Candidate Says Montanans Must Show Courage Reopening the State

Republican Congressional Candidate Joe Dooling was on Friday’s Talk Back program to help promote the Great Veteran Potato and Hand Sanitizer giveaway on Saturday.

Dooling drove his own semi truck full of potatoes to Missoula to give them away to the needy, and described the plight of so many farmers in this pandemic.

“We grow seed potatoes, and our potatoes are shipped to Idaho and Washington to grow the big potatoes for McDonalds and all those companies,” said Dooling. “It just so happens that McDonalds cut down on their orders like many suppliers and so these farmers have their excess potatoes. Each one of those loads that we’ll be bringing in to Missoula is worth an $8,000 loss to each farmer.”

Dooling said it is fear that is keeping the economy from opening up, not just in Montana, but across the nation.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and it’s really starting resonate with me what FDR said, is that fear is driving our economy to the ground,” he said. “We’re going to be in trouble, big time trouble if we don’t have the courage to get out.”

Dooling said he refused a mask recently to make his point.

“This politician took a stand,” he said. “Yesterday when we were visiting a makeshift hospital in Billings they tried to give me a mask, and I said ‘no’,” he said. “We need to show the courage to get out there and say the data was wrong. The bottom line is that the data was wrong. The infection rate’s not there, the death rates aren’t there and we need to move forward. We are going to go broke, and let me tell you what, this world has adversaries to our way of life and those adversaries are licking their chops because if we founder, that is when something is going to happen. We have to get ourselves up and running.”

Dooling is running for the U.S. House of Representatives along with Republicans Matt Rosendale and Debra Lamm.