“There was no doubt in anybody's mind in the audience what this was,” said Larry Anderson, a Great Falls lawyer who attended a July meeting of the American Association for Justice, formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers for America, where Schweitzer was speaker.
“It was just fun,” Anderson said. “It was just Brian poking fun at the caricature of Montana and poking fun at the caricature of Butte and poking fun at outsiders. That's what he was doing.”
Anderson said audio recordings of the speech, which are now widely available on Montana newspapers' Web sites, fail to capture the audience's overall reaction to the governor. People knew the speech was entertainment, he said. There was no confusion.
“Would you think Brian would be bragging about fixing an election to 3,000 lawyers?” Anderson said, adding that people now upset about the speech “lack a sense of humor.”
In the speech, Schweitzer suggested he influenced the outcome of the 2006 Senate election, in which Democratic State Sen. Jon Tester narrowly defeated incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns. Schweitzer, who has since apologized for the remarks, suggested tribal police bullied out-of-state Republican poll watchers away from Democratic-leaning tribal polling places, that he strong-armed the media into calling the race for Tester and that he encouraged election officials in Democratic Butte-Silver Bow County to potentially tamper with the results.
Anderson also said he is a Democrat and his wife, Nancy, was a delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Anderson has donated $250 to Schweitzer's re-election campaign, according to the Helena-based Institute for Money and Politics, which tracks campaign donations in statewide races.
Schweitzer appointed Anderson to sit on the five-member Montana Equity Capital Investment Board.
In other developments, Democratic Attorney General Mike McGrath declined an invitation Thursday by both a citizen and Montana Secretary of State Brad Johnson to investigate the alleged elections tampering of which Schweitzer spoke.
But in an ironic twist Friday, the attorney general's office produced documents showing that McGrath's lawyers successfully defended Johnson two years ago in an elections fraud case alleging Johnson presided over an election fraught with some of the same misconduct to which Schweitzer referred.
The case deals with the dismissal of a poll observer from an American Indian polling place. That information, which came out Thursday, has been used by some to suggest Schweitzer may not have been entirely kidding when he made his remarks.
In the case, a poll observer named Terry Coddens said he was asked to leave a Crow Agency polling place before he was allowed to see any of the votes counted and that the ballot boxes were not secured.
State law stipulates poll observers may watch the counting and processing of votes.
Coddens, along with other Big Horn County residents and groups called the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance and the Montana Citizens Rights Alliance sued Johnson, one of his deputies and Cyndy Maxwell, clerk and recorder for Big Horn County, in federal court.
The groups maintained that Coddens' dismissal, along with the report of a woman who voted twice in the county, were part of broader scheme that violated the federal Voting Rights Act, along with the U.S. Constitution.
McGrath's lawyers represented Johnson in the case and successfully argued that the incidents did not constitute fraud nor did they violate the Constitution.
U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull dismissed the suit in November 2007.
Brown: Schweitzer should have been OK with probe
By CHARLES S. JOHNSON of the Missoulian State Bureau
HELENA - If Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer truly was joking and didn't tamper with the November 2006 election as he implied in a speech, he should welcome an attorney general's investigation, Republican gubernatorial candidate Roy Brown said Friday.
“If I were governor, I would want a quick and fast investigation,” Brown said at a Capitol press conference. “I would open up everything that I had. I would ask the attorney general to come forward and go ahead and investigate because I would have nothing to hide.”
Earlier this week, a recording and transcript of Schweitzer's speech given to a national trial lawyers group in Philadelphia on July 14 showed him saying that he took some steps to help Democrat Jon Tester unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns in 2006 in a race that was closely watched nationally.
Schweitzer boasted in the speech he had tribal police strong-arm Republican poll watchers off heavily Democratic Indian reservations, tried to tell Butte-Silver Bow County election officials when to release certain vote tallies and tried to pressure the Associated Press to declare Tester the winner before the wire service was prepared to do so.
The governor has since apologized for his comments and said he was just joking in the speech.
On Thursday, Attorney General Mike McGrath, a Democrat, turned down a request by Republican Secretary of State Brad Johnson to investigate the potential elections tampering that Schweitzer mentioned in his speech. McGrath said the citizen complaint that Johnson forwarded, which came from a Bozeman Republican activist, contained “no allegation supported by fact.”
The citizen complaint, filed by Tamara Hall of Bozeman, “is solely based on admittedly intemperate remarks of a speaker trying to be funny,” McGrath said.
Brown said Schweitzer “seems to be hiding behind the attorney general's statement that he will not investigate the situation.”
“If everything is true about what he was saying, if it was just a joke, then why not just invite an investigation so we get this taken care of?” Brown said.
The Republican candidate said he hopes the allegations against Schweitzer aren't true, “but I have to tell you the election in Montana is not a joke.”
“His comments were demeaning to Native Americans, they were demeaning to the Butte election office and they were demeaning to Montana as a whole,” Brown said.
In response, Schweitzer's campaign manager, Harper Lawson, accused Brown of trying to make political hay.
“The state's chief law enforcement agent - the attorney general - looked at the issue and made a public decision that this complaint was based on politics, not facts,” Lawson said. “Undoubtedly, the people who want to politicize the issue are crying foul. Those who realize that it was nothing more than an unfortunate joke have moved on.”
On stage
Montana's gubernatorial candidates will be in Missoula on Monday night for their first debate of the campaign season. Roy Brown, Stan Jones and Brian Schweitzer will meet at 7 p.m. in the Montana Theatre on the University of Montana campus.
The debate is open to all, and will also be carried live on Missoulian.com, Montana Public Television, Montana Public Radio and Yellowstone Public Radio.
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Jumbledthot wrote on Sep 13, 2008 5:10 PM:
" How ridiculous does this have to get before people begin using what is left of their brains? He followed a COMEDIAN and was using humor. Something this country better find more of considering the extent of fraud heaped daily on this nations middle class. We need to give up this attitude of "everyone on the other side is my enemy" routine and get over it. We have plenty to do to fix this mess and it has nothing to do with this silly subject.Grow up and work together respectfully as Americans as our grandparents and parents did or this nation will continue our rapid circling of the drain. "
carl d nassif wrote on Sep 13, 2008 1:17 AM: