Sen. Brown's initial lap around the track

One thing that everyone knows about Roy Brown is that he is a tireless worker, as we noted yesterday, and the opening of his campaign only indicates more of the same.

On Thursday, he is going to be starting out with his announcement early in the morning in Billings, and then flying around the state: Billings, Helena, Great Falls, Kalispell, Missoula, and Bozeman -- and back in time for a piece of pie and cup of coffee at the venerable Stella's Bakery in Billings that evening. So we hope that our faithful readers in those cities will check their local Republican listings and turn out to show support for Roy.

Then, it's 50 towns in 10 days on the road.

Advancing a four-point program, Brown said he will work for long-term real property tax relief; elimination of the business equipment tax now frozen at 3 percent; a return to accountability and integrity in campaign finance and openness in government; and the enactment of responsible state spending.

Sounds pretty good. And Brown has the record to show that he has legislatively worked to achieve just those goals. He correctly points to the 40% increase in spending over the last two legislative sessions as a trend that we can't sustain:

"If there is a blip in the economy, the taxpayer-funded surpluses will not be there to fund the new spending," he said. "There are automatic escalators written into those spending increases..."

While it isn't good for one's mental health to spend too much time reading the comments section after articles in the Billings Gazette, it is interesting to note that Roy Brown is, depending on who you read, "just another liberal Republican" or "another rape, pillage and plunder Republican." While it's never any fun to get abuse from anyone, if you're getting it from the far opposite extremes of the spectrum, then you're not doing too bad.

Oh, and back to that 6 cities in one day and 50 towns in 10 days thing:

From what we understand, once Sen. Brown gets warmed up, he'll try to pick up the pace a little -- so the opposition shouldn't get too complacent.