corn and Treasurer Joanne Johnson, hold county office, and none of the county's current legislative delegation are Democrats.
And yet on Tuesday night, the strangest of things happened. Two Democrats, Kathleen Driscoll and Jim Rokosch, soundly defeated their Republican foes, Carolyn Weisbecker and Dave Hurtt, respectively. Topping that, Independent Carlotta Grandstaff trounced incumbent Commissioner Howard Lyons, a Darby-area Republican who was just elected last November.
“What we've seen here is people in this valley have kind of stepped back and taken stock of what's happening here,” said Rokosch. “People decided they wanted to take back some control over the communities, and they realized that that had been slipping away.”
Although Grandstaff ran as an Independent, she is essentially a Democrat who will likely side with Driscoll and Rokosch rather than the other commissioners, Republicans Alan Thompson and Chilcott. The new commissioners will be sworn into office on June 13, and Chilcott said June 14 is likely to be a very different day doing the county's business.
“It's definitely going to be interesting,” he said. “But I do think anybody that runs for commissioner is doing it because they have the county's best interests at heart, so I don't think it will be as difficult as some people think it might be.”
Although growth and development were the central issues in the campaign, two other factors played a major role in Tuesday's election - the on-the-job implosion of Howard Lyons and a series of what Corn called “desperately idiotic” ads from the Ravalli County Republican Central Committee.
Within months of being sworn in, Lyons found himself embroiled in a problem of his own making. In April, during a one-on-one meeting with the county's floodplain administrator, Laura Hendrix, Lyons told her that she needed to “watch your back” because she had angered the development community. Hendrix filed a personnel grievance, which was upheld by the commissioners, then filed a lawsuit.
Lyons himself said on Tuesday that those problems damaged his re-election bid, and another Republican candidate said Lyons' troubles made it difficult on his fellow Republicans.
The ads, which started running the Thursday before the election, were a series of polarizing set pieces that depicted a couple talking about the damage that could be done by “liberal tree huggers” and by Missoula-style planning. One of the ads directly attacked Grandstaff and her husband, who has a drug conviction in his past.
The ads - which many candidates said seemed to target a Bitterroot Valley that existed maybe 30 years ago - angered many, including Republicans. Chris Hoffman, the county's Republican sheriff, was so incensed that he called Grandstaff to apologize and the Ravalli Republic to talk about his displeasure.
“The Republican Central Committee does not speak for me when they choose to reduce local politics to this level,” Hoffman told the newspaper.
Said Corn: “Those ads enraged so many people. They were simplistic and mean-spirited. What people were interested in was ideas, and the Republican Party gave them these desperately idiotic ads. It's nice when ideas matter.”
It will be very different, though. All three of the new commissioners have been extensively involved in growth issues over the past few years, and they said on Tuesday that the county's inability to come to terms with its rapid development was a central reason for their election.
“It seems to me the current commissioners have been ineffective at dealing with growth and development and subdivisions, and I think the results show that people want them to do more,” said Driscoll, a Realtor who beat Carolyn Weisbecker, a former real estate agent.
What Driscoll means, of course, is that the new commission will be much more likely to look at zoning as a solution to Ravalli County's rapid development. Although the current commission often talks about zoning, little has been done and even the county's long-awaited growth policy - which simply makes recommendations - was watered down when push came to shove.
“For a long time, the commissioners have listened to a select group of people,” said Grandstaff. “Those people have been interested in development. Now it's going to be a time when the commission will listen to everybody, but especially to some of the people who haven't been listened to in the past.”
Corn, Chilcott and Stewart Brandborg, the crusty conservationist who led a bipartisan coalition that worked to elect Grandstaff, Driscoll and Rokosch, agreed that Tuesday's election wasn't necessarily the triumph of partisan Democratic politics.
“I think what you had here was votes for individuals rather than parties,” said Corn. “People were looking for ideas and they didn't find many from the Republicans, who really just repeated the same things the commissioners have been saying for years. The problem for them is that the commissioners were out of step with the valley, and by that I mean the people who live here, not just Democrats.”
Chilcott agreed.
“This election was really about an issue, and that issue was growth,” he said. “I personally feel that the commissioners have been working very hard on this, but there's a perception out there with some folks that we haven't.”
The candidates probably worked themselves to wit's end during the campaign, but they likely didn't spend much more time on their races than Brandborg did. Over the past five years, Brandborg and his organization, Bitterrooters for Planning, have been central figures in the valley-wide discussion about growth and development.
Although the commissioners have often complained that they don't have the legal tools they need to fully address development, Brandborg came to see a failure of will and ideology instead of a failure of tools. Because of that, he forged a bipartisan coalition of citizens to work on the commission race.
“I gave my life's blood to this over the past three months, so it's a happy day in Ravalli County,” he said. “But it's not because we elected a bunch of Democrats. It's because people all over the valley came together and said they wanted to protect the good things we have here - our farms, our landscapes, our homes, our economy. We joined together on behalf of goals that we can all be fully committed to.”
Brandborg said even the new commission could fail if it fails to understand that quality of life in the Bitterroot Valley is not a partisan issue.
“This isn't a partisan issue now and it can't be a partisan issue in the future,” he said. “We need to bring an end to the intolerable polarization that brings us into conflict. We need to work to reach out to everybody, from the farmers to the developers to the conservationists and regular homeowners. The things that we have at stake are critical to everyone.”
Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or at mmoore@missoulian.com
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