The newly elected vice chair of the Montana Democratic Party has resigned days after disparaging former U.S. Sen. Jon Tester.
Livingston area Democrat Max Johansen resigned Wednesday “after acknowledging that certain comments he made following the convention were disruptive and inconsistent with the direction of the executive board,” according to a party press release.
The Montana Democratic Party isn’t saying what Johansen said that led to his resignation. He was the only Democrat running for the party’s vice chairmanship at the officers’ convention held in Livingston last weekend. The party didn’t respond to a request for more information.
Johansen didn’t respond to a Wednesday voicemail from Montana Free Press. In an interview with the Montana Free Press after his election, Johansen faulted Tester “for not being more proactive and forthright” about Tester’s 2024 Republican opponent, Tim Sheehy.
Now a U.S. senator, Sheehy defeated Tester by more than 40,000 votes, completing a Republican sweep of the statewide and federal offices that started in 2020.
In an interview with MTFP Tuesday, Tester said, “Things have changed. There’s too many people in the party right now that don’t think I have any value. And I’m OK with that.”
Tester didn’t attend the Montana Democrats’ convention but did call in to endorse former state legislator Mike Jopek for chair. Tester told the conventioneers that “The Democratic Party is in trouble. We have done it to ourselves. We have focused on blue districts and not other districts throughout the state. We are seen in polling as woke and weak.”
Jopek then lost the vote for chair to Shannon O’Brien, 39 to 112. O’Brien campaigned on “something new in the Democratic Party.”
O’Brien was the party’s unsuccessful 2024 candidate for state superintendent of the Office of Public Instruction.
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