This story was originally published by Daily Montanan: URL: https://dailymontanan.com This story has not been altered or edited. (C) Daily Montanan. Licensed for re-distribution through Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. ------------ Neumann, 'prolific' fundraiser, public lands advocate, seeks Dem nomination – Daily Montanan ['Keila Szpaller', 'More From Author', '- May'] Date: 2022-05-26 00:00:00 Cora Neumann argues access to public lands — an issue central to her campaign — directly affects families’ health, their well-being and their pocketbooks. “My family relied on wild game. We didn’t have a lot of money,” Neumann said. Neumann, a nonprofit executive and health care expert who lives in Bozeman, notes she helped organize to restore Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, in direct contrast with Republican Ryan Zinke, former Secretary of the Interior under the Trump Administration who recommended shrinking Bears Ears. Zinke is the likely Republican frontrunner in the race for Montana’s new western U.S. House district. Montana is growing, and Neumann said her sense on the campaign trail is Montanans want champions who will fight for them as it does: “So the throughline of my campaign is making sure the growth in Montana benefits Montanans.” This year, Neumann is running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. House against Missoula lawyer Monica Tranel and former state legislator Tom Winter. Zinke, former U.S. House representative, has the highest profile of the GOP candidates, although he also counts a long list of ethics complaints and investigations from his time as secretary. In a political battle in the general election, Neumann points in part to her family history as a factor that gives her an edge over a Republican challenger. She notes difficulties as a child that shaped her. “The reason I got involved in rural health care was because we lost my dad in a lumber mill accident, and if we were closer to good care, he would have survived,” said Neumann, whose nonprofit work also has focused on public lands. Editor’s note: Three candidates are on the ballot for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives in Montana’s western district. The candidates are Cora Neumann, Monica Tranel, and Tom Winter. Read Neumann’s Q&A with Montana Public Radio here. Read details on policy positions from the Montana Free Press here. Read Cora Neumann’s issues page here. She also points to her family’s economic struggles as part of the experience she shares with other Montana families facing hardships. Neumann said she has moved a lot — for her parents’ jobs, her own career, her husband’s work — but she also said her family had to leave Bozeman for economic reasons when she was young. “That was one of the most heartbreaking things that my family went through,” said Neumann, who noted they were finally able to return after 10 years. One of Neumann’s moves took her to California, and the Helena Independent Record reported she sold a house there in 2020. Leading up to the primary, a super PAC called Montanans for Better Congress has spent at least $143,300 to run a television ad supporting Tranel and criticizing Neumann and Zinke for being from California, although Neumann said she’s been trying since the death of her brother in 2006 to return home to Montana and help care for her mom. The super PAC has not filed a report listing its contributors. Although some critics point to the significant California dollars in Neumann’s war chest as a problem, she’s proven to be the most successful Democratic fundraiser in the race, with $1.17 million most recently reported, a little more than twice that of her closest financial rival, Tranel, at $675,153 as of the most recent report. In federal races, out-of-state money plays a role, and in the primary, political analyst Lee Banville has said the Democrats’ experience and personalities also will be a large factor with voters in the western district. Banville said Neumann’s “prolific fundraising” is a strength and sets her up to make the case she can beat Zinke. “She seems to have real organizational capacity,” Banville said. “She can run a campaign. She can raise money. And she’s done a good job of starting to build a grassroots network. Part of the challenge of running a congressional campaign is organization, so she has that sort of capacity.” Neumann, who describes herself as a lifelong Democrat, also points out that 92 percent of her donations are $100 or less, and the bulk of her contributions comes from Montanans. Candidate financial reports include unitemized contributions, bundled together, so specific entries aren’t available in public reports to the Federal Elections Commission. Regardless, Neumann is unapologetic about fundraising because federal campaigns require money. “We’ve just raised double our nearest competitor,” Neumann said. She counts among her endorsements former Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney; House Minority Leader Kim Abbott; Melodee Hanes, wife of former U.S. Ambassador to China and Sen. Max Baucus; and Shelly Fyant, former chair of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. In 2020, Neumann ran for the U.S. Senate primary in Montana before bowing out to endorse former Gov. Steve Bullock, and in May 2020, a couple of months after the governor shut down the state because of the pandemic, she launched We Are Montana, an advocacy project to strengthen rural access to health care and support COVID-19 relief. Neumann, who holds a doctorate in public health and development from the University of Oxford, has had a career with a global footprint. She founded the Global First Ladies Alliance, which her LinkedIn page describes as helping to facilitate collaborations between First Ladies and nearly 30 global institutions. Her LinkedIn page also notes that for 10 months, she served as a senior advisor to the George W. Bush Presidential Center after his presidency for an African First Ladies summit in Tanzania. Throughout her career, Neumann said she’s worked in rural and tribal communities, and the challenges she sees are similar to the ones faced by other communities across the country and globe, such as access to health care. Since 2015, she said she’s worked in the West and Rocky Mountain West. “That’s at the heart of my work, is helping to support leaders on the ground who understand communities best,” Neumann said. “And I believe in rural communities, that is even more important than in a more urban setting because communities that are more remote have to rely on each other.” Neumann said her interest in the work comes from growing up in Montana, where she also got married, as does her attention to economic development: “When families don’t have the finances, when they don’t have their basic needs met, health is forgotten. Health care is often one of the first things to go.” Out of necessity, Montanans are practical, not political, Neumann said. She said she’s worked with rural Republican county commissioners, for instance, on COVID-19. “You don’t lead with politics. You lead with the problems you need to solve.” On the doors, she said housing is the topic that comes up as the biggest challenge: “Housing is the No. 1 pain point I hear from individuals in communities across the entire district,” Neumann said. She said she wants the next generation, like her teenagers, to be able to afford homes in Montana and not struggle to return, as she did. Housing feeds into the economy and even people’s safety, Neumann said, and Montana needs to be able to recruit health workers and firefighters, and there are “levers at the federal level” that Congress can pull. She said she’s excited to bring the Montana perspective on climate change to Washington, D.C., too, since Montana feels tangible impacts in its outdoors and agriculture industries, and has good partners in farmers and ranchers to help solve the problems. “They’re very motivated to help find solutions,” she said. “Their livelihoods are on the line, and our food security and public health is on the line.” [END] [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2022/05/26/neumann-prolific-fundraiser-public-lands-advocate-seeks-dem-nomination/ Content is licensed through Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/