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January 23, 2025
Briefly during his Monday scramble to jettison the deadweight of an emerging scandal, Jason Ellsworth seemed to be distancing himself from himself.
In the Capitol basement where the press toils, the Republican senator from Hamilton distributed a treatise on the matter written entirely in the third person.
“Ellsworth today announced that he has signed termination documents in hand for the [$170,100] judicial oversight contract [awarded to a former business associate] he authorized [to the surprise of Senate leadership] as outgoing president,” the statement read. [Context added in brackets by Capitolized.] “This decisive action addresses recent criticism and allows the Senate to refocus on legislative priorities.”
And he wasn’t done.
“Ellsworth stated unequivocally that the attacks on the contract are a thinly veiled political ploy to justify reversing changes he championed to ensure the fair treatment of all senators.”
Furthermore: “Ellsworth expressed concern that the ‘contract controversy’ will be used as a pretext to manipulate committee assignments … ”
Three floors up, Ellsworth, who led the Senate as recently as December, was quickly becoming persona non grata. A fellow Senate Republican, according to Senate President Matt Regier, had reported the contract to the Fraud Hotline of the Legislative Auditor. The contract made the news just three days earlier.
By law, tips to the hotline are anonymous, as was the one against Ellsworth. Legislative Auditor Angus McIver, a Scot with a tax collector’s charm, told Capitolized there would be no exception for a tip from a public official against another public official.
“Waste, fraud and abuse” seemed to pass from the lips of the current Senate president, Kalispell Republican Matt Regier, whenever the hotline was mentioned.
By Wednesday, Sen. Sue Vinton, R-Lockwood, was circulating a published editorial about the “strange political dynamics at play” in which Vinton characterized Ellsworth as a past president whom Republicans wisened up to and denied a second term as leader after learning of his true nature. She blamed Democrats for propping him up.
Ellsworth was, however, a known quantity before Republicans selected him to lead the Senate in 2023. The senator in 2021 had been charged and pleaded guilty to obstructing a peace officer during a traffic stop during which he left his car, approached a Highway Patrol trooper, and declared legislative privilege while demanding to be released. In the exchange, the lawmaker advised the trooper to call the attorney general.
It took a state Supreme Court order to release the trooper’s dashcam footage of the incident, two years after the fact.
In 2008, Ellsworth’s telemarketing company was swept up in “Operation Tele Phony,” a Federal Telecommunications Commission investigation into fraud by companies selling magazine subscriptions. A judgment against Ellsworth and his company, Your Magazine Provider, included a $600,000 fine.
In 2022, Ellsworth won his party’s nomination for president of the 2023 Senate by defeating Keith Regier, a Kalispell Republican and patriarch of a Republican political family that’s sent three members to the Montana Legislature. Caucus votes on leadership nominations are anonymous, but Senate Republicans from 2023 say the vote was close, 15 for Keith Regier, 18 for Ellsworth, with Laurel Republican Brad Molnar abstaining.
The vote in 2024 wasn’t as close. In the first round, Ellsworth faced Matt Regier, son of Keith, and Greg Hertz, a Polson Republican. Both Hertz and Regier were former House speakers. Regier won the first round with 15 votes, while Ellsworth picked up 10 and Hertz seven. In the second round the Hertz voters fell behind Regier.
The argument against reelecting Ellsworth was that the 2023 Senate carried too much water for the Republican governor.
Then, the Senate was thrown into chaos 15 minutes after gaveling in this year’s session when Ellsworth and a small group of Republicans partnered with Democrats to score better committee assignments by amending Senate rules. Democrats guided by Minority Leader Pat Flowers, of Belgrade, led the charge that resulted in better assignments for three Democrats, Flowers included, and five Republicans, including Ellsworth.
Regier’s leadership team responded by canceling bill hearings for a week as they tried and failed to regain control of the rules, then made the committee assignments prescribed by the resistance.
Publicly, President Matt Regier’s management of the matter has been subtle. The Monday following the Senate’s week of canceled hearings, House and Senate lawmakers met for a joint evening session to hear Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s State of the State address.
Regier appointed Ellsworth and a few other rebellion members to escort Gianforte into the House chamber. Afterward, Ellsworth told the press he assumed his inclusion in the escort corps was “out of respect.” It was at some point during the week of the governor’s address that Legislative Services informed Regier of a payment request from Bryce Eggleston. The Stevensville man and business acquaintance of Ellsworth was trying to make a first draw on the $170,100 contract awarded by Ellsworth in December as Ellsworth’s tenure as president wound down. For the money, Eggleston was expected to monitor how the state put into practice several would-be laws intended to limit the powers of Montana courts.
Less than a week later, Ellsworth was telling the press that Eggleston was no longer interested in providing the services, which Regier wasn’t interested in paying for.
According to his Monday treatise to the press, “Ellsworth also suggested that a frivolous ethics complaint might be lodged against him as a retaliatory tactic.” That remains to be seen.
—Tom Lutey
Senate slowdown
Weeks of infighting between Republican factions in the Montana Senate slowed the work of the state Legislature’s nominally senior chamber. As of Thursday, one day short of three full weeks into the 2025 session, the Senate had conducted only 19 floor debates, according to legislative data compiled by Capitolized. That pace is dramatically behind this year’s Montana House, as well the Senate in its last two sessions.
Past sessions have seen the House and Senate take a week or two to ramp up their work. By this point in the 2023 session, though, the Senate had conducted 57 floor debates. In 2021, as lawmakers worked around the COVID-19 pandemic, it had conducted 42.
The slow start could produce a crunch later in the session, forcing senators to rush bills across the floor to avoid looming procedural deadlines.
“Committee work got held up that first week. So, we did get out of the box pretty slow. That’s unfortunate,” Senate President Matt Regier said Tuesday. “I do think we make up time. About the same amount of bills are in committee right now and have been assigned to committee as last session.”
Regier has been hinting that Saturday floor sessions to process bills are a possibility. The Senate meets weekday afternoons, generally.
—Eric Dietrich
On Background
- Both times Sen. Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, ran for Senate president, he faced challengers from the Regier clan.
- A select committee tasked with diminishing the power of Montana courts produced 27 bills. Bryce Eggleston was contracted to track the bills that became law as state government put them into practice.
- Debates over judicial power have dominated committee hearings concerning bills to limit court power.
