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While reporting on a right-wing challenge to Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s re-election bid over the past few weeks, I repeatedly heard some version of this statement: If you had told me four years ago that anyone would accuse Gianforte of not being a “real” conservative, I’d have told you to go find your marbles.
But that is precisely what’s happening as the incumbent Gianforte prepares for a June 4 primary challenge against Republican state lawmaker Tanner Smith, who’s flanking the governor from the right.
That political dynamic is fascinating, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The fight over whose brand of conservatism should dominate Montana’s sprawling GOP has been going strong for years. And, as demonstrated by the sudden reversal of Congressman Matt Rosendale’s short-lived U.S. Senate bid this year, divisions between the party factions can be cutthroat.
In the case of Gianforte’s reelection bid, the internal party criticism amplified by Smith and others is mostly centered on three somewhat overlapping complaints.
First, some hardline Republican lawmakers felt steamrolled by the governor’s administration and his legislative allies during the 2023 Legislature, a tension that eventually led to squabbles over vetoes and at least one lawsuit.
Second, some party members are upset by Gianforte’s handling of distinct policy issues — property taxes, immigration, child welfare — arguing that he has given up on “true” conservative stances and aligned himself too closely with the so-called Solutions Caucus, a group of comparatively moderate Republicans spearheaded by House Appropriations Chair Llew Jones.
The third issue is some degree of discontent about Gianforte’s wealth and power. His background as a successful entrepreneur and his proximity to U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, who once worked at Gianforte’s Bozeman tech company and who now chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has sparked accusations about party boss-ism.
Gianforte and Daines’ endorsement of hand-picked candidate Tim Sheehy over Rosendale deepened those misgivings. Gianforte’s recent decision to release a slate of endorsements in competitive legislative primaries also made some Republicans feel like the governor is meddling. And, while Democrats have long sought to paint Gianforte as too rich to be truly in touch with Montana values, Republicans are now raising some similar concerns.
“When you’re a business person and you’re a CEO, you don’t work with equal partners, you work with employees,” said former state lawmaker Al Olszewski during a keynote speech at a recent Republican event in Miles City. About Gianforte’s legislative endorsements, Olszewski said, “What we’re seeing is a governor who’s overstepping his bounds, and he’s inserting himself into the equal-powered partner, the legislative branch. And he’s manipulating and he’s trying to have an effect.”
Smith’s bid to unseat his party’s sitting governor remains a long shot. Gianforte has raked in more than a million dollars in campaign contributions so far, dwarfing Smith’s less than $200,000 haul, and he has the power of incumbency on his side. But Smith’s campaign, and the fact that at least some prominent Republicans are voicing public support for it, is a good reminder that there’s more ideological diversity within the Montana Republican Party than is sometimes visible at a glance.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on both candidates’ showings come June 4.
READ MORE: Why Gianforte’s reelection bid has drawn a challenge from the right
—Mara Silvers, Reporter
Newsroom News 📰
We’re excited to announce this week that Matt Hudson, a Great Falls native and an experienced Montana reporter, has started with our newsroom in a new position covering Cascade County.
Matt graduated from Great Falls High School and the University of Montana School of Journalism and previously reported for the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell and the Billings Gazette. Most recently, he was the editorial director for Endeavor Business Media in St. Paul, Minnesota. He relocated back to Great Falls with his wife, Lauren, and their infant daughter earlier this month.
I’m excited to hire a reporter who not only has Matt’s journalism experience, but who also knows and loves Great Falls. For his part, he’s thrilled to help Montana Free Press bring more local reporting to his hometown.
Matt joins a growing cohort of MTFP reporters assigned to cover specific communities, including fellow UM graduate JoVonne Wagner, who has been reporting from Helena since last fall. We’re also working on further expanding our roster of staff reporters assigned to local coverage in the coming months — so stay tuned.
Matt can be reached at mhudson@montanafreepress.org.
—Nick Ehli, MTFP Local Editor
Following the Money 💰
Opponents of Constitutional Initiative 128, a proposed ballot measure that could give Montana voters the option to enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution this fall, have reported relatively light spending on their effort so far — even as the initiative’s main backer group has reported spending more than half a million dollars on its effort to gather the signatures necessary for ballot qualification.
But the single largest expenditure reported by CI-128 opponent the Montana Family Foundation stands out.
The $3,599 expenditure covered “30 video cameras and 30 camera mounts” related to “signature integrity,” according to the Montana Family Foundation’s public campaign finance filings. And at least one of those cameras already appears to be in use.
The Helena Police Department told Montana Free Press that officers responded to a call for service on Monday from a CI-128 volunteer signature gatherer who was videotaped by two men while she was soliciting support for the initiative in downtown Helena. The woman later moved down the block to the Lewis and Clark Public Library. There, in the library’s entrance area, an MTFP reporter observed a man seated about 10 feet behind her with a video camera pointed at her signature-collecting station.
The man, Patrick Webb, declined to comment about what he was doing at the time but directed questions to Jeff Laszloffy, the head of the Montana Family Foundation. In an email later that day, Laszloffy said there was “nothing newsworthy” about the incident.
“Patrick was videotaping a signature gatherer, she called the police, the police told her that Patrick could legally video tape the signature gathering process as long as the signature gatherer was on public property. The police then left and Patrick continued taping. That was it. Nothing more. No harassment, no confrontation. Patrick was simply videotaping the process,” Laszloffy wrote.
Laszloffy did not respond to an additional question about the group’s rationale for videotaping the signature-gathering process.
The backers of CI-128, Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, have until June 21 to submit upwards of 60,000 signatures to county election administrators around the state. In order to count, signatures must be from registered voters and properly entered on county-specific petitions. The campaign group has hired a professional signature-gathering firm to circulate those forms and trained more than 300 volunteers to help collect support in their respective communities.
State law prohibits the “physical intimidation” of signature gatherers when they are collecting support for statewide ballot issues. A spokesperson for MSRR did not directly answer a question Thursday about whether the group intends to take any legal action over the use of videotaping signature gatherers but said the group is “monitoring the situation closely.”
“The opposition knows that Montanans support reproductive rights so they are resorting to these tactics to silence voters,” said Kiersten Iwai, executive director of Forward Montana, one of MSRR’s member groups. “We will remain focused on the task at hand — collecting signatures so that voters can make their voice heard.”
—Mara Silvers, Reporter
Following the Law ⚖️
A legal challenge to Montana’s first-in-the-nation TikTok ban is now paused as new litigation heats up over the national ban signed into law by President Joe Biden last month. That means the Montana ban, which was blocked by a federal judge in November while the state-level lawsuit plays out, is now on an indefinite hold.
Attorneys on both sides of the tussle over Montana’s law, which was challenged by the company and several users last year, asked presiding judge Donald Molloy this week to stay the Montana case for the time being. In a joint motion, they wrote that the ultimate ruling on the challenge to the national TikTok ban, slated to take effect in January 2025, may clarify several of the legal issues under consideration as attorneys debate whether the Montana-level ban is constitutional. Molloy granted their motion Wednesday.
Backers of the state and federal bans have argued TikTok poses a national security risk by exposing user data to the Chinese government. Plaintiffs in the Montana challenge have asserted that the state’s effort to ban the social media platform runs afoul of First Amendment free speech rights. They’ve also argued that national security concerns are a topic properly addressed only by the federal government as opposed to state Legislatures.
In addition to the First Amendment concerns, the challenge to the federal litigation makes the case that the ban unconstitutionally singles out and punishes a single company, violates Fifth Amendment equal protection rights and amounts to an unlawful taking of private property without just compensation.
—Eric Dietrich, Deputy Editor
The Gist 📌
Having lost a court fight over an attempt to establish restrictions on college-level transgender student athletes through state legislation, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte this week shifted his party’s efforts to a more administrative venue: the Montana Board of Regents.
To recap, Republican lawmakers in 2021 passed a law prohibiting transgender women and girls from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity. The law, House Bill 112, was challenged by a coalition of plaintiffs including university faculty, a former state constitutional convention delegate and the Montana Federation of Public Employees. A district court judge ultimately deemed HB 112 unconstitutional in 2022, and the Montana Supreme Court upheld that ruling last month.
But the grounds on which that decision was reached left a crack Gianforte now seeks to widen. Both courts determined that the law infringed on the Board of Regents’ constitutional authority to govern Montana campuses independently from elected officials. So on May 14, that’s where Gianforte turned.
In a letter addressed to the seven-member board and copied to Commissioner of Higher Education Clayton Christian, Gianforte urged the regents — four of whom he appointed — to enact the law he signed three years ago. He also tied his request to a recent expansion of Title IX protections by the Biden administration to include sexual orientation and gender identity, which has been criticized by state Superintendent Elsie Arntzen and Attorney General Austin Knudsen, both Republicans.
“Do not let a loud vocal minority dissuade you from doing the right thing for girls and young women,” Gianforte wrote in his letter. “They represent a decidedly small minority.”
MFPE President Amanda Curtis said in a statement Friday that her organization’s members “respect the constitutional authorities” of elected and appointed officials and were “proud” to have helped the regents push back against “legislative overreach.”
“As regents consider sensitive policy requests like the governor’s here,” Curtis said, “we hope the voices, experiences and safety of those of us who go to campuses every day to work and learn carry the most weight.”
A spokesperson for Christian’s office, Leanne Kurtz, told MTFP via email Thursday that the commissioner and regents are interested in working with Gianforte to evaluate his request and its potential impacts on collegiate athletics in Montana. Kurtz added the commissioner’s office has not made any formal inquiries into how many students might be affected by such a policy.
“We anticipate an ongoing discussion around Title IX with the governor and other stakeholders,” Kurtz wrote. “If it is scheduled for a future board meeting, it will be posted with the agenda and properly noticed.”
—Alex Sakariassen, Reporter
On Our Radar 
Amanda — I was inspired by a Missoulian story this week about an 86-year-old former smokejumper who earned a master’s degree by cataloging nearly a century of smokejumper history. I was also astonished by this detail: For 75 years this gentleman went on weekly hikes with a childhood friend.
Alex — May 17 marks the 70th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed segregation in America’s schools. To acknowledge the occasion, the education news nonprofit The 74 compiled a collection of oral histories from individuals familiar with the story behind the ruling.
Arren — The U.S. Senate contest between Jon Tester and Tim Sheehy has received the New York Times treatment in a story that focuses on the value of trust on the campaign trail. I’d love to hear how well you think the Gray Lady captured the spirit of the race.
JoVonne — The University of Montana’s Native News Project produced a
