comparing simple button instance name to XML child node

I want Montana data to appear when I click the state of Montana (and so on throughout the 50 states). Montana is the instance name of my simple button on the state of Montana.

Something's not quite right about this line of code:

if (pEvent.target == myXML.statename[i]) { ...then do something ...}

The code works fine if I say
if (pEvent.target == Montana)

Do I have to convert the myXML node value to text or something?

What does the trace(myXML.statename[i]); give?

trace(myXML.statename[i]) outputs Montana, which is correct (it's reading statename from my XML file).

trace(pEvent.target) outputs [object SimpleButton], which means that pEvent.target is an object, and I'll have to somehow to do some type casting to compare the instance name of this object to myXML.statename[i], which I'm assuming is a string.

This is where I need help. I haven't been able to find any documentation that shows how to convert the instance name of an object to a string. How can I do this?

if (pEvent.target.name == myXML.statename[i])