What’s the old saying in politics – if you’re whining, you’re losing? The Governor has been on the defensive and boy is he touchy – seems like someone isn’t used to being called out for his blatant corruption and self-dealing.
The latest example is the fact that Bullock stacked his coronavirus relief task force with a majority of his own donors – an indisputable fact the Governor has been whining about being criticized for. Now, a local fact checker finds that it is true that Bullock did indeed put 13 donors on his 24-person task force, many of whom stand to benefit from the task force’s recommendations. This is just a plain fact – one that even the task force itself acknowledged in an open letter whining to the Montana press corps about criticism of the Governor’s decision to leverage the pandemic to pay back his donors.
What’s also true? Bullock has been dragging his feet to get much-needed aid to small businesses and local governments around the state of Montana. Fact checking the statement that only 13% of federal aid funds (that Steve Daines procured for the state) had been distributed by the end of July, local fact checkers write: “This claim from the Senate Leadership Fund ad is a true statement.”
Leveraging the pandemic to pay back Bullock’s political donors is a gross misuse of his office, but we’re only just getting started. If he’s already this spun up about factual criticisms of his record, the next couple months are not going to be fun for Steve Bullock.