Meet the Flathead Valley judges squaring off for a state Supreme Court seat

In mid-September, the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce dedicated its monthly luncheon to a candidate forum featuring local legislative candidates and Flathead County District Court judges Amy Eddy and Dan Wilson, who are facing off for the open seat on the Montana Supreme Court. The two jurists were the only statewide candidates to appear at the event, which might have been considered a major score for the local chamber, especially if Eddy and Wilson had traveled across the state to attend. But they only had to meander down from the Flathead County Courthouse on the other side of downtown. 

This fall, Eddy and Wilson are competing for the state Supreme Court seat being vacated by three-term justice Beth Baker, who announced last year she would not seek a fourth term. The unusual race between two judges from the same court means that, regardless of who wins in November, Flathead County will have an open bench come the new year.

But perhaps more interesting than the commonality of the candidates’ current jobs is the politicized flavor of the nominally nonpartisan race. While Eddy has tried to present herself as a nonpartisan candidate who wants to “keep politics out of the courtroom,” Wilson has been embraced by the Montana Republican Party, accepting hefty donations from the state GOP and speaking at its events. 

Adding to the race’s ideological dynamic, the campaigns’ partisan overtones are playing out as Montanans will consider on the same November ballot a constitutional initiative — CI-132 — that would require judicial races in Montana to remain nonpartisan, as they have been for decades. The initiative was sparked by a failed Republican effort during the last legislative session to turn judicial elections partisan.

CANDIDATE AMY EDDY 

Judge Amy Eddy has been on the bench in the 11th Judicial District Court since being appointed by Gov. Steve Bullock in October 2015, following the early retirement of Judge Ted O. Lympus. 

Eddy, 50, grew up near Stanley, Idaho, and attended California Polytechnic State University, graduating in 1997 with a degree in sociology. After that, she interned at the Idaho State Controller’s Office, where she got her first exposure to the legal world as the state reassessed the value of cabins on state land. “I was impressed at the difference it made for people to be represented by a good lawyer,” she said. 

That experience inspired her to attend law school at the University of Montana. After graduating in 2001, she moved to the Flathead Valley to work in civil litigation, with an emphasis on cases related to construction and insurance claims. Over the years, she became interested in appellate work and worked on several cases that were appealed to the Montana Supreme Court. Those experiences led her to seek a judgeship. In 2015, when Lympus retired from Flathead County’s 11th District Court, she put her name in for consideration alongside five other local attorneys, including Dan Wilson. The year after her appointment, in 2016, Eddy won her run to keep the seat and serve out the remainder of Lympus’ term. She ran for reelection and won in 2018 and 2024. 

“I was surprised by how much I love this type of work,” she said, adding that she enjoys a judge’s view into all aspects of life in her community, both good and bad. 

In 2017, Eddy was appointed by the Montana Supreme Court to oversee a special asbestos claims court dealing with thousands of personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits stemming from vermiculite mining around Libby. The cases had languished for years after Libby and the surrounding area became one of the largest Superfund sites in American history. 

In May 2025, Eddy announced her current run for associate justice on the state Supreme Court. Among her stated reasons for running was the need for a nonpartisan candidate. 

“I’m committed to the judiciary, and now more than any other time I can recall in my life, we need to have a judiciary that is stable, consistent and independent,” she said in a September interview with Montana Free Press. 

CANDIDATE DAN WILSON

Judge Dan Wilson has been on the bench for more than a decade, first as a Flathead County Justice of the Peace beginning in 2011, and then as a District Court judge starting in 2017. 

Wilson, 61, was born in Billings and grew up in eastern Montana. Later, his family moved to Pennsylvania and he attended Penn State, graduating with a degree in Soviet studies. Wilson briefly considered a career in intelligence (the end of the Cold War was still a few years away) but decided instead to attend law school at the University of Minnesota. He graduated in 1993 and returned to Montana, taking a job as a deputy county attorney in Great Falls before becoming chief prosecutor in Chinook. In 1995, he joined the Flathead County Attorney’s Office and worked there for a few years before opening his own practice. 

Wilson became a self-described “generalist,” working on a variety of civil and criminal cases. But he knew he didn’t want to be an attorney forever.

“It was always in the back of my mind that maybe I’d like to be a judge,” Wilson told MTFP, noting that his grandfather had been a magistrate in Malta. 

In 2010, he ran for a four-year term as Justice of the Peace, thinking, he said, that a four-year term would give him enough time to decide if he wanted to be a judge for the rest of his career. He decided he did, and so he ran again four years later. After falling short of the appointment Eddy received in 2015, Wilson won a seat on the District Court in 2016, following the retirement of Judge David Ortley. 

“You really get to cover the waterfront as a District Court judge, and I’ve come to enjoy that,” Wilson said. 

In 2024, Wilson made his first run for the Montana Supreme Court. He ended up losing to Katherine M. Bidegaray by more than eight points. 

THE PARTISANSHIP QUESTION

By most accounts, when Wilson ran for the Montana Supreme Court in 2024, he did so without evoking any especially political slant. In response to an MTFP candidate questionnaire about the court’s independence, Wilson wrote, “The Supreme Court must earn the respect of all Montanans by issuing decisions which are firmly rooted in the Constitution and our laws and by providing reasons for its decisions which stand up to the most rigorous standards. When the court lives up to these ideals, it will achieve and maintain its proper role and authority as the independent and non-political decider of the cases that come before it.”

The following year, when he announced that he would run again for the state’s top court, Wilson’s tone shifted.

“As a native Montanan and a conservative, I firmly believe Supreme Court Justices must apply the law and the Constitution as written to all their rulings,” his announcement said. “As your next Montana Supreme Court Justice, I pledge to follow that guiding conservative principle.”

In early 2026, Wilson spoke at a GOP event in Great Falls where he railed against the Montana Supreme Court’s alleged leftward tilt. He’s since taken financial contributions from the state Republican Party — contributions made allowable by a new law passed during the last legislative session. 

In a September interview with MTFP, Wilson said that while Republicans have supported him and he has spoken at GOP events, he has no intention of being a partisan on the bench.

“Candidates don’t pick their supporters; supporters pick their candidates,” Wilson said.

He added that during his previous race for the Supreme Court, he spoke at events hosted by both Democrats and Republicans. Invitations from left-leaning groups, he acknowledged, have since dried up. 

Wilson argued that “in one form or another, political considerations have always figured into judges’ races,” pointing out that former Chief Justice Mike McGrath was elected attorney general as a Democrat in 2000 before running as a nonpartisan judge in 2008. 

But regardless of party affiliation, Wilson said, he will always follow the law and the state Constitution. He added that he doesn’t believe some current members of the state Supreme Court are doing that, accusing them of trying to enact the “leading edge” of social and legal change. 

Eddy disagrees with Wilson’s view that the Montana Supreme Court — and the justice system in general — is out of step with the state and its Constitution. She noted that of the more than 265,000 cases that went through Montana’s legal system in 2025, only about 900, or less than 1%, reached the Montana Supreme Court. She argued that if the justice system was indeed failing, or being dragged to the left as Wilson has suggested, there would be far more appeals to the state’s High Court. 

“That shows that the system is working without politics and without controversy,” she said. 

Eddy said she believes that running for the Montana Supreme Court while embracing a political brand risks misleading voters, who might think the candidate will advance a partisan agenda from the bench. 

“For almost a century it has been the policy of this state that judges be nonpartisan. We don’t want the judicial branch to be held captive by a political party or a political party platform,” Eddy said. No one she has spoken to during her campaign, she added, wants more partisanship in an already hyperpartisan era. 

Eddy highlighted the fact that she has not sought political endorsements. The most prominent endorsements on her website are from eight current or retired Montana Supreme Court justices. She has, however, also highlighted endorsements from groups like the Montana Federation of Public Employees and Montana Conservation Voters, which have a tendency to endorse left-leaning candidates.

Additionally, letters to the editor penned by Wilson’s supporters have noted that Eddy has paid Democratic-leaning campaign firms, specifically Chicago-based Nineteen Sixty Campaigns. Eddy said she picked that firm because it ran Bidegaray’s successful campaign against Wilson in 2024. “That was the only qualification that mattered to me,” she said. 

The results of the June primary — in which both Eddy and Wilson were on the ballot — show that Eddy could have a slight edge in November. Eddy topped Wilson by nearly three points. (The top two finishers in Supreme Court race primaries go on to the general election, and Eddy and Wilson were the only two candidates on the primary ballot.) 

Constance Van Kley, an assistant professor of law at the University of Montana, said that increasing specter of partisanship in judicial races could be a sign of things to come. In November, voters will also consider CI-132, which would amend the Montana Constitution to require that judicial elections remain nonpartisan. Republicans — who tried and failed to partisanize judicial elections in the 2025 legislative session — are actively campaigning against the initiative. 

Even if the initiative does pass, it’s possible that future races for the Montana Supreme Court will continue to become more overtly partisan, thanks to the new state law allowing political parties to financially back judicial candidates. 

“This is a result of that legislation,” Van Kley said.