CNN - Big Sky Battle: The Singer vs The Millionaire

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By Lauren Fox, CNN

Hamilton, Montana (CNN)Rob Quist, a 69-year-old singer songwriter-turned-Democratic congressional candidate, is delivering his stump speech on a trailer stage in a backyard in rural Ravalli County to a crowd that is a bit bigger than what one might expect in a place that voted by nearly 40 points in November to elect President Donald Trump .

"It's like the sleeping giant has awoken," Quist said looking into the audience. "It's truly amazing."

Quist waits for a campaign aide to fetch his guitar so he can perform his self-composed campaign song. In classic Quist form, he tells a story you wouldn't expect from a politician about skinny dipping.
"The rule is, you know, I always try to jump into the water someplace in Western Montana before the first of June," he said. "We were hiking up one of these creeks up here and I realized it was the last day of May so I shucked off all my clothes. You can't dabble your toe in because if you do, you chicken out. So in I went and all of a sudden it was like my whole body contorted. I thought I was going to have a heart attack right there. It was definitely a baptism."
His audience roars in laughter.

This is Trump country through and through, but on a 45-degree Sunday evening in April more than 100 supporters are standing around bonfires, hopeful that Quist could win the special election to replace Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and send a warning shot to Washington that Democrats -- even in rural Republican strongholds where they haven't won a House seat in two decades -- are mobilized against the President.
"I have always had opinions, but until this Trump election, I've never done anything," said Joni Lubke, a 39-year-old Hamilton resident. "The Trump situation really fired me up because I can't stand the hatred that's been coming out from it. I just want to speak up for those people who don't have voices. … Quist just feels like he's one of us."
Kierstin Schmitt, a 47-year-old from just outside Hamilton said her involvement in the Quist campaign has a lot to do with the fact Trump won too.

"It was a big reminder that the reason why he won was partially because we were a bit complacent with (President Barack) Obama in office and thought someone had our interests in mind," she said. "That's not the case anymore."

In the wake of a Kansas special election where the Democrat outperformed expectations and another special in Georgia next week where the Democrat is within striking distance, there are real opportunities for Democrats in Montana.

Democrats are hopeful that the populist streak that catapulted Trump to the White House in November and elevated independent Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary may boost their unorthodox candidate, a banjo player and former member of the Montana-famous Mission Mountain Wood Band who is prone to quoting Hemmingway, wearing the same shirt two-days in a row on the campaign trail and reciting his own poetry on the stump.

Quist, who looks like he rode straight out of a 1970s-era Western, has a thick black mustache, white cowboy hat and silk handkerchief hanging from his neck. He's making a play for communities like Hamilton, places he says aren't that unlike the town of Cut Bank, where he grew up on the highline, a rural corner of the state that isn't always frequented by Democratic politicians.

DONALD TRUMP JR. COMING TO CAMPAIGN.
Quist is facing a formidable opponent: Bozeman-based Republican Greg Gianforte, a tech entrepreneur and multi-millionaire who sold his self-made company RightNow Technologies to Oracle in 2012.
"He's got a track record of getting things done and problem solving," said Patrick Johnson, a Helena resident who came to see Gianforte speak.
"Anything can happen, but boy, we got a good candidate," said Bridget Johnson, a 75-year-old Helena resident and another Gianforte supporter.
Gianforte has deep pockets and high name recognition after mounting an unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in 2016. He's estimated to have spent more than $5.1 million of his own money on the governor's race and has outraised Quist $1.6 million to just shy of $1 million in the first quarter, which ended March 31.
Gianforte also is expected to get a boost from the National Republican Congressional Committee's campaign arm expected to get into the race Friday with its first $148,000 ad buy and Donald Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. expected to campaign for Gianforte throughout the state next week.
Making matters even tougher for Quist is that the special election is on a Thursday in May just before Memorial Day weekend, a factor that some worry could cripple Democratic turnout. Gov. Steve Bullock -- a Democrat -- is fighting to make the election a mail-in ballot, but he's up against a Republican state legislature.
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Still, Montanans are known to have an independent streak. Trump won the state by more than 20 points in November and on the same night, Montanans re-elected Bullock.
HUNTING TROPHIES AND PUBLIC LANDS
At his home in Bozeman -- the same one where Gianforte started RightNow Technologies decades ago with just $5,000 -- Gianforte points out the floor to ceiling collection of framed family photos he keeps of backcountry camping trips and hunting expeditions. In a game room, he proudly exhibits the hunting trophies he's shot over the years. An elevated white mountain goat greets visitors in the entry way along with a standing black bear Gianforte shot with his own bow and arrow.
Democrats have tried to cast Gianforte -- a 24-year Montana resident -- as a disconnected New Jersey outsider, a dangerous label in a state where residents prize deep roots above all else.
"We made the decision to start the business here," Gianforte said. "We made the decision to raise our family here."
But even some Republican voters are skeptical of Gianforte's wealth and willingness to run for governor in 2016, fail and then turn around and run for the open congressional job so soon.
"I like the guy with the cowboy hat, but he's a Democrat," said life-long Republican voter Bob Hackel, a 35-year resident of Hamilton. "I don't like the millionaire because he's just wishy washy. He wants either to be governor or he wants to be this or wants to be that. He doesn't know what he wants. He just wants something."
Linda Vaughey, a Helena resident and Gianforte supporter, said that Republicans need to celebrate Gianforte's success not ridicule his ambition.
"His strengths are in his background, his ability to problem solve," Vaughey said. "He started out with nothing and so in this very complicated, complex world we're living in who would you rather have someone who doesn't know how to get ahead?"
Attacks against Gianforte have also included charges his family's foundation donated exhibits to a creationist dinosaur museum in Glendive that bills itself as the "the largest dinosaur and fossil museum in the context of biblical history."
When asked about his donation, Gianforte said his foundation donates to all kinds of causes, but in this case "there was an opportunity to do an economic development project in Glendive. And we supported it."
"A FIGHT FOR THE SOUL OF MONTANA'
Democrats also argue that Gianforte is an enemy of public lands. It was a common refrain in the governor's race that Gianforte tried to block access to public lands after the Republican filed a lawsuit in 2009 over an easement boundary on a river near his house.
It's "a fight for the soul of Montana," Quist often tells voters on the stump.
Gianforte argues the lawsuit was little more than a misunderstanding in which he -- like a lot of Americans -- had a disagreement with a government agency. Gianforte said he filed the lawsuit against Montana Fish and Wildlife after spending 18 months writing letters and calling the agency to come out to the property to resolve a surveying issue.

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