BILLINGS — In a convention that felt tamer than two years ago when the Montana Republican Party had sharp debates over how to deal with things like abortion access, the state GOP set its party platform over the weekend.
The convention made several changes that reflected the party’s sharp criticism of Montana’s judiciary and added language to reflect other stances such as the opposition to ranked-choice voting, all while managing long-simmering divisions within the group.
“It’s time that we take our platform seriously, and we require people to abide by it. That’s all,” former state Rep. Brad Tschida, a Missoula Republican, said to applause at the close of the convention Saturday afternoon. “If they don’t want to, I don’t have any hard feelings. I think what we need to have them do is to run as an Independent, run as a Libertarian, run as a Green Party member, but don’t put an R after your name.”
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Some of the more pointed debates were muted this time by convention rules. Jeff Essmann, the former state lawmaker and past party chair who led the meeting, said that any substantive changes needed to be made in individual issue, or plank, committees that met the day prior and were closed to press. Those larger changes would not be up for consideration before the whole group.
Convention Chair Jeff Essmann leads the platform discussion at the 2024 Montana GOP Platform Convention at the Billings Hotel and Convention Center on June 29.
The limitations on changes to the platform in the full convention came up quickly when delegate Shane Eaton of Prairie County asked to add a resolution to support teaching the Bible in the classroom, as the state of Oklahoma recently ordered. That was ruled out of order before any debate.
The rule also shut down any potential debate over abortion, an issue that caused intense disputes in 2021.
State Rep. David Bedey, a Bitterroot Valley Republican who was booed in the last convention when he took stances that diverted from what ended up in the platform, called again for allowing some exceptions to the GOP’s support of a total ban on abortion.
“I cannot offer an amendment but I will offer an observation and that is our call in this plank for a total ban on abortion is out of sync with most Republicans, out of sync with most Montanans, and it’s frankly setting back the pro-life movement in the state of Montana,” Bedey said. “It’s energizing the effort to make abortion a constitutional right. And it’s unfortunate that the plank committee did not take this particular issue up. Had I understood the rules of the game as some other people misunderstood here as well, I might have made them play during (the appropriate time).”
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