{"id":19484,"date":"2017-09-21T08:58:27","date_gmt":"2017-09-21T14:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=19484"},"modified":"2017-09-22T16:26:08","modified_gmt":"2017-09-22T22:26:08","slug":"opinion-gianforte-and-his-pr-team-must-do-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/09\/opinion-gianforte-and-his-pr-team-must-do-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Gianforte and his PR team must do better"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Two<\/a>

Martin Kidston\/Missoula Current<\/p>

Rep. Greg Gianforte, left, and Sen. Steve Daines, both Montana Republicans, discuss ways to improve forest health and reduce summer wildfires.<\/p><\/div>\n

After 18 years as a journalist working across Montana and Wyoming, there aren\u2019t too many times where I can say that something happened for the first time. Sometimes it feels like I\u2019ve seen or heard it all before.<\/p>\n

But a new first came\u00a0on Tuesday, when I got word that U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., was in Missoula. A trusted reader said she had spotted him at lunch at Finn and Porter, a local restaurant, right around\u00a0noon.<\/p>\n

\"Martin<\/a>

Martin Kidston<\/p><\/div>\n

This came as a surprise since there was no notice from Gianforte\u2019s communications team that he would be in Missoula on business. His Facebook page had placed him in Bozeman and Helena on prior days, but even this made no mention of Missoula.<\/p>\n

Things took an odd turn when, after hearing Gianforte was here in town, I did what reporters do and called his office in Washington, D.C., looking to speak with his communications director, Travis Hall, to find out where I could catch up with our state\u2019s congressman.<\/p>\n

The woman staffing Gianforte\u2019s office in our nation\u2019s capital politely said she would give me Hall\u2019s email address if I needed to reach him. When I asked for his contact number, however, I was told that Hall didn\u2019t \u201chave one immediately available.\u201d<\/p>\n

A number or a phone?<\/p>\n

I was a little confused, wondering why the person who heads communications for a sitting member of Congress wouldn\u2019t have a government cellphone. Of course, Hall does have a government cellphone; the office just wasn\u2019t willing to give it out.<\/p>\n

In contrast, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., lists the contact numbers for his three media personnel on every press release he sends out. His media personnel also do something that\u2019s increasingly rare these days \u2013 they actually contact the media when Tester is in town.<\/p>\n

Curious, I checked Gianforte\u2019s own press releases and found that none of them have included a contact number for media inquiries, much less a name. This is hardly an oversight on Gianforte\u2019s part but rather, it suggests an attempt to shut the public out and limit its ability to interact with Montana\u2019s only member of the U.S. House.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>And just so you know, Gianforte claims three congressional offices in the state, with all three sitting east of the Continental Divide. Two of those offices are just 90 minutes apart. Why our congressman has no representation in Western Montana is a question better saved for a different day.<\/p>\n

With Gianforte\u2019s staffers unable or unwilling to find or release Hall\u2019s public number to the media, I resorted to writing Hall an email requesting his number, along with Gianforte\u2019s location in Missoula, at\u00a03:31 p.m.\u00a0on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s now going on\u00a0noon\u00a0on Wednesday\u00a0and Hall has yet to reply.<\/p>\n

I find it disappointing that Hall has disregarded the basic duties of his public job, and that Gianforte hasn\u2019t taken the most basic steps toward transparency by sharing the numbers of his media staffers and letting all news outlets know when he\u2019s in town.<\/p>\n

It drives toward accountability, access to our elected officials and our right to know what they\u2019re doing when it\u2019s related to the duties of their office. Really, it comes down to your right to know.<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hall reached out at 2:05 p.m. on Wednesday. Here is his reply:<\/p>\n

“Good afternoon, Martin. Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. Your Gmail address and lack of a subject line were likely the culprits that pushed your email into my junk folder, which is particularly sensitive with the House email system.<\/p>\n

“Congressman Gianforte was in Missoula yesterday as part of his Forest Jobs Tour. There, he met with a trucking company impacted by the current forest management system. He also sat down with the ABC\/FOX Montana affiliate in Missoula for an exclusive interview.<\/p>\n

“The best ways to reach me are our office number\u00a0(202.225.3211) and my email (Travis.Hall@mail.house.gov). Both my number and email are included in all releases we send. I regret I was not in the office to take your call yesterday, as my infant son was sick. That said, I would have responded to your email more quickly had it not been filtered to a junk folder.<\/p>\n

“Finally, I regret this is our introduction and first interaction. Feel free to reach out anytime, and I will endeavor to be helpful.”<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on\u00a0Missoula Current<\/a>, an independent online newspaper, of which\u00a0Martin Kidston is the founding editor.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After 18 years as a journalist working across Montana and Wyoming, there aren\u2019t too many times where I can say that something happened for the first time. Sometimes it feels like I\u2019ve seen or heard it all before. But a new first came\u00a0on Tuesday, when I got word that U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":19485,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3864],"tags":[335,3084,6287],"class_list":["post-19484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-greg-gianforte","tag-jon-tester","tag-travis-hall","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19484"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19509,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19484\/revisions\/19509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}