No clear winner in Montana GOP legislative primaries

Austin Amestoy: So, set the stage a little bit for us here. The Montana GOP this election season was targeting more than a few of its own members to be voted out of the statehouse. Who are some of those lawmakers and why did they fall out of favor with the state party?

Seaborn Larson: Right, so the lawmakers in question here include that centrist faction of the party that we talk often about here on MTPR, it's Llew Jones, David Bedey, Ed Butcher, these are longtime members of the Republican caucus at the state Legislature that will often work with Democrats to pass major policy and spending initiatives. What happened leading up to this election was the 2025 Legislature where a group of nine Republican legislators in the Senate partnered with Democrats on the first day in. Sort of exercised a majority control of that chamber throughout the session. And so that was kind of the first big event.

The second one was the election of Art Wittich to the top of the Montana Republican Party. And, you know, Art Wittich made it a point of his new chairmanship that he would purge, essentially, the more moderate wing from the party. And while the party chair doesn't have the power to stop somebody from running as a Republican, it can essentially make being a Republican kind of an uncomfortable situation for its more moderate members. And so for the better part of a year leading up to the primary, the party did put a lot of effort into trying to oust those incumbents.

Austin Amestoy: Well, let's talk about the successes and failures of that effort then, Seaborn. How successful was the state party in ousting those incumbents?

Seaborn Larson: You know, depending on who you talk to, I think it was kind of a wash, actually. So if we look at the math over in the Senate, it looks like, like I mentioned earlier, that group of nine Republicans is going to be a few different members, but there will be another nine in the Senate of moderate to centrist Republicans who look likely to maybe work with Democrats again to maybe control the chamber on major policy issues. That includes Representative Llew Jones who is headed for the Senate and Representative David Bedey, a close ally of Llew Jones.

The conservative wing of the party was successful in ousting Representative Ed Butcher. He's been a major proponent of Medicaid the last several sessions, as well as Representative John Fitzpatrick. He was another more moderate legislator who really had gotten involved in funding for state institutions such as the Montana State Hospital and Montana State Prison and Deer Lodge. Those were both in his district and he lost out to a newcomer who's a major school choice advocate. So policy was, I think, involved in a lot of the outside spending that came into that race as well.

Austin Amestoy: So kind of a draw, it sounds like, between these two factions of the Republican Party. And I do think it's important to note here that this was a primary election. So none of these people have been elected to office yet. That's going to happen this November. But it's important because in a lot of these districts, these Republicans who have advanced to the general election stand a very high chance of going on and serving in the statehouse because they're not in competitive districts. They don't really have viable challengers or in some cases a challenger at all. So, what are you hearing from GOP party leaders and lawmakers about whether these results are going to impact the way the party governs come January?

Seaborn Larson: Absolutely. And, you know, when we get into the Legislature in January, what I've been thinking about is, you know, these fault lines in the Republican caucus have existed for a long, long time. And I don't know that I've ever seen as much hostility at the Legislature as I did last year when that group of nine Republican lawmakers broke out with Democrats to kind of run that chamber. And I wonder, you know, will this election actually have much of an impact on those fault lines or were they so deep already? That those factions are already kind of set.

What I am curious about is the Republican convention coming to Missoula this weekend, and I'm wondering if maybe the more hardline faction of the Republican Party that is running, at least the party mechanism right now, if they're gonna try to formalize some of this party purity stuff that Art Wittich has really been focused on in his time as chair, and whether or not that'll have any kind of impact in how Republican politics looks going forward.

Austin Amestoy: And one last thing, how about the bad blood? There's a lot of money spent trying to oust these incumbents and some pretty aggressive moves by their opponents. Are we gonna see any efforts to patch things over before January?

Seaborn Larson: You know, I'm not hearing anybody trying to come back to the negotiating table to try to settle things out. I think, you know, the party, Art Wittich told me, at least, that he still hopes these Republicans will sort of come into the fold and start abiding by the party platform. But for those Republican incumbents who won last week, you know they've already been elected, they have the power of the office. And so I'm really sure they feel they need the party backing to continue to govern.