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As if the intensity of Tuesday morning’s Western House District debate between Republican Aaron Flint and Democrat Sam Forstag wasn’t high enough, Fox News categorized the race as a toss-up just minutes before the event went live.
NonStop Local journalist Bradley Warren informed the room of that fact as Flint and Forstag were being wired for sound. For the next 60 minutes, sparks flew. NonStop Local and Montana Free Press collaborated to produce the debate.
Flint called Forstag “Phony Forstag” and attacked his smoke-jumping bona fides. Forstag criticized Flint for a career spent speaking from an “air-conditioned recording studio.” Flint shot back that the air-conditioning barb showed disrespect for military families. Forstag thanked Flint for his service.
The race, always close, is tightening. The Silver Bulletin, the Substack newsletter and statistical analysis platform of election forecaster Nate Silver, also this week shaded the district as a toss-up, and has given Forstag’s chances of winning a five-tenths-of-a-percentage-point edge over Flint’s.
This is only the third time on the ballot for this iteration of Montana’s Western Congressional District. It was created by a divided bipartisan state Districting and Apportionment Commission in 2021 following the preceding U.S. census.
Republicans on the commission were bullish about the 16-county creation, which met the districting criteria without including Helena, which would have tipped the political scales in favor of Democrats.
The two Democrats on the commission were livid. The new district’s voting history suggested that it would favor Republican candidates in U.S. House contests by 7%.
Republicans, who carried the day, pointed out that Kathleen Williams, the 2018 Democratic candidate for Montana’s at-large U.S. House District, had won a majority of the vote in the Western District counties. Rob Quist, the Democratic candidate in the 2017 special election for U.S. House, had pulled more votes from the region as well.
Williams recently told Capitolized about some similarities between 2018 and this year — namely, that eight years ago she was campaigning in the first midterm election with Trump as president. Voters then, she said, were concerned about the future of Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, public lands and, as always, jobs.
One big difference between then and now was the 2018 Senate race between incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester and Republican Matt Rosendale. Trump traveled to Montana four times to stump for Rosendale in 2018. The Senate race overshadowed everything else.
Forstag likens the current race to 2006, when Tester defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Conrad Burns. Fuel prices were high and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were unpopular.
At the end of Tuesday’s debate, Flint crossed the gap between podiums to shake hands. For a split second, the men hugged.
—Tom Lutey
You Be the Judge
Two new PAC ads promoting Montana Supreme Court candidate Dan Wilson have given Wilson a bit more than your average air-brushing. The AI-generated images used by the Make Montana Affordable Again PAC and Yellowstone County Republican Central Committee portray Wilson looking like a Crossfit-obsessed county attorney in a “Yellowstone” knockoff.
—Tom Lutey
Term-Limit Battle Continues
There’s been another twist in the long-simmering battle between conservative centrists and Republican hard-liners in the Montana Legislature.
The latest turn concerns the fate of a term-limits opinion issued this summer by the state attorney general at the request of Senate President Matt Regier of Kalispell.
In an opening brief filed Oct. 1 with the Montana Supreme Court, Attorney General Austin Knudsen, a Republican, argued that a lower court erred in August when it rejected his opinion that the state Constitution does not allow legislators to return to one chamber after an eight-year break during which they served in the other.
For the past 15 years, lawmakers have moved between the House and Senate whenever they reached the eight-year maximum in either chamber. The opinion allowing them to do so was issued by former Attorney General and Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat.
Knudsen argues that Bullock was wrong. The attorney general issued a contrary opinion in August in response to a question from Regier, who specifically wanted to know whether his adversary and fellow Republican Llew Jones of Conrad was eligible to appear on this year’s ballot. Knudsen ruled that term limits don’t allow such skipping between chambers, menaing that Jones, an eighth-year representative, can’t run this year for the state Senate. That determination set off a scramble among north-central Montana Republicans to select a replacement for Jones.
But Jones and fellow centrist Republican Steve Fitzpatrick of Great Falls filed suit in Lewis and Clark County District Court and won. Judge Christopher Abbott ruled that Regier lacked authority as Senate president to request the opinion, and that Knudsen doesn’t have unfettered authority to issue binding opinions. The ruling allowed Jones and Fitzpatrick to remain on the November ballot despite questions about whether their cumulative service exceeds constitutional limits.
The Supreme Court then rejected Knudsen’s request to block the lower court’s ruling, saying there was not a reasonable chance to fully consider the issue before ballots were finalized — with both Jones and Fitzpatrick listed as candidates.
Knudsen persisted, notifying the Montana Supreme Court that he still wanted to pursue the appeal before the 2027 session. An initial attempt to launch the appeal stalled because transcripts from the lower court were unavailable, but Knudsen eventually submitted the proper paperwork and tried again.
A ruling in Knudsen’s favor after the Nov. 3 election could mean that if voters elect Jones to the Senate and Fitzpatrick to a second House term, they will wind up represented by substitute legislators they didn’t choose.
—Tom Lutey
