When Dona Stebbins threw her political hat into the ring in the Great Falls mayor's race back in 2005, few had heard of her, let alone gave her a chance of victory.
Even though her veterinarian father was a legislator and her grandfather served as Billings' mayor back in the 1950s, Dona was a relative political neophyte challenging a respected and capable incumbent.
However, there was an unrecognized surge of discontent ready to be tapped among voters who wanted change.
The primary election featured three candidates, and Stebbins emerged as one of two to face off in the general election. She nicked her incumbent opponent by about a half a percentage point--a mere 350 votes.
She did so with stealthy but relentless grass roots campaigning involving a lot of shoe leather, door knocking and innumerable forum appearances.
But politics makes for good across-the-bar conversation fodder and some Great Falls tavern owners members backed Stebbins and presumably advocated her candidacy with their customers. Some, no doubt, also contributed financially.
In the end, she was able to put together the resources and had the stamina to run a credible campaign.
According to CCTA Executive Secretary John Hayes, some tavern licensees may have supported the campaign of whomever was challenging the incumbent, who had gone before the Montana Legislature, and relentlessly at other venues, to denounce licensed businesses and legal gambling, advocating a doubling of gaming taxes which would have crushed most licensees and put a lot of people out of work.
"Besides," Hayes said, "Dona just has a natural charisma about her; she is very likeable but is also bright and capable. Having worked in taverns as an entertainer and bartender, some of our members felt she would be familiar with our businesses and our struggles, especially at the hands of government regulators."
Great Falls has a form of municipal government where the mayor's position is principally political and ceremonial but with significant policy influence, with the day-to-day administration of the government apparatus left to a hired city manager.
But mayoral terms are only two years so Stebbins found herself standing for re-election last fall. This time, however, there was no primary so four candidates were in the final running. She once again prevailed, this time by a mere 276 votes.
"You can't get much accomplished in two years," she told the Montana Tavern Times recently. She says she felt compelled to seek another term. Just an hour before the interview she had been "sworn in so I can get sworn at." Then she was off to meet with a Canadian trade delegation, followed by a later reception.
The Miles City native found herself a resident of Haight Street in San Francisco's infamous Haight-Ashbury section during the "Summer of Love" when the counter-culture wave was at its zenith.
Stebbins was, like thousands of other young Americans then and there, trying to make a living in the world of the arts while she attended college in Berkeley. She was singing jazz with a four-piece in clubs around the Bay Area.
She says she witnessed performances by all the great San Francisco-based bands of that era: The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service and many more.
In fact, she says she used to rush backstage at these shows with a guitar case in hand, feigning a state of panic while explaining to security personnel that so-and-so in the band had left his guitar at the hotel and needed it right away. Thus she was cleverly able to "hang out" with many of the musical greats of the day.
Stebbins says she also attended concerts by jazz legends such as Buddy Rich, Mose Allison and Big Mama Thornton.
She got her musical start singing with the church choir as a youth in Miles City and in the high school choir and musical stage productions. She says her father also founded a community theatre ensemble in Miles City--The Barn Players--and she performed a number of singing parts.
She soon found herself singing with a band at the now long gone Freight House at the Old Depot in Great Falls. Later, she would be instrumental in founding a Great Falls community theatre group with its own theatre known as "Center Stage."
She admits that back in the Summer of Love, she was singing some rock and roll but, she says, has always found jazz music, such as that rendered by Cole Porter or Irving Berlin, to be "more intimate. I've always felt an affinity for it," she says.
Of course, she paid the rent and groceries with bar tending gigs between her musical ones. She started out at "a nice supper club," then took a job at Don Sponheim's rough and rowdy Maverick Bar in Great Falls.
"That was different experience," Stebbins says today. "It was a real eye opener; a real education." She had the day-side and opened the place at 8 a.m.
"Don Sponheim (deceased husband of well known MTA board member and current licensee Joyce Sponheim) was a bigger-than-life character," Stebbins says, as is Dan Snyder, former owner of the Freight House and Old Depot, and Curly Creasman who still today runs the Cartwheel.
Those places are where she became acquainted with "the close-knit community of bar owners. They're really just a big, extended family, very supportive of their communities and local events," she says. "That's why I like reading the Tavern Times. It really enlarges the neighborhood. I always want to stop at the places you write about. I enjoy the welcoming atmosphere of bars; you're only a stranger for about five minutes, then you have new friends.
"Taverns are very labor intensive businesses that require a lot of knowledge to run successfully," she points out, then adds, "and they are very vulnerable" to the whims of government and the current crop of social reformers.
"These are legitimate businesses that have a place in Montana. They are our gathering places, just as when I was a child and we'd go to Kegler's Club (a bar and bowling alley in Miles City) for breakfast after church. My uncle would take us. I loved getting a maraschino cherry," she says with a laugh.
"Taverns and casinos provide a lot of people, families, with good jobs," Stebbins says, especially folks who are relatively uneducated or unskilled. "The tips are very good." She notes her sister is a single mother with two kids who provides for her family though a job at the Rock Creek Lodge in Red Lodge.
"Government ought to let tavern owners do their jobs while we do our jobs" of regulation, Stebbins says.
Great Falls, a high plains agricultural city adjacent to Malmstrom Air Force Base in the central part of the state, has not seen the economic boom of her sister cities nestled in the mountains such Kalispell, Missoula and Bozeman.
"I would characterize our economy as one of slow growth," Stebbins says, adding that Great Falls may not covet the wild speculation and astronomical housing prices seen in the boom towns, where workers can't afford to live where they were born and raised.
"I don't think we want to be another Bozeman or Missoula," she says. "Here our infrastructure improvement is keeping up with growth. We're the last best place in the Last Best Place. We're still a small, close-knit community where we care about each other.
"And we have our share of culture, too. We have a marvelous symphony orchestra, great museums, theater... And we have real potential to further develop our outdoor recreational resources."
Further developing the state's vast natural and energy resources should be a priority, Stebbins says, and cites the city's ongoing involvement in efforts to build a new electric generation plant near Great Falls as an example.
Also it had been announced that a major expansion of the oil refinery at Black Eagle on Great Falls' north flank was seriously being examined and that the military was considering construction of a coal-to-liquid fuel facility in conjunction with the air base operations.
And a major expansion with good jobs is underway for a Calgary, Alberta, business, Avmax, that services passenger jets at the city's airport. Centeene, a medical billing company, now employs over 100 and is "growing exponentially," Stebbins says.
"Progressive, orderly economic development has been the centerpiece of my administration," Stebbins says.
She has been a volunteer with neighborhood Housing Services for more than two decades and is still involved with the Center Stage community theatre. She has been a task force event coordinator for the state Spay and Neuter Clinic and has worked to pass progressive, even controversial, animal control ordinances.
"She's been a good mayor for Great Falls," says Hayes. "She's fair with our small businesses and that's all we ever expect. We don't want handouts but we don't feel we should be punished either.
"If government leadership in your community is hostile to small business, as business owners we are obligated to try to do something about it. And who knows? You might even succeed."
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, March, 2008, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.