We're a small food manufacturing business. Eight of us, one delivery truck, a gelato bike, and as many Montana crops as we can use. We don't have a PAC and we never will. Our money goes back into our people, our equipment, and finding even more ways to use Montana-grown food in our products.

Montana banned corporate money in elections back in 1912 by citizen initiative, and that held for a hundred years. Then in 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that Citizens United applies to state law just as it does to federal law, and Montana's ban was gone. We've all seen the damage that ruling has done — elections increasingly shaped by money that doesn't come from here, and politicians accountable to corporate interests instead of the Montanans they represent. The Montana Plan is a chance to bring that idea back. It's not a perfect fix — nothing on a ballot ever is. But it is a critical step in the right direction, and we’ll take it.

We think businesses should earn their place in a community by what they make, not what they spend on politics. That's the deal we signed up for when we started our business, and we're happy to keep it. That's why Cool Earth Creamery supports the Montana Plan.

Devin Morales, owner/operator,

Cool Earth Creamery, Missoula