This story is excerpted from Capitolized, a weekly newsletter featuring expert reporting, analysis and insight from the editors and reporters of Montana Free Press. Want to see Capitolized in your inbox every Thursday? Sign up here.
Public Service Commission President James Brown is running for Montana state auditor in 2024, he announced Thursday.
Brown, a Republican, previously told Montana Free Press he was considering a run for the office if the incumbent auditor, Republican Troy Downing, enters the race for Montana’s eastern district seat in Congress. Downing, indeed, is now seeking to succeed Republican Congressman Matt Rosendale, who is widely expected to run against declared Republican candidate Tim Sheehy for a chance to seek the Senate seat currently held by Jon Tester (who formally filed for re-election last week).
No other candidate has yet announced a campaign for auditor. The filing deadline is March 11.
Brown, a Helena attorney originally from Dillon, told MTFP he has been debating whether to run for re-election to the PSC, run for auditor, or make a second bid for Montana Supreme Court — he unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Justice Ingrid Gustafson in 2022. But when he saw “the deck chairs moving around on the Titanic” consequent to Rosendale’s interest in the Senate, he decided to opt for auditor. He also said he feels there’s an adequate array of candidates for the two open seats on the Montana Supreme Court this cycle.
The state auditor’s office, which also serves as Montana’s commissioner of securities and insurance, regulates the state’s insurance industry, investigates fraud and has a seat on the state land board.
Brown said his experience as leader of the PSC, which regulates Montana’s monopoly utilities, will carry over to the auditor’s office. He said he also holds an insurance producer license, and so understands the industries the auditor regulates.
“I know the work that’s being done at that agency,” he said.
Brown was elected to the PSC in 2020. When he began his term, the commission was in a state of disarray and under heightened public scrutiny amid intra-staff litigation, infighting and a blistering legislative audit that highlighted “an unhealthy organizational culture and ineffective leadership.”
A 2023 audit credited the agency for making progress on many of those fronts.
“One of the reasons I ran for PSC was because I felt I had the skill set and personal relationships to turn this agency around,” Brown said. “In the three years I’ve served as the commission president, I really feel the work I’ve done has put the agency in a much better place. But is there still work to be done at the agency? Absolutely.”
The state auditor’s office has frequently been employed as a launch pad toward higher-profile statewide or federal offices. Rosendale, who occupied the auditor’s office from 2017 to 2021, is a prominent recent example. And Brown is transparent about the opportunistic optics of cherry-picking an office to target this election cycle. His motivation to run, he said, is unrelated to money or ambition.
“If I was just looking for a state paycheck, I would just run for re-election to the PSC,” he told Capitolized. “I have an interest in serving the public and I have a skill set that serves the public interest well. And as a fourth-generation Montanan, I want to give back to the citizens of Montana.”
Brown said he’s especially interested in increasing public awareness about the traditionally low-public-profile auditor’s office and its duties, attracting new insurers to Montana, and ensuring that Montanans living in areas subject to high wildfire risk can obtain insurance as insurers nationally increasingly decline to underwrite such coverage.
Brown’s public announcement of his campaign for auditor comes as the Legislative Audit Committee is set to present another PSC audit in its scheduled meeting next week. The new audit credits the PSC with some improvements, but also recommends the adoption of a formal code of conduct and steps to improve employee retention.
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