For those of us who spent our early adulthood listening to iconic Mission Mountain tunes and attending the Aber Day keggers in Missoula, Quist was and remains one of the primary “voices of Montana.” His songs were about our lives, our loves and our dreams. They brought us joy and epitomized the hopeful attitude following the end of the Vietnam War and the blooming of a more rational, kind and peaceful future.

But Bozeman entrepreneur Greg Gianforte, with bags of personal money and hundreds of thousands from out-of-state sources, is trying to convince us that, somehow, we have been mistaken about Quist and he is simply not representative of Montana’s populace. As Gianforte said in his own words, “we do not need to send Nancy Pelosi a court musician who wants to socialize medicine” and is an “out-of-touch liberal.”

Really, Mr. Gianforte? You wouldn’t want to put some of that hard cash on the table to back a bet between whether Montana-born and -raised Rob Quist knows more – and more about – Montanans than do you? Or that his actual knowledge of Montanans and Montana’s way of life is vastly more informed than your ideologically driven right-wing view from a perch at the top of the millionaires’ pile?