Now is the time for experience in Congress, says House veteran Denny Rehberg

Editor’s note: This is one of 12 profiles featuring a candidate in Montana’s Second Congressional House District primary race. The profiles are being published daily over 12 days and in alphabetical order. Each of the candidates were asked the same questions. 

Denny Rehberg had just announced his first run for U.S. House when his father Jack, who had done the same unsuccessfully in 1970, offered this sage advice: “Don’t promise to pave the road from Ekalaka to Alzada.”

The two southeast Montana towns were separated by 72 miles of two-lane road, 47 of which were unpaved and unnavigable for much of the year. The workaround was a 251-mile trip through Broadus, Miles City and Baker.

The joke was that you could drive to Ekalaka, but you had to back out. The year was 2000, politicians had been promising to pave the connector since the 1920s. Someone would produce enough money to pave a mile or two every so often, but then the effort would stall.

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“It took forever,” said Rehberg, who after a 12-year political hiatus is running for Montana’s eastern U.S. House Republican primary. “Conrad Burns worked on it. And

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