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August 20, 2026
It’s been a whirlwind week of conflict in Montana’s Republican political circles.
The usual suspects were involved: a leader of the GOP’s centrist faction of legislators, a Helena judge, some high-powered attorneys and the top brass of the state Republican Party.
This chapter of the Montana GOP’s infighting saga — a story that’s come to define Montana politics over the past two decades — kicked off in earnest last week when Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen, a former legislator himself, dropped a bomb.
At the request of Senate President Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, Knudsen released an official attorney general opinion on term limits less than two weeks before the deadline for certifying candidates for the general election ballot. That opinion stood to keep two of the Legislature’s most influential lawmakers off the ticket: Conrad Republican Rep. Llew Jones and Great Falls Republican Rep. Steve Fitzpatrick.
Both Jones and Fitzpatrick have hopped between the state House and Senate consistently for 21 and 15 years, respectively. The reason they’ve lasted so long? Because when they hit their statutory maximum of eight years in one chamber, they run for the other chamber, never exceeding state law’s 8-contiguous-years cap in either. The practice of hopping from one to the next — which a handful of Montana legislators have done in the nearly 15 years since the strategy was determined to be legal — is exactly what Regier wanted to put an end to, and precisely what Knudsen’s decision would make illegal.
Regier specifically asked the attorney general to determine whether Jones, a perennial adversary of Regier and the bloc of hardline GOP legislators he leads, is eligible to run for state Senate this year.
Knudsen’s decision did not name Jones or Fitzpatrick specifically, but under the attorney general’s new precedent, both would be ineligible.
What came next was predictable: One group of Republicans sued another group of Republicans.
“If you want games of chaos, I’m not beyond games of chaos,” Jones said in a Thursday phone interview.
Adding urgency to the chaos is the looming deadline — Aug. 20 — by which Montana’s secretary of state has to certify ballots, i.e., decide whether or not to print Jones’ and Fitzpatrick’s names on the November ballot.
Fitzpatrick and Jones hired a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Montana, filed a lawsuit in Lewis and Clark County, and the District Court judge blocked the attorney general’s opinion after a hearing Tuesday in Helena. The attorney general’s office then appealed that decision, asking the Montana Supreme Court to block the lower court’s decision. The High Court rejected that request in less than two hours, declining to intervene in what the justices called an emergency of the state’s own creation.
The High Court’s decision leaves an injunction against the attorney general’s opinion in place, which should mean that Jones and Fitzpatrick will appear on the ballot.
As the battle was playing out in court, a subplot was simultaneously unfolding at the local level.
The Subplot
Once it became clear that the attorney general’s opinion, if upheld, would block Jones and Fitzpatrick from running, the Montana Republican Party got to work.
The state party passed a resolution affirming Knudsen’s opinion and started the process of picking a candidate to replace Jones in the race for Senate District 9.
The state party is a private organization that sets policy priorities and works to get Republicans elected. Over the last two years, party leadership has backed the hardline faction of the GOP, and has taken steps to purge relatively moderate Republican legislators from its ranks.
North-central Montana’s Senate District 9 encompasses parts of Teton, Toole, Pondera and Lewis and Clark counties, and the party’s replacement candidate was selected by a vote of three Republican central committee members from each county.
Holly Hovland, chair of the Toole County Republican Central Committee, said in a phone interview Thursday it was “absolutely shocking” to learn that Republicans would need to find a replacement for Jones. She was not happy to hear it.
“There needs to be a huge change at the state level in the GOP,” Hovland told Montana Free Press. “The leadership is not supporting Republicans. They’re causing more problems.”
Two potential replacement candidates were put forward: Jones’ primary election opponent, Rep. Zack Wirth, R-Wolf Creek, who had been backed by the state party and Regier in the June primary, and Ted Kronebusch, chairman of the Pondera Republican Central Committee and one of Jones’ closest friends for more than five decades.
The three delegates from Lewis and Clark County voted for Wirth, while the nine others voted for Kronebusch. Hovland explained that the Pondera, Teton and Toole county committees often share resources and co-host fundraisers, so they easily coalesced around Kronebusch.
Kronebusch then sent a letter to the state party saying he would accept the role only if Jones were in fact legally precluded from the ballot, and stating his belief that no true vacancy existed in the Republican candidacy for Senate District 9. That letter also mentioned that Kronebusch is one of the plaintiffs, alongside Jones and Fitzpatrick, in the lawsuit against the attorney general’s opinion.
Now Wittich was unhappy.
“[Kronebusch’s] acceptance letter was clear as mud, and full of weasel words as to his intentions,” Wittich said in a Thursday email to MTFP. “He also did not disclose before the vote that he was suing the State to stop the vacancy, while applying to fill it. A clear conflict.”
Wittich responded to Kronebusch’s acceptance statement with a letter of his own, which incensed Hovland and other GOP central committee members.
“I am surprised to learn you are a co-plaintiff with Llew Jones in the suit against the Secretary of State and Attorney General challenging the eligibility of Mr. Jones on the ballot,” Wittich wrote to Kronebusch. “Although I understand your desire to manage the clear conflict of interest this raises for you, I am nonetheless surprised you effectively conditioned your acceptance on the eventual decisions in that case.”
Wittich also pointed out that the state party, months ago, had “revoked its recognition” of Kronebusch as a Republican Party member because of his connections to certain political action committees. (That’s another chapter of the story that you can read about here).
Hovland and a handful of others then sent emails to Wittich, some of them noting that the very reason they’d voted for Kronebusch was his involvement in the lawsuit against Knudsen.
“Your responsibility is clear: you are not being asked to pass judgment on Ted Kronebusch, but to uphold Montana law, respect the lawful process, and carry out the unmistakable will of the people who chose him,” Vicki Baker, vice chairman of the Teton County Republican Central Committee, wrote to Wittich.
Over the last couple of days, multiple legislators have speculated on how the saga could impact the upcoming legislative session that gavels in early January.
“This is the calm before the storm, right?” Hovland said in a Thursday phone interview. “What’s going to happen when the session gets called in?”
Describing the last few days as “calm” might seem ludicrous, but observers of the 2025 session know that Hovland could be on to something.
—Victoria Eavis