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. ------------ Winter, 'ready on day one,' wants to bring 'progressive populist' view to Washington, D.C. – Daily Montanan ['Keila Szpaller', 'More From Author', '- May'] Date: 2022-05-27 00:00:00 Tom Winter has at least one clear disadvantage and one clear advantage in his bid to land the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives in Montana’s new western district. On the down side, the former state lawmaker has raised the least amount of money among his competitors. As of May 18, Winter had raised just $98,545 on the cusp of the primary, according to the most recent report. Missoula lawyer Monica Tranel, on the other hand, has raised nearly 10 times that amount, $882,230, and Bozeman nonprofit executive Cora Neumann has raised $1.33 million. Political analyst Lee Banville said Winter, who is based in Polson, hasn’t had as much success pulling in either money or endorsements, but he has one clear strength in the race: Winter has actually done the job of legislating already. Banville, a journalism professor at the University of Montana, said Winter can argue that he has the practical experience to step into the job and be an effective legislator because he did the work at the Montana Legislature and carved out a voice. “It’s an argument that I’m ready on day one,” Banville said. 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 Winter’s Q&A with Montana Public Radio here. Read details on policy positions from the Montana Free Press here. Read his issues page here. In 2019, Winter represented House District 96, and he sponsored more than 20 bills that year. Four of them became law, including one that revised unemployment eligibility for military members and one that updated accounting terminology. The winner of the Democratic primary is likely to face former Trump Administration Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who also previously served in Congress. Zinke has a series of ethics complaints filed against him, but he won a U.S. House race by 16 points in 2016. As part of his own pitch that he is the candidate to take on a Republican in November, Winter touts his victory as a state legislator: “We flipped an 11-point Trump district in 2018 by bringing a bold vision to working Montanans.” Soon after winning the seat, Winter announced a run for Congress, and the hard-fought win for the Democrat reverted to Republican control. Winter, though, said it isn’t fair to criticize him for wanting to do even more for Montanans. “I should not be penalized for having won an election and then trying to do better for my constituents,” he said. As for dollars, Winter bristles at questions about fundraising given that a million people have died of COVID-19 in the United States and people can’t find places to live. He said the dollars don’t matter much until after the primary, but he figures there’s a good reason he’s not pulling in the big bucks either. He said he’s a champion for the working person, a “progressive populist,” and he wants rich people and corporations to pay more in taxes. He has been explicit about it — his website says “Billionaires and their corporations have corrupted our politics, broken our government and set us against one another” — and he said his approach has consequences. “People who believe what I believe are not welcome in the drawing rooms of the billionaires and millionaires,” Winter said. “Corporations do not like us and our viewpoints.” Winter previously ran Interim Health Care with his mom to bring home-based health care to help people transition out of the hospital, according to an earlier story from MTN news. He said people deserve to have health care, housing, child care, and protection from climate change and the dangers it presents for Montanans who guide or fish or grow crops. He pounds the pavement with a belief that his message will resonate with Montanans regardless of their politics. “It’s becoming less and less radical, and we are trying to make it less radical,” Winter said. He said he doesn’t believe some issues are partisan after knocking on doors and talking to people across the spectrum who he said want universal health care and want women to have the right to an abortion. Winter, who said at 35 he’s the youngest candidate and can relate to the struggles of working people, also takes aim at government at every level. He said the federal government has tools at its disposal that will help working people, but he also points to some local governments as throwing up barriers to protect “a small landed class of the wealthy” as well. “Our campaign is on record saying certain cities in the state of Montana — and I am willing to make enemies … — are starting to act as if they are gated communities,” Winter said. Although the bills died, he tried as a legislator to address housing on a couple of fronts. He sponsored one piece of legislation that he said on his website it would have “zero’d out property taxes on the middle class through an innovative taxation mechanism.” He wanted to tax extra on second homes that were million dollar properties. Winter also tried to pass a law to help tenants in mobile homes, who he said “have been treated like second class citizens.” The bill, which would have put requirements on property owners, didn’t get traction, and in Helena, Winter said he ran into pushback from both Democrats and Republicans. “It reminded me how much the government is not reflective of the will of the people,” Winter said. In general, Winter said his campaign is about fighting for the things that people believe they deserve, such as access to health care. He also speaks about inequities and inequality, a problem he sees even in his own work with broadband, given rural areas and Native American reservations are more in need of broadband. He’ll do in Congress what he said he tried to do in the Montana Legislature, and that’s fight for issues constituents tell him are important. For example, he wasn’t ever personally compelled to legalize recreational marijuana, he said, but he sponsored a bill in 2019 to do so because he heard people say it was something the government should do. One year later, Montanans themselves approved the idea at the ballot box. “What I was trying to do was trying to represent my constituents faithfully,” Winter said. [END] [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2022/05/27/winter-ready-on-day-one-wants-to-bring-progressive-populist-view-to-washington-d-c/ 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/