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Candidates for state and federal office in Montana can’t officially file for the ballot in next year’s election until January.
But that hasn’t stopped dozens of Montana politicians of various degrees of renown from making preliminary steps toward higher office, forming exploratory committees so they can begin raising money, taking out advertisements and stumping around the state.
Already, it’s a lot to keep track of, even for a relatively seasoned political observer like myself. Some races in particular, like the Republican primary for Montana’s eastern House district, have already attracted a small army of hopefuls — and the district’s incumbent, Republican Matt Rosendale, hasn’t even said whether he’s running for re-election.
So Montana Free Press consulted our notes, email inboxes, news clippings and more to create a running list of almost everyone running for state or federal office in Montana’s 2024 election cycle. Our candidate listing, which we’ll update periodically as election season heats up, covers just about every office that Montanans might be interested in this cycle, from state Supreme Court to U.S. Senate.
We haven’t quite captured every office — some, like state auditor, have yet to see any candidates announce — and we’re waiting to address the various possible ballot initiatives until they actually qualify for the ballot. But we do have information on who’s running for Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, most of Montana’s constitutional offices (including the governor, attorney general, secretary of state and superintendent of public instruction) as well as the state Supreme Court. Even at this early stage, it’s a dizzying list.
We tried to provide some basic biographical information about each candidate and a little bit about their personal politics and motivations for running. Some candidates have a relatively small public footprint; others, an established, well-known record. We’ll flesh out these descriptions as we cover these races over the coming year, writing stories, profiling candidates and compiling our biennial full-fledged election guide. In the meantime, we hope this is a good starting point as we begin the shift into election season.
As mentioned, we’ll periodically update the guide when there are new candidates for office. If we missed someone, or you’d like to get in touch with the guide’s primary author, don’t hesitate to reach out to MTFP political reporter Arren Kimbel-Sannit at [email protected].
—Arren Kimbel-Sannit, Reporter
By the Numbers 🔢
Total revenue generated for Montana’s public schools from state-owned public lands during fiscal year 2023, which ran from July 2022 to June 2023. The figure, reported to the Montana Land Board by the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation Nov. 20, included a nearly record-setting $46 million in coal revenues. The Billings Gazette reported that the only year that eclipsed that dollar amount was 2010, when Arch Coal paid the state $86 million in a failed attempt to develop coal tracts at Otter Creek.
Coal is one of several types of public land revenues Montana leans on to help fund K-12 education. Grazing leases, timber sales, recreational use permits, and oil and gas development also each generate money that, in one way or another, eventually finds its way into classrooms throughout the state.
—Alex Sakariassen, Reporter
Hot Potato 🥔
Last month, Republican and Democratic lawmakers on a legislative interim committee voted to object to a sweeping revision of state rules for child care providers. The move interrupted a significant reform effort backed by the Gianforte administration and business owners who say the state’s current requirements for day care centers are overly burdensome, contributing to Montana’s dire child care shortage.
Lawmakers say they didn’t cast their votes lightly. One sticking point cited by legislators in the November meeting was a requirement for many child care providers to accept religious exemptions for standard vaccinations. As the Daily Montanan reported at the time, that portion of the package was opposed by public health advocates, including the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Montana chapter, and created heartburn for Democrats and Republicans for varying reasons: Some critics said the vaccine requirement revisions weren’t far-reaching enough, while others said they could contribute to the spread of infectious illnesses among young children.
Because of the committee’s objection, the draft rules are likely stalled until it meets again in January, lawmakers told MTFP this week. The health department could present an amended version of the package at that time with the portion about vaccine exemptions removed or heavily revised in an effort to get more lawmakers on board. But there’s no guarantee that the Gianforte administration, routinely a backer of religious freedom measures, won’t dig in its heels on the package as currently written. Lawmakers said they sent a letter to the health department in November explaining their objections and had not received a response as of Thursday.
Committee member Sen. Chris Friedel, R-Billings, said in a Friday phone call that the objection vote is one of the only check-and-balance tools lawmakers have over the executive branch during the interim period between legislative sessions. On an issue as complicated as public health and childhood vaccines, he said, it’s worth everyone’s time to come to the table and try to hash out a possible way forward.
“On the one hand, it protects religion. On the other hand, not everyone is religious,” Friedel said. “… It’s one of those situations where, how do you solve the problem without pissing someone off?”
—Mara Silvers, Reporter
Close-up 📸
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wednesday that wolverines, an elusive snow-dependent species, will be protected under the Endangered Species Act due to threats posed by climate change and habitat fragmentation.
While reporting that story, MTFP came across a camera trap image taken by Kalon Baughan, a former trapper and wildlife painter who uses his knowledge of wolverines and Canada lynx to support wildlife research. Baughan said in an interview that he uses genetic material from hair and scat, as well as distinctive neck and chest markings, to identify individual wolverines and keep track of their whereabouts over the course of years.
The above photo was taken in 2021 with a camera trap Baughan set on the Helena Lewis and Clark National Forest, not far from his home in the Helmville area. The male wolverine, dubbed M-6, first made its way into biologists’ records on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in 2010. By the time this photograph was taken, he was at least 12 — old for a wolverine.
Baughan said time stamps on the digital SLR he uses in his camera trap indicate that M-6 “was there literally minutes before I showed up.”
“I wonder how many times he’s watched me, but I never personally laid eyes on him,” Baughan said. “I find that wonderful, personally.”
—Amanda Eggert, Reporter
Following the Law ⚖️
Litigation over Missoula County’s 2020 election results, which became a flashpoint for hardline Republicans who questioned the integrity of Montana’s elections, has dwindled to a final conclusion without election skeptics persuading the court system that there was merit to their suspicions.
In an Oct. 17 order, Judge John Larson dismissed claims that Missoula County’s election office had failed to properly retain voter database information from the 2020 election. With the closure of an appeal window last week, that leaves his order the final legal word on the issue.
To recap: The 2020 election in Missoula County became the subject of considerable scrutiny from local conservatives in 2021. A citizen group led by former Republican Rep. Brad Tschida conducted a hand-count that January of the affirmation envelopes submitted by voters along with their ballots. What followed was a string of claims and counter-claims about alleged discrepancies in the county’s election results, fanning the flames of a nascent right-wing movement that questioned a core piece of Montana’s democratic process.
The fervor manifested itself statewide in a deluge of public records requests, a string of contested county clerk and recorder races, and two legislative sessions packed with debates over election security. Tschida’s group, the Missoula County Election Integrity Project (later rebranded as the Montana Election Integrity Project), teamed up with former U.S. Department of Justice adviser John R. Lott Jr., who had been appointed by President Donald Trump, to sue the county. The lawsuit accused election administrator Bradley Seaman and his office of failing to adequately retain various records including video surveillance of 2020 election activities and historic snapshots of the state-managed voter database.
The election integrity project backed out of the litigation last year, and the video surveillance complaints were dismissed in mediation. Lott, however, forged on, arguing that state and federal law obligated the county to keep records of its changes to its voter rolls. Larson ultimately disagreed, noting that the voter database is controlled by Montana’s secretary of state as opposed to county election administrators.
“Evidence in the record shows that Montana’s election law structure is controlled by the secretary of state,” Larson wrote, “and any relief requested from the court is more appropriately directed to the Legislature.”
—Alex Sakariassen, Reporter
Verbatim 💬
“Despite the state’s attempt to defend SB 419 as a consumer protection bill, the current record leaves little doubt that Montana’s legislature and Attorney General were more interested in targeting China’s ostensible role in TikTok than with protecting Montana consumers.”
—U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy, writing in a court order that blocks Montana’s first-of-its-kind TikTok ban from taking effect Jan. 1.
Supporters have said the ban, championed by Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen and passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature as Senate Bill 419 this year, would protect Montanans from having their data leaked to the Chinese government. The company and other critics have argued the ban would infringe on First Amendment protections for free speech and represents an inappropriate intrusion by state government into national security issues that are properly the domain of the federal government.
Molloy’s order, which temporarily throws the brakes on the ban while litigation brought by the company and a group of Montana-based users proceeds, signals that he thinks the plaintiffs have a strong case that the ban is unconstitutional. In a statement, the AG’s office said it will continue advocating for the ban in court.
READ MORE: Federal judge blocks Montana’s first-in-nation TikTok ban.
AND IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: The TikTok ban isn’t Montana’s only new tech privacy law.
—Eric Dietrich, Deputy Editor
On Our Radar 
Amanda — I appreciated this Flathead Beacon story about the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ frustration with the years-long diplomatic stalemate over transboundary coal-mining pollution. An agreement “was supposed to be done by summer and that came and went like the wind,” the tribes’ natural resources department head told Tristan Scott. “So now we’re going to hold [Canada’s] feet to their fire on this end-of-year deadline.”
Alex — With the continued lack of snow around Missoula, I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time repeatedly rewatching a mind-bending 2011 ski film segment from one of my childhood heroes: the late freeskiing legend JP Auclair. Gotta build the ski season hype somehow.
Arren — “Anthony Bourdain always wanted to punch Henry Kissinger over Cambodia,” the Washington Post’s food section writes. “Punch,” I think, probably stops short at what Bourdain really wanted to do to Kissinger, who, as secretary of state and national security advisor under two presidents, presided over and prodded (secret) mass death and destruction in Cambodia, Laos, Chile and beyond.
JoVonne — Homeless encampments have popped up more and more within cities across the nation. The Associated Press reports here that simply removing the camps isn’t the easy fix it may seem.
Brad — One of the things I love about flying is the chance to settle in for a few hours with an actual book, which I otherwise rarely have focused time to do anymore. As I flew to visit family in Houston over Thanksgiving, I spent the time with Pulitzer Prize winner “His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice,” by Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. Floyd’s experience as a fellow child of Houston, just six years younger than me, was largely foreign, for reasons that give the book moral weight, but the re-created landscape of his youth was hauntingly familiar.
Mara — As we were drafting this newsletter, news broke that former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor died in Phoenix at the age of 93. Candidly, I did not have time to read this extensive obituary about the high court’s first female justice written by Linda Greenhouse for the New York Times. I can promise that it’ll take up a worthwhile portion of my weekend.
Eric — Does the federal government need more bureaucrats? This prominent Substack guy makes an honest-to-god case for yes.
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