BUTTE – Gov. Steve Bullock held a town hall meeting, which was closed to the media, in Butte at the Carpenter’s Union Hall Friday afternoon.
The 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 (NDA), 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,” said Heatherlynn Meeks.
The governor spoke to MTN right after the meeting, and he said it was just a town hall meeting; 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 [about] 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 a significant that he’s running for president,” said David Parker, a political science professor at Montana State University.
Bullock has not officially announced if he is running for the presidency in 2020.
-Reported by John Emeigh/MTN News
