Mullen Makes Visits in Phillips County

Jesse James stopped by the Phillips County News office last week. Well, not the notorious outlaw Jesse James, it was Jesses James Mullen, who is a candidate for the Montana Office of the Secretary of State. Mullen had spent some time in the Dodson community and stopped by to introduce himself and share his interest and incentive for running for the office, currently held by Christi Jacobsen. He was accompanied by Sue Orr, who is traveling with him as he seeks support across the state.

He has worked for the Saratoga Sun and has been in the newspaper business all his life; starting as a paperboy. He knows of the hardship of late payments and barriers to collecting money due to him.

In the few months he has been on the campaign, he has traveled over 20,000 miles to reach the constituents of the great state, and his venture is still ongoing, as he plans to hit all 56 counties. This is his first stop in Malta for political purposes, having hit the campaign trail in September.

Muller owns the newspapers in Cut Bank and Shelby, so he is familiar with the western side of the state, and is pleased to be able to see the rest of Big Sky Country. A native of Deer Lodge, he is learning how this side of the divide lives and works. He has good friends on Fort Peck Reservation and recently came up to sweat with them, he stated, "They have been very supportive of me."

His travels took him to Glasgow, met with the mayor and other individuals at the Loaded Toad and discussed relevant issues. He met with the commissioners and talked about land board and business services.

Across Montana the common issues are a lack of clear information from the state. He said with the county clerks it is not so much an issue, it is a problem with matters in other areas, such as with county attorneys seeking guidance from the Secretary of State's office.

A big issue is the unfunded mandates; "They just had to switch everything over to the new election software; the software is good, but they didn't have any budget to switch it over," and a lot of these counties don't have any spare room in their budget to pay for it.

"You have a mandate coming out of legislature telling you you need to do this...well...HOW?"

He said, "The State set aside a little bit of money to have the capital staff write up an opinion on how to implement it. They didn't provide any budget to the counties, cities or schools. They haven't given guidance on what equates a 'storage' or if you are able to save that on Facebook or youtube and does that count as permanent storage or do you have to buy service space? Do you have to buy a $150-a-month cloud subscription to store all the video and audio or do you leave it online?"

Muller said there is the possibility that there will be lawsuits down the line, as a result of all this because they don't have it.

"The little owls that swivel around (videoing) are not cheap...at about $1,000 each. In some counties, $500 can make or break part of the budget. In Phillips County every penny is pretty accounted for."

An issue is "the online ballot tracker, the people in Montana want to know when they turn in their ballot it gets where it is supposed to go so, ballot tracker on the Secretary of State's website, having it down during the election isn't very good. Well, if you want to get into detail...it wasn't down, it was just on the fourth layer of the website below two pages that said "under construction"; some were able to finally get through the pages to get in.

"People do want to know their elections are safe and secure in this state and they are, but only if you get any message from the state that they are."

Mullen said initially the challenge in the office would be to make sure things are running on time, the constitutional duties of the office. He said there has been a tendency to overlook the real essence of the job, which is the record keeper of the state that is, transmitting data, making sure everything is accurate.

"Christi Jacobsen just lost a lawsuit because she refused to transmit the marijuana funding bill back to the legislature after a veto. That's her constitutional duty. That's the job of the Secretary of State, to turn that back over to the legislature and it wasn't done.

She narrowly avoided a lawsuit with the states tribes because she did not take the legislatures bills and information that impacted the tribes and turn that information over to the tribes to let them know that the bills did pass that had impacted them. That's the boring nuts and bolts part of the Secretary of State that is overlooked."

Mullen added, "The current Secretary of State spends a lot of time taking pictures and giving speeches. But the website is broken. People aren't getting their documents, the customer service is falling apart. It takes five days to file a new business registration. These are core incompetency's that are being ignored."

He then added, "What do you do as Secretary of State? What you should do is shut up and do the job. If I am a successful Secretary of State, no one is going to hear about me because I am doing my job correctly and if I am doing my job correctly that means Montana business owners, Montanans, don't have to worry about it.

When they go to check on the status of their ballot, the website works. You don't think about who the Secretary of State is when the website works perfectly."

In visiting with Mullen he said, "The coffee shop over in Glasgow, the 'Loaded Toad'...there is a marijuana shop just 30 miles this side of it that calls themselves the 'Loaded Toad' as well... the 'Loaded Toad Medicinal Supply'...that's close enough of a name that they shouldn't have been able to register it. And that is a mistake that happened at the Secretary of State's office. But rather than fixing it they put it off on Candee that owns the coffee shop. She has to hire lawyers now and has to go through the process of correcting it.

They swiped the name. That's it. They thought it was a fun name so they started using it. The coffee shop has been in existence for some time. They are marketing under the name and it is causing a lot of confusion. She has high school kids working there and people show up at the coffee shop that come in wanting to buy some weed."

Mullen shared his concerns and thoughts about the recent voter registration on the same day as election, voicing his take on why it happened since it was not legal, yet the ads continued to advertise the same.

To date, the campaign efforts have taken the pair to 50 counties, and he has been able to visit a lot of Montana's Clerk of Court personnel.

Mullen shared about his stop at the hi-line's famous "Pay & Save" grocery and meat market in Saco. Even being a tourist, he was impressed with the flavors and awards of Robert's jerky and bacon.

The four-day school week pros and cons came up in conversation, as did small town survival as well as family survival.

The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 5th.