BUTTE – Gov. Steve Bullock held a town hall meeting that was closed to the media in Butte at the Carpenter’s Union Hall Friday afternoon.
This meeting was first announced early Friday morning in a social media post by the Butte Area Rising Coalition, which stated the governor was going to discuss plans about the 2020 election.
The governor arrived at the meeting with his own private film crew. Everyone who attended the meeting had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, meaning they could not discuss what was said at this meeting.
“Yeah, we all signed NDAs, but basically it wasn’t exciting unless you really like him, because it was a lot of fun to listen to some of his viewpoints on where we are in the state and in our country,” atendee Heatherlynn Meeks said.
The governor spoke to MTN News right after the meeting and he said it was just a town hall meeting and he didn’t discuss any plans about what he would do in 2020.
“The Legislature just left town, they left 300 bills on my desk, so literally I have quite a bit of work to do to sort the rest of that out, I haven’t made any decisions what I do after I get to serve as governor,” said Bullock.
Word of this meeting fired up more speculation about the governor’s plans to possibly run for the presidency.
“It sounds to me given the fact that you have private vehicles, you had a film crew, you had NDOs signed that all sounds to me like he’s getting footage of some particular capacity to put into one of these video type announcements. I think this is probably a precursor to maybe signify that he’s running for president,” said MSU political science professor David Parker.
Bullock has not officially announced if he is running for the presidency in 2020. He has made at least five trips to Iowa, a key early presidential caucus state, and has formed an exploratory political action committee, Big Sky Values.
Story by John Emeigh, MTN News
