Can a Republican ride to Congress without Trump’s coattails?

Now comes Al Olszewski, aka “Dr. Al,” to perform his role in the rotation of primary election special guests at Republican dinners, where references to Donald Trump are like table salt — never on the menu, but always included. Unless, that is, there’s another candidate in the race boasting of Trump’s endorsement, as there is in Olszewski’s four-way GOP primary for Montana’s open Western District U.S. House seat. In that case, the challenge becomes this: how to persuade Republican voters of your MAGA-grade fealty to the party’s national standard-bearer by imbuing your words with the pitch of a dog whistle you dare not actually blow.

Olszewski’s pitch requires persuading voters that his dearth of major endorsements and PAC support from House leaders means that they — Montana’s voters — are his candidacy’s majority shareholders.

“The last time I saw you, I was running a race that I lost by razor-thin edge,” Olszewski told diners gathered at a country club luncheon hosted by the Gallatin County Republican Women on March 27. “I ran against my friend Ryan Zinke, and it took three days to count. It was too close. Let’s finish it. Let’s finish that race, let’s take it forward.” 

In the 16 counties that comprise the Western District, President Trump’s seal of approval belongs to Aaron Flint, a talk radio personality who trotted out a polished campaign ad, a Super PAC, and Trump’s Truth Social blessing before even registering to run. Any other claim to Trump’s support, such as primary competitor Christi Jacobsen’s current promotion of Trump’s endorsement of her 2024 reelection campaign for secretary of state, is sure to be met with corrective rhetoric from MAGA’s gatekeepers.

Like Flint, Olszewski, 63, is a veteran, having served 13 years in the Air Force as a surgeon. Unlike Flint, he’s said little about the current war with Iran on the campaign trail. Both of his major primary opponents have publicly approved of Trump’s execution of the attacks, as have the federal delegation officeholders — Zinke, Eastern District Rep. Troy Downing, and Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy — that Olszewski hopes to join.

“I don’t like the war, but I’m respecting the president’s position, that he knows more than I do, and he’s actually trying to find weapons-grade plutonium,” Olszewski told Montana Free Press on April 3. Olszewski said Congress needs to revisit the question of its power to authorize war.

So how does a candidate convey that he’s a Trumper without emphasizing that Trump himself has anointed a competitor? The answer for Olszewski has been to emulate another Montana Trump loyalist who also failed to win the president’s endorsement when it mattered most. Former U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale’s 2024 U.S. Senate campaign ended six days after its launch when Trump endorsed the eventual winner, U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy. Rosendale had welcomed Trump’s endorsement in his two previous elections for U.S. House, and in his 2018 run for Senate.

On the stump in Montana, Olszewski incorporates Rosendale’s consistent Freedom Caucus messaging, including a commitment to “regular order” — meaning the annual passage of a federal budget based on 12 agency appropriations bills, fully heard and amended in committee, which Congress has managed to do just four times since 1977.

“In the U.S. Congress, they’re a mess, and the reason they’re in the mess is because they’re not in regular order,” Olszewski told the Gallatin County Republican Women in late March. “There’s a lot of people there that have not been to the farm team and worked in state legislatures, and when they come up and they have no experience, it’s those same power brokers, the leadership, who have taken the power to themselves as the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader of the Senate, the minority leaders. They have stolen our sovereignty that we gave to our representatives. We need to be in regular order, period. And then we can govern. Once we’re back to regular order, then we can govern as a nation, as a republic.”

A Great Falls native, Olszewski served six years in the Montana Legislature — two in the House and four in the Senate — starting in 2015. Scott Sales, the Senate president during Olszewski’s tenure, thinks the former Kalispell legislator could emerge from the primary victorious, though he’s clear that he sees a winning path for each of the race’s three high-profile candidates. 

“He’s a really good retail campaigner,” Sales said of Olszewski. “He’s excellent on the stump. He’s even better person-to-person. I look at those three people, and then you throw a fourth person [Ray Curtis] who will siphon off probably 4% to 6% of the vote,  just because his name’s on the ballot, sure, and who the hell knows?”

One major unknown is how primary voters will respond to presumptive frontrunner Flint’s early backing by the D.C. Republican establishment. Before Zinke’s surprise retirement announcement two days before the candidate filing deadline, no Republican candidates had filed to challenge the incumbent, and for good reason. Incumbents running for U.S. House in Montana have lost only one primary election — in 1932. 

With Zinke out, four Republican candidates filed in the final two days before the deadline, but only Flint did so with the backing of a House Republican leadership fundraising committee and endorsements from a cadre of national Republican leaders, and with Zinke’s staff serving as Flint’s campaign team. 

Then, in the final minutes before the filing deadline, U.S. Sen. Steve Daines withdrew his candidacy and, like Zinke, endorsed a would-be successor in Kurt Alme. Alme, like Flint, is moving forward with a campaign staffed by Daines personnel, backing by Senate Republican leadership, and a Trump endorsement.

“Here’s the thing,” Olszewski said. “In the general [election], what has happened within our party that was considered inside baseball and clever is now a tremendous baseball bat that Democrats want to beat the crap out of us with.” Republicans will vote a party line, he said, but independent voters, whom Republicans need to win, might not.

Some Republicans are still upset that they didn’t get a competitive primary election in 2024 when the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by Daines, coalesced around eventual winner Tim Sheehy, a candidate Daines recruited. 

The pick of Sheehy, complete with a Trump endorsement, boxed out Matt Rosendale, a popular pick among conservatives including Olszewski, who cautions voters not to fall in line with party leaders in D.C.

“When you’re brought to the dance by those who are from Washington, D.C., and they hand you the endorsements and a million dollars, guess what?” he said, suggesting that Flint’s loyalties might already lie with a D.C. political establishment.

This is Olszewski’s third campaign for federal office. He placed last in the 2018 Republican primary for U.S. Senate. In 2022, he finished second to Zinke in a five-candidate primary for the then newly created Western District. He’s never made it beyond the primary. 

This time he thinks he finally can, even without Trump in his corner. 

Olszewski said he learned from Trump’s endorsement of Zinke in 2022 that the president’s blessing isn’t necessarily a kingmaker.

“We went from 10 points behind in 2022, despite Ryan being a former congressman, Secretary of Interior, Trump’s endorsement and Gianforte’s endorsement, Daines’ endorsement, and that’s when Daines and Gianforte were really in good light with the Republicans,” Olszewski said. By the time ballots were counted, Olszewski trailed Zinke by just 2% of the vote. 

Olszewski’s platform is centered around limiting government overreach, and he supports conservative positions on abortion, health care and education. He said Montana’s housing affordability challenges can be solved by creating more high-paying jobs in natural resource extraction. The father of six said four of his own kids rent, while two own homes.  

“If you’re trying to afford a living on a tourist income, that means rental,” Olszewski said. “But you can have an affordable job, and we can create them, all we have to do is unlock those mountains and our treasure, our timber and the resources within it.” 

Olszewski is a staunch opponent of abortion. In the state Legislature, he sponsored the Born Alive Protection Act, which required that any infant born alive, including after an abortion, be treated as a legal person, requiring health care providers to employ all available measures to keep them alive. The bill was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock. A similar federal bill has been cosponsored by Eastern District Rep. Troy Downing, 

Olszewski also opposes the Affordable Care Act, which he said derailed his orthopedic surgery business. He would prefer to replace Medicaid subsidies with tax credits for anyone who pays a medical premium.  

“You buy your own insurance, you make your own decision, and it’s going to be a tax credit,” Olszewski said. “Once health care is back to being just like house or home insurance, life insurance, where you buy it, it’s not a gym membership now, it becomes affordable”

Similarly, Olszewski says education funding should go directly to students. 

”We have Trump investment accounts, have Trump education accounts, and the money follows the child instead of the [Department of Education] sending their money bribing the teachers unions to do indoctrination,” he said. 

He said Congress should narrow the scope of the Endangered Species Act to help open more federal land to development. “Our apex predators are not in danger … the Endangered Species Act is a very positive, conservative act …  if we can go back to its original intent.”

In closing, Olszewski told his luncheon crowd that he wants to be their man in Washington — but not of Washington. The people of Montana, Olszewski said, are the only endorsement he needs.

“So you’re going to scare me with endorsements? Didn’t get them. Scare me with money? Didn’t get them. I now have the freedom to shine a light into the darkness of what’s going on in the shadows.”

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