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.
Several Montana Democratic candidates this week issued statements calling for an “immediate, permanent, bilateral” ceasefire of the war in Gaza, including three candidates for Montana’s eastern U.S. House district and the party’s treasurer.
“There are moments in history that call us to set aside political differences and do what’s right,” begins one statement, co-signed by eastern district congressional candidates Ming Cabrera, John Driscoll and Kevin Hamm.
It continues: “If we fail to condemn the killing of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians and the displacement of two million others, we can no longer claim to be defenders of morality. We believe that failing to use our political platforms to counter dangerous, dehumanizing narratives that endanger both Jewish and Palestinian communities around the world is not only morally reprehensible, but a policy failure that will perpetuate lasting harm to both communities well beyond this election cycle.”
A second letter, authored by Lance FourStar, a member of the Red Bottom Clan of the Assiniboine Nation, House District 31 legislative candidate and treasurer of the Montana Democratic Party, makes a similar case, but also explicitly connects the U.S. government’s “deliberate actions to prevent Indigenous tribes from exercising their right to self-determination, dissent and cultural healing” with “the oppression faced by Palestinians.”
Both letters, which were published and distributed by a left-wing group called the Montana Jewish Labor Bund earlier this week, call on Hamas to release remaining Israeli hostages, for Israel to free prisoners held without trial, and for an end to Israel’s siege of Gaza and violence against the civilian population.
“We reject the false choice between Israeli safety and Palestinian freedom,” the letter from the congressional candidates reads.
Neither the Montana Democratic Party nor the Montana Republican Party has made a public statement about a possible ceasefire.
This week, the U.S. drafted a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for “an immediate ceasefire” in Gaza tied to the release of hostages held by Hamas. The U.S. previously vetoed three other ceasefire resolutions. Also this week, a report from the World Bank warned that half of Gaza’s population of roughly 2.3 million is at imminent risk of famine.
“Everybody I know feels the same way, and even if they didn’t, I’d be in favor of a ceasefire. It’s horrific to see those kids being killed,” John Driscoll, a former Democratic state legislator and Public Service Commission member who was a late entry into the House race, told Capitolized Thursday. Driscoll added that he regards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “fascist.”
Steve Held, another Democrat running in the eastern district primary, did not sign the letter.
Held said in a statement Thursday that “this is not the time for self-serving political hopefuls to fuel the fires of war against us, but to stand with the United States and demand an end to this violence and all other conflicts by working together.”
FourStar told Capitolized that he issued his statement as a candidate and tribal member, not as an officer of the Democratic Party.
“What we’re doing is listening to what matters to Native voters and youth in particular,” he said. “At the end of the day this issue matters to them and should matter to their representatives as well.”
He criticized the “economic irresponsibility of spending billions of dollars supporting a foreign military … while we debate whether we can afford to fund health care in our own government.”
He drew a connection between Israeli troops opening fire on Palestinians attempting to get food from an aid convoy and the starvation experienced by his ancestors as they were forced onto reservations.
“I need to remind the public that we’ve seen this before and we need to learn from the past,” he said.
But he went out of his way to signal respect for Montana’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, who has faced protests by some activists due to his lack of public support for a ceasefire and his position as chair of the influential Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee. He said Tester has been publicly asked about a ceasefire before and “he gave a very level-headed response.”
“The truth is, it’s a horrible situation,” Tester told an audience member at a Butte town hall last fall. “There are no good answers here. And it’s not a good sight, what’s going on in Gaza right now. It wasn’t a good sight on October 7.”
FourStar said he thinks Tester can be moved on the issue.
“I don’t think the youth would ask me to make a statement unless they thought Sen. Tester could be potentially redirected on some areas of his decisions,” he said.
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