A New Montana Majority Defangs the Far Right

Disaffected Republicans and resurgent Democrats just took over the Montana Legislature and spent big on education and health care

By Gabriel Furshong, High Country News

Statue of Thomas Francis Meagher in front of the Montana State Capitol in Helena (photo: Denise Rivette)

Before a single vote was cast on Election Day, Paul Tuss figured he knew how Montana’s statewide races would turn out. Montana’s major elections — like those in many states in this historically partisan era — have become predictable. As expected, President Donald Trump trounced Kamala Harris, Republicans swept all statewide offices by an average 21 points, and 18-year incumbent Senator Jon Tester lost to Republican Tim Sheehy, a wealthy businessman who was born in Minnesota.

This article originally appeared in High Country News.

Local results, however, were more surprising. In Havre, a windy railroad town 38 miles from the Canadian border that comprises much of House District 27, voters re-elected Tuss, a Democrat, by 5 points, while going for Trump by 22 points. Tuss’ total exceeded Harris by 14 points, according to Scott McNeil, director of the Montana Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. In 5,800 state legislative elections nationwide, only one Democrat outperformed Harris by a larger margin.

“I’m the red-headed stepchild of the caucus,” said Tuss, who runs the Bear Paw Development Corporation, a business-assistance nonprofit serving five counties. “I’m the only Democrat from rural Montana who isn’t Native, and that’s symbolic of some difficulties we’re having within our party.”

Since November, national Democrats have struggled to forge an identity after losing the White House and both houses of Congress. But in Montana, where Democrats have been the minority in the Statehouse since 2011, the party has quietly produced some surprisingly tangible results.

Seven Democrats, including Tuss, outperformed Harris, and the party flipped 12 seats in the state Legislature, its second-largest gain in the country after Wisconsin. Since Montana’s biannual Legislature convened in January, the Democratic minority in both chambers has locked arms with a group of moderate Republicans to isolate the far right and protect the public services that Trump and Elon Musk have placed on the federal chopping block: Medicaid, public schools and a nonpartisan judiciary, among others.

As Trump’s opinion polls continue to sink, this burst of bipartisan cooperation suggests that legislators on both sides of the aisle are stepping into the widening gap between the president and some of his voters — and betting on their constituents to keep them there.

WHEN MONTANANS look back on the 2025 legislative session, which concluded on April 30, the defining number will be nine. That’s the number of Senate Republicans who were effectively sidelined after GOP leaders, who mostly identify with the party’s right wing, set up a novel committee structure to consolidate their control of the session. Instead of accepting bystander status, however, the nine moderates opened a dialogue with their Democratic colleagues.

“It started before the session,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers, D-Belgrade, explained on April 24 in the Senate Gallery of the State Capitol in Helena. “Given our 18 members and their nine, we had, in effect, a working majority. So we decided on Day 1 to change the rules.”

Working quickly, Democrats and these nine Republicans stitched together a new majority, which enabled them to bypass Republican Senate President Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, and reassign their members to committees with the most influence over the state budget. The results were immediate.

Several Republican priorities, like a bill requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms, were quickly killed. Meanwhile, moderates waited for the state budget to wend its way out of the House and through Senate committees. Then, they amended the bill on the Senate floor — over and over again — pushing tens of millions of dollars toward various public health programs, such as requiring hospitals to hire full-time nurses, as well as funding a pre-trial diversion program.

A similar pattern played out in the House, where moderate Republicans torpedoed an Arizona-style school voucher program, which has contributed to a $1.4 billion budget shortfall. With Democrats, they also renewed $100 million for an expanded version of Medicaid and allocated another $100 million to boost teacher pay, which ranks 46th in the country.

“I’m not elected by my party. I’m not elected by a single person in charge of something,” said Representative Ed Buttrey, R-Great Falls, who carried the Medicaid renewal bill. “I’m elected by the people of House District 21, and as long as I’m working hard for them and getting things done, they seem to want to send me back.”

In the context of an unusual legislative session, this explanation suggests that new political currents might be circulating in the wake of the red wave that swallowed Montana and most of the country last November. It also underlines the belief that voters want lawmakers to build new programs, not just break old ones. In addition to preserving Medicaid and boosting teacher pay, Montana’s new majority acted on this belief by allocating $75 million to a school maintenance trust fund and and including preschool students with disabilities in the state school funding formula, which will save schools $3.7 million next year.

“I don’t want to call it buyer’s remorse, but I do think there is such a thing as going too far,” Tuss remarked over lunch in a basement conference room of the Capitol. “It’s fine to embrace conservative political conventions, but when [legislators] don’t support public education, don’t support fixing our infrastructure, then people are going to look for an alternative.”

Second-term Governor Greg Gianforte, a culturally conservative Republican, appears to agree with this analysis. In April 2024, he endorsed 58 candidates in Montana Republican primaries, a list that included a significant number of moderates, while snubbing some high-profile hard-liners. That gamble is now paying off. Some of his political objectives, such as allowing judicial candidates to declare their partisan affiliation, have failed, yet most of his budget wishes became law. These included a major income tax break, an inflationary funding increase for public schools, and Medicaid renewal. He also pushed through several GOP bills curtailing individual rights.

After repeated requests for comment on the bipartisan coalition that carried several of these policies across the finish line, his press secretary, Kaitlin Price, sent a written response on April 30, the final day of the session. “As the governor has stated repeatedly, this session, and every session prior, he believes every legislator — whether Republican, Democrat, or Independent — was elected by their constituents to advocate for them.”

MONTANA IS NOT the only state displaying signs of a Trump backlash. Musk’s millions failed to overturn a liberal Supreme Court majority in Wisconsin. Since November, Democrats have also seen their vote share increase compared to the 2024 Presidential Election by an average of 11.6% in 19 special elections across 10 states, including races in Pennsylvania and Iowa Senate districts that Trump won by 15 and 21 points.

While it’s too early to know whether this trend will continue, it’s undeniable that Trump voters are pulling away from him in some of the states he won just five months ago. It’s also clear that state legislators feel more insulated from national political pressures than their federal colleagues do, especially on issues where Trump has staked a position to the right of broad-based popular opinion.

In Montana, meanwhile, the Republican Party is betting against moderation. Last month, the party’s executive committee censured “the nine” for “disregarding the will of Montana voters,” a salvo that might encourage far-right challengers in primary races next June. House Majority Leader Steve Fitzpatrick, R-Great Falls, however, doubts that such saber-rattling will slow the moderates’ momentum.

“In the Republican primary electorate, there’s a block of voters that value loyalty, but there’s a larger block who are going to look at their (legislator’s) record and accomplishments,” he said in early May. “The far right represents about 25% of the Republican electorate, so there’s a lot of room in the party for a variety of different voices.”

Montana AFL-CIO Executive Secretary Jason Small, a former two-term Republican senator and member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, agrees. “People are getting tired of hyper-partisanship because it leads to gridlock and does nothing,” he said. “I would guess the backing (the nine) have from their actual constituencies is pretty phenomenal. They’re non-idealogues. If you’re an idealogue, you’re never going to vote for your constituents.”

If this hunch holds true, then Trump voters in Montana will continue to value compromise even as they applaud some of the president’s executive orders. If false, then the next legislative session will prove far less surprising than this one. For his part, Tuss believes it’s a sensible prediction, and he’s counting on his Republican neighbors to send him back to Helena for another term.

“When people are trying balance their household budget, they really do want people who are going to provide solutions,” he said. “I mean, rhetoric is easy, and God knows us politicians are good at rhetoric, including me. But beyond the campaign slogans, beyond what we do through November, people elect politicians to govern.”