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June 6, 2024
As is long tradition in Montana politics, Tuesday night’s primary election saw a sweat-drenched tug of war play out in Republican legislative primaries between the hardline and (comparatively) moderate wings of the state’s currently dominant political party.
As we reported last week, Conservatives4MT, a political committee aligned with the party’s moderate Solutions Caucus wing, spent nearly a quarter-million dollars defending Solutions Caucus lawmakers and supporting primary challenges against hardliners in 27 contested GOP primaries. Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, who has taken heat from certain corners of the Montana GOP for allying himself with prominent Solutions Caucus members, also took the somewhat unusual step of wading into legislative races this year by announcing endorsements in 24 contested GOP primaries.
Noting substantial overlap between the governor’s endorsements and the candidates backed by Conservatives4MT spending, Capitolized spent some time tallying up the results of those races on election night. By our count, 19 of 24 Gianforte-endorsed candidates were clear winners or are leading in still-unofficial vote counts. Conservatives4MT posted a somewhat less successful record, with 17 of the 27 candidates it backed posting wins.
The comparatively moderate wing of the party saw some of its stalwarts fend off primary challenges, including House Appropriations Chair Llew Jones, R-Conrad, Rep. Ed Buttrey, R-Great Falls, and Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton. Several freshman lawmakers who drew primary challengers after sticking their necks out as comparative moderates in their initial terms survived primary challenges as well, among them Rep. Courtenay Sprunger, R-Kalispell, and Rep. Brad Barker, R-Roberts.
Hardliners did, however, pick off Rep. Tony Brockman, R-Kalispell, who lost his re-election bid to Lukas Schubert. Schubert, an 18-year-old described by the Flathead Beacon as an “ultra-conservative challenger,” was backed by prominent hardline Republicans including Speaker of the House Matt Regier.
Regier, who drew national headlines during last year’s legislative session for his handling of a dispute with transgender lawmaker Rep. Zooey Zephyr, D-Missoula, survived a well-financed primary challenge himself as he runs to move up to the state Senate. That opponent, Kalispell business owner Marquis Laude, spent nearly $69,000 on his campaign in addition to support from Conservatives4MT. Regier, who ran a comparatively cheap $14,000 campaign, handily won the primary on a 67-33 margin.
However, House Speaker Pro Tempore Rhonda Knudsen, the mother of Attorney General Austin Knudsen, lost her primary for an eastern Montana Senate district that spans Sidney, Plentywood, Scobey, part of Glasgow and portions of the Fort Peck Reservation. Her husband, Miles Knudsen, also lost a bid for a House seat that spans part of that Senate district.
In other notable Republican primaries, Rep. Josh Kassmier, a Fort Benton Republican who carried several of the governor’s priority bills in 2023, beat out Montana GOP vice-chair and state Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway, R-Great Falls, for a Senate seat representing rural areas around Great Falls. In Great Falls proper, Sheldon-Galloway’s husband, Rep. Steven Galloway, also narrowly lost his primary to Conservatives4MT-backed candidate Melissa Nikolakakos, the wife of Rep. George Nikolakakos.
With those mixed-bag results for the GOP tug of war, it’s difficult at this juncture to draw reliable conclusions about how primary outcomes will affect the policy coming out of the 2025 Montana Legislature, where lawmakers will likely tackle property tax, school funding and Medicaid policy questions that have historically divided the party.
Additionally, in some cases, the victorious Republicans will face Democratic opponents in this fall’s general election, though many of the districts involved are so Republican-inclined that their voters are unlikely to send a Democratic representative to Helena.
—Eric Dietrich
By the Numbers
Turnout in Tuesday’s primary election, with 308,226 of Montana’s 753,698 registered voters casting votes, according to the Montana secretary of state’s office.
According to data kept by the SOS, that rate is the sixth-lowest primary turnout for a presidential election year recorded since 1920. It is also the lowest presidential primary turnout since the 37% recorded in 2012, the year President Barack Obama was re-elected to his second term.
—Eric Dietrich
Counting Non-Votes
Montanans for Palestine, a group that has sought to push Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester to oppose American military support for Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza, claimed a self-described victory this week in its push to encourage Democratic voters to protest American policy by marking “no preference” on their ballots instead of voting to nominate President Joe Biden as the party’s presidential nominee.
In a release, the group said its advocacy had contributed to about 9% of the Democratic electorate, 9,141 voters, choosing the “no preference” option — more than twice as many as the 4,250 voters who did so in 2020.
“Just like Senator Tester, Joe Biden does not see the humanity of Palestinians and so he does not care when Israel kills them by the tens of thousands,” the group said in the release.
In response to an inquiry from Capitolized Thursday, a spokesperson for Tester’s campaign pointed to the results in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary, where Tester won 97% of the vote. The campaign didn’t address a specific question about whether Tester is worried that some Democrats’ frustration with Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war could harm his re-election bid.
In contrast to this year’s Democratic primary ballot, where Joe Biden was the only presidential candidate option for Montana voters, the 2020 ballot also included Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who drew a combined 34,000 votes.
When Barack Obama was the only presidential option on Democratic primary ballots in 2012, 10% of Montanans who voted in the Democratic primary selected the “no preference” option — a figure roughly equivalent to this year’s statistic.
—Eric Dietrich
Uncontested PSC Race to Get Second Candidate?
An independent candidate from Missoula is seeking to challenge Republican Public Service Commissioner Jennifer Fielder’s otherwise unopposed re-election bid. Elena Evans, a geologist who manages air and water quality programs for Missoula County, filed a notice of intent Monday with the secretary of state to appear on the general election ballot as an independent candidate.
In an email, Evans’ campaign said more than 150 supporters have collected 5,270 signatures across District 4, which includes all or parts of Lincoln, Mineral, Flathead, Lake, Sanders, Ravalli and Missoula counties. In order to qualify for the ballot without the nomination of a qualified political party, she needs 3,050 signatures.
Evans submitted the signatures to the relevant county election offices, and the secretary of state will now begin a verification process. If cleared by that office — a process that must be completed before ballots are printed in August — Evans’ name will appear alongside Fielder’s in the November general election.
Neither Evans nor Fielder returned calls asking about their campaigns Thursday. In campaign materials, Evans has said she was motivated to run by rising utility bills. She has also criticized a vote by Fielder and other commissioners that authorized an approximately 24% rate increase for NorthWestern Energy last year. Fielder has defended that vote as the best decision commissioners could make for consumers given the regulatory parameters set by state law.
—Amanda Eggert
On Background
For Solutions Caucus, the Proof is in the Primaries: A flashback to 2020, when we were… (checks notes)… writing about the tug of war between hardline and comparatively moderate Republicans.
Dems rally around Tester as activists push him on Gaza ceasefire: A reminder that Montanans for Palestine interrupted Tester’s speech at a major Democratic fundraiser earlier this year.
