Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte was nowhere to be discovered this week, as his state was devastated by historic flooding.
The flooding, triggered by torrential rain and fast snowmelt, devastated communities throughout southwest Montana. Swollen rivers washed away bridges, buildings and full roads in and round Yellowstone National Park, stranded vacationers and polluted ingesting water in lots of communities. The National Park Service shuttered all of Yellowstone, and northern areas of the park are anticipated to stay closed for months — dealing what’s more likely to be a devastating blow to the economies of gateway communities like Gardiner, which had been hard-hit throughout the early a part of the pandemic when tourism floor to a halt.
But for days, Gianforte’s workplace refused to reveal the governor’s whereabouts, citing “safety causes.” It acknowledged in statements to native reporters that he’d left the nation final week, earlier than the floods, on a “long-scheduled private journey with the primary woman,” and stated he was returning house “early and as shortly as doable.”
Around the state capitol in Helena, rumors swirled that the governor was in Africa, seemingly on safari, in response to a Twitter put up from Max Croes, a longtime Democratic marketing campaign supervisor and staffer primarily based in Helena.
Maritsa Georgiou, a correspondent for Newsy primarily based in Missoula, finally found that the governor and his spouse had been vacationing in Tuscany, the ritzy area of central Italy. Newsy obtained a photograph from an nameless supply that confirmed the couple eating at a restaurant within the village Casole d’Elsa. The image was reportedly taken 12 minutes after Gianforte’s workplace despatched out its assertion in regards to the governor returning to Montana “as shortly as doable.”
The incident shortly earned Gianforte comparisons to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who famously fled to Cancun, Mexico, final 12 months as his state was reeling from winter storms and widespread energy outages.
