Virginia was the soft opening for our targeted political fundraising for this cycle. Next up is Montana, where I hope we can help get Four Directions back on the ground in Montana! (This will be our last political fundraiser of 2023, but we’ll get started again toward the end of January or early February.)
Why Montana / Four Directions for our first boots on the ground for 2024?
Montana is hardly a swing state, is it? But the conservative state has elected Democrat Jon Tester to the Senate three times, starting in 2006. Unfortunately, in 2024, Tester is running what looks to be his toughest race yet!
So while it’s not a swing state, it is a strategic choice – this is is a seat we have to hold! And as always, we feel that boots on the ground + helping the Native population use their voice in the election + supporting Four Directions, which has a most excellent track record in helping turn out the native vote, isn’t just a win-win, it’s a win-win-win.
Plus they nearly always can pull off a double-match for us, and who doesn’t love a double-match? So I say we count that as a 4th win! (But no guarantees on the double-match until I hear back from Bret.)
The Native American vote is critical. According to the Montana Office of Public Instruction, Montana is home to approximately 78,000 people of Native American heritage, constituting 6.5% of the 1,100,000 total population of this sparsely-settled state.
According to the High Country News, the Native vote has thrice helped put Jon Tester over the top:
In Montana, though the state went for Trump overall, counties overlapping with the reservations of the Blackfeet Nation, Fort Belknap Tribes, the Crow Tribe and Northern Cheyenne Tribe went blue. The divides were often stark; Glacier County, encompassed by the Blackfeet Nation, went for Biden by 64%, the highest in the entire state, while the neighboring county voted for Trump by 75%. The Native vote in Montana has made the difference before, when Indigenous voters helped Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat who has advocated for Indian Country in legislation regarding water settlements, missing and murdered Indigenous women, and tribal recognition, get elected the last three terms in often-close races.
Four Directions had boots on the ground operations in Montana in 2012 and 2014 – and had some hard-fought litigation success on behalf of one of the Nations – but in the past few years they have not been active in the state. I’ll let Bret & OJ explain why in the zoom, lest I get any of the details wrong.
Recently OJ (OJ Semans) had a conversation with Marvin Weatherwax – a leader of the Blackfeet tribe and Chairman of the Coalition of Large Tribes – and made a request to OJ:
Four Directions is needed in Montana to help our Tribes with the Native Vote in 2024, they proved they can make our voices heard, and I support them in doing so.
Can we help get them the early money they need now in order to get their ground operations up and running well before the 2024 election? We are getting a bit of a late start in our fundraising this year (no one’s fault but my own!), but I’m talking with a couple of our amazing Balloon Juice Angels, and each one has offered up to $5,000 for their angel matches!
We’ve set a goal of $25,000 to kickstart the Four Directions return to Montana. They are working on finding a double-match for us, and we’ll hear about how that’s going at the zoom on Thursday.
On the zoom, we will no doubt learn more about Four Direction’s push into Montana. If there is time, they can also talk about the other states they are focusing on in 2024. No surprise – when we talked, our list of key states to focus on this year matched theirs, and theirs matched ours!
To RSVP for the zoom, please send me an email message, so I can send you the zoom link for Thursday.
*For a deeper dive into Montana’s 12 Nations and their history and culture, you can check out the Montana government study referenced above: “Montana Indians: Their History and Location.”
Zoom With Four Directions Set for Thursday at 7 pm ETPost + Comments (31)