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Emails show state grappling with Governor Gianforte’s ‘Come Home Montana’ blowback

July 1, 2022 /

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“I heard back from the Govs Comms office,” Deputy Director Adam Schafer wrote in a June 2021 email thread where department staff discussed how to respond to criticism of the Come Home Montana campaign. “Their direction is that they as a general rule do not engage with negative social media posts, so we should not. However, for emails we receive, they did approve this generic response that we can use as a reply.”

Under Gianforte’s leadership the commerce department launched the Come Home Montana campaign last year, publishing a comehomemontana.com website, buying social media advertisements and sending out multiple waves of promotional mailers. As of late April, the department had spent about $701,000 on the effort, a spokesperson said. A round of mailers that month was sent to approximately 122,000 Montana college graduates.

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