Big sky greeens - Green Party forms in Montana

Progressive, The, June, 2002 by Dan Laidman

It is a chilly March evening and the Green Party of Butte, Montana, is clustered around one end of an enormous conference table. This is its third-ever meeting, and the party is six members strong. They are talking about adopting the "Ten Key Values," a requirement for officially joining the newly formed Montana state Green Party. Bob Bassett, a gray-bearded sixty-one-year-old who works for Head Start and just finished writing a science fiction novel, shuffles some of the papers being passed around the table and looks up at his comrades.

"I've read the national party platform, and a lot of it is pie in the sky," he says. "Frankly, from my point of view, some of that stuff is too far out there."

Mary Kay Craig, a longtime environmental and labor activist and the group's secretary/treasurer, nods and shrugs.

"It's too idealistic," she agrees. "But then it gets back to why I'm being idealistic by joining this instead of staying with the Democratic Party." There is a burst of debate about military spending and other hot topics on the Green platform, and then Craig calls the meeting back to order. The next point of discussion is her report about the state Green Party electronic discussion list. "The state party saw that three people are running from Butte-Silver Bow," Craig says, smiling. "They just think that's the coolest thing in the world."

Ralph Nader took 6 percent of the vote in Montana in 2000, giving the Green Party a ballot line and inspiring disenchanted progressives throughout the state. In the last year, a state Green Party has taken shape, and regional chapters have sprung up in six counties. The largest chapters, not surprisingly, are in Missoula, home of the University of Montana, and Bozeman, home of Montana State University. While the stereotype of the prototypical Green being an earnest college student may be unfair on a national level, it is more or less true in states like Montana. The Green Party is new here, and so it has caught on most strongly with those new to politics themselves.

The Silver Bow County chapter, with a core of older members steeped in years of Democratic Party activism, is an exception. The Butte Greens are closer in age and experience to Ralph Nader himself than to his youthful followers. Alienated by the rightward tilt of the Democratic Party and by the increasingly distant nature of modern mass media politics, they have jumped ship and gone Green.

And they have done so in an unlikely setting. Unlike Missoula or Bozeman, each a college town that makes you feel like you're in a cosmopolitan mountain oasis, Butte is a relentlessly antique place that is thoroughly saturated by its industrial past. From the street names to the historic buildings to the giant polluted pit just outside of town, Butte always reminds you that it is America's quintessential mining town. Butte has a history of labor triumphs and tumult--most notoriously the lynching of Industrial Workers of the World activist Frank Little in 1917--and the area remains solidly Democratic. However, Butte politicians tend to be old-school labor Democrats who are hostile to environmentalists, the traditional Green Party base.

Against this backdrop, the Silver Bow County Greens are pushing forward. While most of the group focuses on recruiting new members (nearly 1,000 people voted for Nader in Silver Bow County in 2000, so they know people are out there), one of them has his sights set higher. Bob Kelleher, a Butte lawyer, is running for the U.S. Senate. Running for office is not new to him--Kelleher has run for just about every possible state and national office over the last forty years--but running as a Green is. A lifelong Democrat, at the age of seventy-eight Kelleher has finally given up on his party.

While there has already been some bad blood between the Silver Bow Greens and their erstwhile Democratic colleagues, Kelleher's candidacy is also creating some friction with other Greens. Though the state party is proud to have the Silver Bow faction to defy stereotypes and show how multigenerational and inclusive the party can be, they have not endorsed Bob Kelleher.

To get to Bob Kelleher's office, you go through a back alley in downtown Butte. Behind a new upscale fast-food restaurant is a steel door with a sheet of paper taped on it. Scrawled at the bottom is "Ring once for Noodles and Wraps, ring twice for Kelleher."

Upstairs, Kelleher's law office looks like someone put an archive of twentieth-century political artifacts in front of a fan and let everything loose. There are yellowing news clippings from Kelleher's campaigns, some framed and some not. Law books and family photos are tucked into every conceivable corner, and papers and file folders are strewn all over the floor. The computer is covered in yellow sticky-notes. Several times during the interview, Kelleher points out photos of himself with prominent Democrats--Ted Kennedy, Tip O'Neill, Lee Metcalf--that are hidden in different corners of the office.

Kelleher himself is easily distracted but very sharp. Dressed in jeans and a worn March of Dimes flannel shirt, he puts Porgy and Bess on the stereo, sits down behind his desk, and talks about being a Harry Truman Democrat.