Hankinson has testified at every legislative session since 1999. He drafted health care legislation carried by Sen. Carolyn Squires, D-Missoula, during the 2007 session. And he's served on one of the governor's advisory councils.
Now Hankinson has mailed campaign literature to thousands of residents living in House District 91, a horseshoe-shaped district that stretches from Lolo to Potomac and Clinton.
These are the limitations of a quadriplegic.
Confined to a wheelchair since age 11, Hankinson suffers from muscular dystrophy, a disease that weakens the muscles.
This is Hankinson's first time running for office. He is challenging incumbent Rep. Tim Furey, D-Piltzville, who is also an advocate for those with disabilities. Furey is director of development at Opportunity Resources, Inc., and has spent his entire career serving thousands of people with physical and developmental disabilities.
“I really respect Dustin,” Furey said. “It's tremendous that he's doing this.”
It's not for love of politics or a desire to give back to society that Hankinson is running for the state House. It's the opposite. He's angry and frustrated.
“The disabled community is tired of going to the state and asking for them to support us,” said Hankinson, sitting at a cafe in East Missoula. “I've tried every other way to fix the system and it doesn't work. The only way to accomplish what we want is to be at the table.”
It was a rainy Wednesday evening when Hankinson, his common-law wife Theresa Martinosky and roommate Mark Boatman walked and wheeled their way through a neighborhood in East Missoula. Chain-link fences barricaded nearly every home on the block. Steps or a barking dog guarded the front doors.
Martinosky, 48, did the knocking and talking.
If she can introduce herself, point to Hankinson, spit out that the primary is June 3 and the location of the neighborhood's polling place in the 15 seconds before many people shut the door, Martinosky considers the visit a success.
“Some people last night seemed more engaged and weren't in such a hurry to shut the door,” she said.
Hankinson hangs back at the end of the driveway. No one comes out to greet him.
“That's how 90 percent of these things go,” he said. “That's as close as I get.”
Hankinson began his fight for disability rights as a student at the University of Montana.
A math class he took required students to use specialized software in a second-floor computer lab, which was not accessible to him. It took some persuading to get the professor to set up a computer station on the first floor, Hankinson said. Even then, he was forced to finish assignments independently while the rest of the students worked in pairs.
Since then, Hankinson has served as a member of a 12-person steering committee helping the state create a new Medicaid waiver so people like himself have more direct control over the services they receive.
Hankinson also served on the Governor's Disability Advisory Council for two years. The group advised the state on how to best implement the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Sixty percent of its voting members are people with disabilities.
In 2007, Hankinson wrote a bill carried by Squires to allow people with disabilities living in an institution to more easily transfer into home-based care.
It's legislation that hit close to home.
Several years ago, Hankinson rescued his friend and now roommate, Boatman, who is also a quadriplegic, from a nursing home in North Dakota. Before the age of 30, the state forced Boatman into a nursing home. They said he needed more specialized supervision.
He lived there unwillingly for four years before he met Hankinson through an online support group for people with ventilators. It didn't happen overnight, but the two concocted a plan to bring Boatman to Montana.
Today, Hankinson, Boatman and Martinosky live together with six pugs. Martinosky is the caretaker for both men. And though she wears a shiny gold ring on her ring finger, Martinosky and Hankinson can't afford to wed. Her meager income would cost him his Supplemental Security Income, he said.
“We are married in spirit,” he said.
In May, Boatman completed his first year at the University of Montana and plans to apply to the School of Journalism next year.
“We've been packaged away too long,” Hankinson said. “We deserve to build a life where we want to live.”
Hankinson's run for the Legislature comes less than five years after nearly dying. His deteriorating body caught up to him in 2003 when a weak diaphragm prohibited him from releasing carbon dioxide when breathing, causing memory loss and loss of consciousness.
“I was being poisoned by my own carbon dioxide,” he said.
Hankinson received a non-invasive ventilator after that. He remembers six days out of that entire year.
That's partly why Hankinson never graduated from the university. He's 25 credits short. After that, advocating for those with disabilities became his top priority.
Hankinson doesn't want a handout and doesn't want sympathy.
“In the end, all we want is the ability to be ordinary,” he said. “To have the chance that everyone else has.”
That's why he's running for HD 91, one door at a time.
Reporter Chelsi Moy can be reached at 523-5260 or at chelsi.moy@missoulian.com.
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)