Letters to the editor March 7

Nonpartisan primary

Marc Racioct and Bob Brown’s proposal for a nonpartisan primary would be a mistake. Electing representatives in this manner would be no different than our current judicial elections.

Many liberal judges in Montana have slipped into office under cover of the nonpartisan label. At least partisan races offer some assurance to voters that their candidates believe in most of their values. Nonpartisan primary elections would grant too much power and influence to an already biased media. This proposal is a charade that would relegate the Republican Party to permanent minority status.

History shows that weak Republicans working with Democrats have hurt the country by shipping American jobs overseas, keeping us dependent on foreign energy, transferring American wealth through foreign aid, refusing to stop mass migration, building a surveillance state, supporting undeclared wars while building and funding international organizations that threaten American sovereignty.

Because of failed Democrat policies, the Republican Party is experiencing incredible growth. We are becoming the party of the working class with an America first foreign policy. Why would we even consider proposals that would knee cap the freedom movement by splitting the vote? Is their hatred for President Trump more important than an independent sovereign United States?

— Ed Regan, Townsend

Gianforte’s hunts

Our iniquitous governor has established himself as a great white predator slayer during the past year. Last season he shot a trapped Yellowstone wolf, and this season a treed Yellowstone mountain lion.

Walking up and shooting a trapped or treed animal is not exactly what constitutes hunting’s fair chase ethic. As stated, the fairness is in the chase, not in the trigger-pulling. But maybe this is more about the governor’s photo-ops.

Additionally, the wolf and the lion were both wearing radio-collars. These animals were collared (at great expense) so that their locations could be documented by wildlife biologists as part of an approved wildlife study. Is it possible that the biologists weren’t the only ones that knew the locations of these wild creatures?

I mean, he is a governor with access to many databases that contain sensitive wildlife information, like transmitter frequencies. Many houndsmen place radio-collars on their dogs, and carry radio-receivers, so they can find them. Receivers are also what biologists use to track their research animals.

Is this some great coincidence? I would hope that no houndsman would ever entertain such an idea.

Maybe next year the governor can shoot a collared moose, or maybe a collared bighorn. He’s got the connections and evidently much to prove. When will this governor realize that hunting is so much more than the kill shot or the photo-op?

—Rick Yates, Whitefish

Fuller’s performance

With regard to the most recent letter by Rep. John Fuller and his performance at the Flathead library board meeting, while I am impressed by the consistency of his messaging, I am appalled by its content.

At the meeting he commended a board which has done nothing but undermine the institution they are charged with protecting, supporting and growing.

Equally, while being an elected member of the Montana Legislature, he does nothing but obfuscate the institution’s purpose of legislating for the benefit of Montanans. And, even more dangerously, he works to undermine the very Constitution which he has sworn to protect in service to those who elected him. Shame, shame!

Let us hope that come the November election, if he has not resigned in disgrace before that, the voters remember his performances and his utterances and keep him from returning to office.

— Ron Gerson, Kalispell