U.S. House candidate Ryan Zinke of Whitefish says his campaign for Montana’s lone congressional seat is coming together with a distinct characteristic: “The face of the campaign is very much veteran.”

Zinke, a retired Navy SEAL and former state senator, said his campaign leaders in Montana’s bigger cities are all veterans from different branches of the service. His Bozeman campaign team is made up no less than 35 veteran volunteers. Most of them are former special operations soldiers and most of them are attending Montana State University.

In Kalispell, his lead campaign volunteer is Jeremy Mahugh, a retired Navy SEAL who now runs an excavating business in the Flathead Valley. 

Beyond the veterans supporting his campaign, Zinke boasts that he has a core group of people who provide him with top-flight advice on diverse topics, including finance, farming and energy.

“We have a kitchen cabinet that will compete with anybody nationally, hands down,” Zinke said during a recent stop in Kalispell. “It’s better than Obama’s administration by far.”

So far, Zinke said his campaign is focusing on four specific topics: government is too big, energy independence, the need to improve economic conditions for the average family, and restoring truth in governance.

“Government has become too evasive and invasive in our lives,” said Zinke, citing the Affordable Care Act as a good example of both evasiveness and invasiveness.

On one hand, it is an overbearing law that has been implemented through a series of overreaching executive exemptions, he said. On the other hand, the federal government has not been straightforward about enrollments.

While the Obama administration claims that around 7 million people are enrolled, Zinke wonders how many of those people previously had insurance plans that were canceled because of the law. Those people merely reflect a transfer rather than an expansion of insurance availability, he said. 

And there is the question of how many of the enrollees are now paying more for insurance than they were before.

“The data is there and [government officials] just aren’t providing or they are being selective about providing it,” he said.

Zinke views expansion of energy production and exports, starting with construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, as a means to provide a meaningful economic boost to the country. Recently, it has become increasingly apparent that energy could be a powerful tool for countering Russia and other countries that are highly dependent on their energy economies.

Zinke said he believes that an expanded energy economy would set the stage for a resurrection of manufacturing in the United States.

“The Republican Party has to convert from being the party of no to being the party of go,” Zinke said, adding that the GOP needs to take action that protects the ability of the private sector to innovate.

“I understand the relationship between government and business, and in many cases, government just needs to get out of the way,” he said, adding that one-size-fits-all policies in everything from health care to energy do not work.

Zinke said the main complaint he hears from Montanans is that top-down federal mandates are a problem “across the board.”

Zinke currently leads Republicans in fundraising for the Montana U.S. House race. Also in the race are Republicans Elsie Arntzen, Matt Rosendale, Corey Stapleton and Drew Turiano, along with Democrats John Lewis and John Driscoll and Libertarian Mike Fellows.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by email at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.