Brown, the Republican candidate for governor, is his party's door-to-door guru. He teaches “Doorbelling 101” to GOP candidates.
In his first race for the state Legislature from Billings in 1998, Brown went door to door to each home four times, knocking on a total of 15,000 doors. It helped him narrowly win in a Democratic-leaning House district.
“Hi there, guy up in the tree,” Brown says, with a laugh. “I'm Roy Brown, and I'm running for governor.”
This huge state is too far-flung for statewide candidates to spend much time on the doors, and Brown doesn't. Instead, they rely on fundraising, statewide organization, advertising and news coverage to get their message out.
Yet on all of these other fronts, Brown trails Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who's no slouch at campaigning either. Virtually anything a sitting governor says makes news, putting a challenger at a disadvantage.
By early last month, Brown had put 55,000 miles on his brown Chevy Silverado pickup since last November driving around Montana. Or as he puts it, “I figured I've been around the world twice, and never left Montana.” His wife, Kim, does much of the driving so he can make fundraising calls.
Earlier that day in Kalispell, Brown finds plenty of support working the breakfast tables at Sykes Grocery & Market, where a cup of coffee still costs a dime.
A few already know Brown and back him enthusiastically.
“He's got a lot of very strong support up here,” says Linda Tutvedt, whose husband, Bruce, is a Republican running for the Legislature. “He's a very real person, and that's very important to us. You get into politics, and you see plastic.”
Others at Sykes don't know Brown. But he'll get their votes for one reason - they don't like Schweitzer, who previously lived in the Flathead Valley, one of Montana's largest Republican bastions.
“I think it's time for a change,” says Doug Wise, Sykes' owner. “I knew the other guy pretty good. I thought he was kind of a lyin' bastard.”
Over at the Kalispell Farmers Market, Bernie Onsager, who sells birdhouses, also is no Schweitzer fan.
“It's about time we get rid of Schweitzer,” Onsager says. “He's had his fun spending all of our money.”
That evening, there's a fundraiser for Brown on the top of a mountain in a gated community overlooking Whitefish Lake where the property owners have built what appears to be a Forest Service lookout. This one, however, is tricked out with a flat-panel TV, stereo and Internet links.
Host Bick Smith asks Brown about Schweitzer's frequent claims that he's developing energy projects in Montana.
Brown says nearly all of the energy projects that Schweitzer takes credit for were in the works before the Democrat took office in 2005. Although Schweitzer talks a good game about developing energy, he's appointed people to the Board of Environmental Review who have erected roadblocks to stop any projects, Brown says.
In a brief speech, Brown reels off what he would do as governor.
Brown says he would push to eliminate the current
3 percent property tax on business equipment to spur the economy, as he believes previous tax cuts have. He wants ongoing property tax reductions, not one-time refunds like Schweitzer's $400-per-household rebates. He wants to stop big state budget spending increases. He says he would remove barriers and encourage the development of Montana's natural resources, as Wyoming has done, and pump some of the revenue into schools for higher teacher pay and better facilities.
“I'm not for raping and pillaging the state,” Brown says. “I feel like I'm an environmentalist, too.”
Brown has pushed for the same agenda to cut taxes and spur energy development in the Legislature. Business and agricultural lobbying organizations give him high grades, while environmental and union groups rate him poorly.
Brown, 57, was born in Wyoming, the eldest of four children. The family moved to Billings when he was 4. His father owned an energy-testing laboratory now run by Roy Brown's brother and employing 150 people.
Roy Brown graduated from Billings Central High School in 1969. The previous fall, Brown caught a 60-yard touchdown pass to help lead the Rams to a state football championship against Havre.
It was at Billings Central where Roy began dating his future wife, Kim. They married in 1976 and have three children: Katie, 28, who's on a post-doctoral fellowship at Notre Dame; Gillian, 21, a Montana State University-Billings student; and Roy Jr., 20, a Gonzaga University student.
The elder Brown, a petroleum engineering graduate of Montana Tech, put himself through college with summer jobs in the oilfields and sometimes three jobs during the school year.
After graduating in 1974, Brown went to work as a petroleum engineer for eight years for Marathon Oil Co. He started in Cody, Wyo., and was transferred to Findlay, Ohio; Cork, Ireland; London, England; and Cairo, Egypt.
With a 1-year-old daughter in Egypt, the Browns decided to return to the United States. He left Marathon and took a job with a Denver bank evaluating loans to energy companies.
One company he evaluated was in the Shelby area and needed someone to run the business. Brown worked for the owner for a couple of years until it went broke when oil prices plunged.
In the mid-1980s, Brown, with his petroleum engineering background, partnered with another man who had oil rigs and employees on the Hi-Line. Major oil companies were leaving Montana because of high state taxes, so Brown and his partner began buying up properties and working for banks on foreclosed oil properties. They eventually had 40 employees and produced oil in three states.
Tired of nearly a decade of spending 260 days a year away from his family in Billings, Brown sold his share of the oil business in 1994 and returned home. He continued investing in rental properties, and today the Browns own 54 apartments in 10 buildings in Billings.
Democrats and Schweitzer's campaign regularly refer to Brown as “Big Oil Roy.”
“If I was Big Oil, I missed out on all the perks,” Brown says. “This was about as small oil as you could get when I was there. It was some hard-working guys trying to make a living.
“I am proud of the fact that I worked in the oil business. I worked very hard in the oil business and earned a living when times were extremely difficult. I paid my taxes and I paid my employees.”
After selling his oil company interests, Brown decided he wanted to give something back to Montana and ran for the Legislature in 1998. That's where Brown learned the value of campaigning door to door, hitting each house four times.
“The first time, people were suspicious,” Brown recalls. “The second time, I got a little bit of recognition. The third time I went around and I had done some mailings, people said, ‘Oh yeah, I remember you.' The fourth time, they said, ‘Yes, I remember you, Roy. I'm going to vote for you. You don't need to come back again.' ”
He won three more House elections and rose to leadership as a House Republican whip in 2001, House majority leader in 2002-04 and House Republican leader in 2005, when the House was split with 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats.
Doug Mood, a Republican who was House speaker in 2003 and now serves on the Public Service Commission, praises Brown's leadership skills.
“He does very well analytically looking at issues,” Mood says. “It may be slightly below the surface, but he's got a lot of passion.”
State Sen. Dave Wanzenried of Missoula, the House Democratic leader opposite Brown when the chamber was tied in 2005, says Brown was good to work with, even though neither backed away from the principles and views of his respective caucus.
“The tone was one of cooperation,” Wanzenried says. “We were friendly, more collegial than we would have been, had there been a one-vote shift either way. But I think the tone of the session was a lot better than the '03 session and certainly more than '07 session. I think Roy deserves some credit for it.”
Brown has faced tough races before.
In the state's most-watched legislative race in 2006, Brown eked out a slim win in a Billings Senate district over Democrat Margie MacDonald, Schweitzer's former community services director. He won by 138 votes out of more than 7,200 cast.
“I felt like my race was more against Brian Schweitzer than Margie MacDonald,” Brown says, because Schweitzer and Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger campaigned for her.
MacDonald outspent Brown $57,309 to $38,829. Brown believes the Democratic Party and environmental groups spent more than $40,000 in independent expenditures against him, although that's difficult to quantify, while MacDonald said groups including Realtors spent money on Brown's behalf.
“He's a very hard campaigner, a good campaigner, a hard worker,” MacDonald says.
However, MacDonald says, Brown “took umbrage at any kind of critical scrutiny.” She says she told voters that Brown represented himself one way on the doorsteps on issues, such as support for public education, mental health programs and increased access to health care, but voted differently in Helena.
Some political observers have speculated that Brown is running in 2008 to get his name known statewide in preparation for a 2012 race for governor once Schweitzer can't run because of term limits.
Brown insists that isn't the case. He doesn't believe Montana can afford four more years of Schweitzer.
Coming Monday: A look at incumbent Gov. Brian Schweitzer.
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