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Quist on a different kind of road tour

Mission Mountain Wood Band co-founder runs for Congress

Musician-turned-Democratic-congressional-hopeful Rob Quist was in Havre Tuesday to visit with and field questions from members of the party’s Hill County Central Committee.

In the past two weeks, Quist said, he has visited with central committees in about 20 cities and towns.

Quist is competing against Democratic state Reps. Amanda Curtis of Butte and Kelly McCarthy of Billings to be the Democratic candidate in the special election to fill the seat held by Republican Ryan Zinke.

Zinke has been nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as the next secretary of the interior and is expected to be approved by the Senate.

Quist, 69, who has never run for public office, said in an interview Wednesday that a bid for Congress was not something he had considered until recently.

“I just really feel this is a critical time in the history of our country, and I feel like each of us have to ask ourselves, ‘How may I serve?’” he said.

Though he now lives in the Flathead Valley, Quist was born and raised on a ranch 12 miles outside of Cut Bank. He co-founded and played in the country rock and bluegrass group The Mission Mountain Wood Band. He later went on to be a member of the Montana Band and the Northern Inn.

Throughout his career he has shared the stage with such famous music acts as Dolly Parton, Jimmy Buffet and Tim McGraw, among others.

Traversing the state and country, Quist played concert venues and as many as 300 college campuses across the U.S. before leaving the Mission Mountain Wood Band in 1984.

He served as a Montana cultural ambassador to Japan, and later as a member of the Montana Arts Council.

Time on the Arts Council drew Quist’s interest in arts education, he said, especially in rural areas, where funding for such efforts is often the victim of cuts. It eventually inspired him to create his own arts education program that teaches creativity and songwriting to students.

Crafting such a program and working with schools gave him insight about how government works, Quist said.

“It’s a microcosm of how government works with central committees making all the decisions and then taking it to the board meetings for the formality of adopting it,” he said.

If he wins his party’s nomination and the special election, Quist would be the first Democrat since 1996 to win the seat that has since then been held by Republicans.

“I’ve played every small town and big city in the state and I’ve made a history and study of the people in this state,” he said. “I really feel like I am connected to all the peoples of Montana in ways that other candidates may not be.”

He said his website has comments from a wide range of people, some who have identified as Republicans, who say they are voting for him because they trust him and feel that Quist will look out for Montana.

Quist said that, if elected, he wants to represent all of Montana and not just a small group.

“For me, it’s got to work for everybody or it can’t work for anybody,” he said.

He said working to make sure agriculture producers get better prices for their products along with issues of public lands, education, women’s rights and income inequality will be at the top of his agenda.

“There is such a disparity in the amount of wealth that is distributed throughout the country,” he said.

Quist said that while he was recently campaigning in Choteau, a man said to him that money was like B.S. If you pile it up it stinks, but if you spread it around it makes everything grow.

“I said, ‘My friend, I couldn’t have said it any better myself,’” Quist said.

He said while he may not have all the answers, he does have questions about dark money groups and interests holding so much sway in the political process.

 

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