Amy Lunde
One of the biggest problems with Greg Gianforte is his hypocrisy.
It’s quite glaring when you look at his campaign reports and compare them to what he says on the campaign trail.
For instance, Gianforte loves to bash Bullock for our state tourism contract going to a Wisconsin firm.
Despite that, Gianforte has spent a lot of money in Wisconsin.
Back in March he spent $11,700 for 15,000 pieces of mail from a Wisconsin company, and in September he spent $15,700 more for 20,000 pieces of mail from the same Wisconsin company.
How do we account for this?
Personally, I believe that Lunde is giving a few favors to friends by directing that money back to her home state.
Or maybe she just figured no one would check those reports.
I don’t think she’s stupid, but this is a stupid move…especially when you make Wisconsin spending a campaign issue.
Let’s not forget that Wisconsin is a Right to Work state, meaning that it costs less to print.
Yep, none of those pesky unions around asking for higher wages.
Republicans like this. They’d rather spend that $11,700 three states over than at, say, Printing for Less in Livingston, a company with more than enough high-tech features to get the job done spot-on.
Anyways, I just think it’s really dumb and I thought I’d look into who made this decision.
It’s quite glaring when you look at his campaign reports and compare them to what he says on the campaign trail.
For instance, Gianforte loves to bash Bullock for our state tourism contract going to a Wisconsin firm.
Despite that, Gianforte has spent a lot of money in Wisconsin.
Back in March he spent $11,700 for 15,000 pieces of mail from a Wisconsin company, and in September he spent $15,700 more for 20,000 pieces of mail from the same Wisconsin company.
How do we account for this?
Personally, I believe that Lunde is giving a few favors to friends by directing that money back to her home state.
Or maybe she just figured no one would check those reports.
I don’t think she’s stupid, but this is a stupid move…especially when you make Wisconsin spending a campaign issue.
Let’s not forget that Wisconsin is a Right to Work state, meaning that it costs less to print.
Yep, none of those pesky unions around asking for higher wages.
Republicans like this. They’d rather spend that $11,700 three states over than at, say, Printing for Less in Livingston, a company with more than enough high-tech features to get the job done spot-on.
Anyways, I just think it’s really dumb and I thought I’d look into who made this decision.
Amy Lunde used to work for the Republican Governor’s Association.
She got her start in Wisconsin way back in 2004, working as a field rep for Bush/Cheney.
In 2006 she worked as a field director for Green for Wisconsin – which I’m assuming is Green County and not the Green Party – and then in 2008 she was a retail associate at Ann Taylor Loft.
Both of those positions lasted for less than a year.
Lunde never really stepped away from politics, however, as beginning in 2007 she joined Arena Strategy Group as a consultant.
By 2010 Lunde was ready for a change of scenery and moved to North Dakota, getting a job as “victory director” for the Republican Party there.
Two months after taking the position she presented her North Dakota victory plan, as you can see in the video below:
Shortly after the move Lunde spread her wings and founded the consulting business Plain Stakes LLC.
Like most of Lunde’s jobs, the victory director position lasted less than a year, whereupon she took 8 months off before becoming the campaign manager for the 62-year-old Jack Dalrymple.
Darlrymple had been the lieutenant governor of the state for 10 years but was kicked up to the top job when Governor Hoeven got elected to the U.S. Senate in the 2010 election.
The race wasn’t even close, and come November 2012 Dalrymple took 63% of the vote to Democrat Ryan Taylor’s 34%.
Lunde did not transition to the gubernatorial staff and her job ended a month after the election. By February 2013 she was back with the Republican Governor’s Association as a deputy political director.
She’d hold that job until December 2014, and then it was 8 months off again before she was hired as the campaign manager for Greg Gianforte.
That was in August 2015 and Gianforte figured Lunde was the woman to win him the Montana governor’s seat.
He pays her $71,421.96 a year, or $5,951.83 every month.
That comes out to $37 an hour.
That’s good money…more than most Montanans can expect.
Lunde has been educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Virginia, and the Extra Bold Portfolio School, so perhaps that accounts for her salary.
Or maybe it’s her ideas.
In the video she pinpoints voter registration, voter identification and voter mobilization as the most important things needed to win.
She mentions that “GOTV” became “get on TV” and not “get out the vote” during the 2000 election, and national GOP strategy changed because of that.
So she thinks about politics a lot.
Will it be enough to pull off another gubernatorial win? After all, her client this time isn’t an elected official that’s been sitting around for a decade in the public eye while waiting for his turn at the top spot.
No, this is a GOP businessman with no political experience that’s not even from the state he’s running in, and he’s going against a moderately-popular incumbent governor to boot.
It’ll be interesting to see where Lunde winds up after this race, and who will hire her when it’s all said and done.
