Greg Lemon | Blue Man in a Red State

Published: August 12, 2008

Montana's Governor Brian Schweitzer and the New Western Populism

It struck me, while reading Greg Lemon’s Blue Man in a Red State, that I didn’t know much about Montana’s head of state.

And it appears that the reporter had to work hard at extricating information from Gov. Brian Schweitzer – not so much because he’s secretive, but because he’d much rather discuss ideas than biographical details.

How this remarkably savvy politician, once dubbed by a CNN reporter as the “Rock Star from the Rockies,” has garnered national attention and become a popular Democratic governor in a state that was seen as increasingly Republican, is a story worth telling.

Schweitzer, writes former Congressman Pat Williams in the book’s foreword, “fits our changing economic and political landscape. Neither all liberal, conservative, not populist, Schweitzer has been able to stride the fault lines of our changing western landscape.”

Lemon’s book closely examines those fault lines, and strives to frame Schweitzer’s rise to power in a political and historical context. He splices reflections on the state’s past and current political seasons, with a look at the governor’s personal history, his childhood on a homestead near Havre, family dynamics (he’s in the middle of six children), his education as a soil scientist and his pre-political pursuits (he spent several years building farms in the Middle East where, he says, he learned to negotiate like a Bedouin).

As we head toward another election, Lemon has crafted an engaging and helpful portrait of this charismatic, larger-than-life farmer-turned-politician who is clearly shaping the future of Montana.

Blue Man in a Red State was published June 2008 by Globe Pequot Press, Guilford, CT and sells for $22.95 hardcover.

– Kristi Niemeyer