This story is excerpted from Capitolized, a weekly newsletter featuring expert reporting, analysis and insight from the reporters and editors of Montana Free Press. Want to see Capitolized in your inbox every Thursday? Sign up here.
As is long tradition in Montana politics, Tuesday night’s primary election saw a sweat-drenched tug of war play out in Republican legislative primaries between the hardline and comparatively moderate wings of the state’s currently dominant political party.
As MTFP reported last week, Conservatives4MT, a political committee aligned with the party’s moderate Solutions Caucus wing, spent nearly a quarter-million dollars defending Solutions Caucus lawmakers and supporting primary challenges against hardliners in 27 contested GOP primaries. Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, who has taken heat from certain corners of the Montana GOP for allying himself with prominent Solutions Caucus members, also took the somewhat unusual step of wading into legislative races this year by announcing endorsements in 24 contested GOP primaries.
Noting substantial overlap between the governor’s endorsements and the candidates backed by Conservatives4MT spending, Capitolized spent some time tallying up the results of those races on election night. By our count, 18 of 24 Gianforte-endorsed candidates were clear winners or are leading in still-unofficial vote counts. Conservatives4MT posted a somewhat less successful record, with 16 of the 27 candidates it backed posting wins.
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The comparatively moderate wing of the party saw some of its stalwarts fend off primary challenges, including House Appropriations Chair Llew Jones, R-Conrad, Rep. Ed Buttrey, R-Great Falls, and Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton. Several freshman lawmakers who drew primary challengers after sticking their necks out as comparative moderates in their initial terms survived primary challenges as well, among them Rep. Courtenay Sprunger, R-Kalispell, and Rep. Brad Barker, R-Roberts.
Hardliners did, however, pick off Rep. Tony Brockman, R-Kalispell, who lost his re-election bid to Lukas Schubert. Schubert, an 18-year-old described by the Flathead Beacon as an “ultra-conservative challenger,” was backed by prominent hardline Republicans including Speaker of the House Matt Regier.
Regier, who drew national headlines during last year’s legislative session for his handling of a dispute with transgender lawmaker Rep. Zooey Zephyr, D-Missoula, survived a well-financed primary challenge himself as he runs to move up to the state Senate. That opponent, Kalispell business owner Marquis Laude, spent nearly $69,000 on his campaign in addition to support from Conservatives4MT. Regier, who ran a comparatively cheap $14,000 campaign, handily won the primary on a 67-33 margin.
However, House Speaker Pro Tempore Rhonda Knudsen, the mother of Attorney General Austin Knudsen, lost her primary for an eastern Montana Senate district that spans Sidney, Plentywood, Scobey, part of Glasgow and portions of the Fort Peck Reservation. Her husband, Miles Knudsen, also lost a bid for a House seat that spans part of that Senate district.
In other notable Republican primaries, Rep. Josh Kassmier, a Fort Benton Republican who carried several of the governor’s priority bills in 2023, beat out Montana GOP vice-chair and state Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway, R-Great Falls, for a Senate seat representing rural areas around Great Falls. In Great Falls proper, Sheldon-Galloway’s husband, Rep. Steven Galloway, also narrowly lost his primary to Conservatives4MT-backed candidate Melissa Nikolakakos, the wife of Rep. George Nikolakakos.
With those mixed-bag results for the GOP tug of war, it’s difficult at this juncture to draw reliable conclusions about how primary outcomes will affect the policy coming out of the 2025 Montana Legislature, where lawmakers will likely tackle property tax, school funding and Medicaid policy questions that have historically divided the party.
Additionally, in some cases, the victorious Republicans will face Democratic opponents in this fall’s general election, though many of the districts involved are so Republican-inclined that their voters are unlikely to send a Democratic representative to Helena.
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