Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaks during a rally at the Billings Logan International Airport on Friday, Aug. 16.
Friday’s political event at an airport hangar in Billings felt like a drop in the bucket compared to the rally for former president Donald Trump a week earlier in Bozeman. Still, there was excitement in the crowd of roughly 100 for several statewide Republican candidates and U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
Johnson, the highest-ranking Republican in Washington, D.C., and third in the presidential line of succession, sought to assure the crowd that Montana would play a role in what the party hopes will be a wide red wave this November.
“Right now is an open question, it’s not a rhetorical one: Are we going to preserve freedom?” Johnson posed to the crowd. “That is an open question that will be decided on Nov. 5, and Montana is going to be a big part of the answer to that.”
The reality on the ground here seems more solid. State auditor Troy Downing sewed up a 19-point victory in the crowded Republican primary for Montana’s deep-red eastern congressional district in
