Obama in Montana, locals chat with presidential hopeful over a beer in Butte

By DAVID ERICKSON / Whitefish Pilot

By sheer coincidence and blind luck, several different Whitefish residents spoke face-to-face with presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama on Saturday in two different cities within hours of each other.

It was a historic week for Montana politics. Sens. Obama and Hillary Clinton as well as former President Bill Clinton all campaigned across the state in anticipation of the June 3 primary.

On Saturday, more than 7,500 people waited to see Obama speak at the Adams Center in Missoula.

"It's the longest line I've ever seen here," said University of Montana forestry student Ty Livezey as he surveyed the crowd.

As soon as he came on stage, Obama quickly warmed up the raucous Missoula crowd by quipping about his appreciation for the natural beauty of the state.

"I want to learn to fly fish. We're going to have to come back to Montana, I think," he said to a deafening applause.

Whitefish resident Will Hammerquist, Glacier program manager with the National Parks Conservation Association, found himself in an unusual spot.

"After the speech, a guy came up to me and said he needed help getting about 20 people with green wristbands to a special room in the Adams Center basement," Hammerquist said. "So there I was talking to Obama for about 20 to 30 seconds. I said, 'Senator Obama, 200 miles from here is the wildest, most protected scenic river in the U.S., and the Canadians want to open a mountaintop-removal coal mine near its headwaters.' He smiled at me and said, 'That's not a good idea, is it?'"

Obama, like the Clintons, is one of the most famous people on Earth right now, and Hammerquist said his heart was racing the entire time.

"It was amazing. He was totally focused in on everybody he talked too," Hammerquist said. "It was pretty cool man. I was just in the right place at the right time."

Less than six hours later in Butte, Whitefish residents Cris Coughlin and Nancy Woodruff had their own lucky run-in with Obama.

"We had tickets to the Mansfield-Metcalf dinner with Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton, but we didn't want to wait three hours inside just to have a good seat, so we said, 'Let's go downtown and get a beer,'" Coughlin said.

The first bar they went to was too smoky, so they decided to go across the street to the M & M Bar.

"So we sauntered in there, and 20 minutes later, in walks Obama," Coughlin said. "Nobody knew he was coming. We chatted with him longer than anybody there. He said, 'Whitefish, that's up north isn't it?' Nancy told him that I was the former mayor and she was on the city council of Whitefish. I kind of looked at her like he isn't going to be interested in that, but he said, 'Yes, I am, what issues are you dealing with up there?'"

Coughlin said they discussed growth issues at length with the presidential candidate, and that Obama was "very genuine and absolutely interested" in what they had to say.

"It's a pretty historic time in Montana right now," she said. "People kept asking us, 'Why did you drive five hours for this?' I was just excited to be there."