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February 12, 2026
An invitation received this week to a Feb. 24 Mountain States Policy Center dinner in Helena promises a curtain raiser on the think tank’s 2027 legislative priorities, plus a discussion about rewriting Montana’s Constitution. The evening’s special guest? Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte.
The governor’s staff this week clarified that Gianforte himself will not be discussing a rewrite of the state Constitution, which at least one Republican officeholder in recent years has characterized as a “socialist rag of a constitution” that should be “thrown out.”
“He will not be speaking in support of a constitutional convention, as it is not part of his agenda,” Gianforte spokesperson Kaitlin Timken confirmed this week. Timken said the governor plans to talk about his income tax goals for the 2027 Legislature, which will be Gianforte’s last regular session before his second and final term as governor ends in 2028.
The question of whether to hold a constitutional convention to rewrite Montana’s Constitution will be on the ballot in 2030, as it has been every 20 years since the state’s current Constitution was approved by a slim majority of voters in 1972. The Mountain States Policy Center has produced an eight-part series of policy papers promoting changes to Montana’s Constitution, most recently suggesting that its water rights provision be amended. That provision currently declares that for the common good, all waters are the property of the state.
“The state should be able to own water, but the fiction that the state owns all of it should be abandoned,” writes Rob Natelson, the think tank’s senior fellow of constitutional studies.
Natelson has also twice run as a Republican candidate for governor of Montana, having lost in GOP primaries to incumbent Marc Racicot in 1996 and to Racicot’s eventual successor, Judy Martz, in 2000. Between those campaigns, Natelson convinced Montana voters to amend three sections of the state’s Constitution to require a public vote on nearly all state and local taxes. Constitutional Initiative 75 was enacted with 52% of the vote in 1998. A year later, the Montana Association of Counties sued to overturn it, and prevailed, arguing that distinct amendments to the Constitution require separate votes.
Natelson was employed as a professor at the University of Montana law school for 23 years, ending in 2010. That position both gave him credibility on constitutional questions and created a target for political opponents. Campaigning in 1996, Racicot rarely acknowledged Natelson by name, referring to him only as “the professor” in primary debates. The incumbent trounced the professor 76% to 24%.
Now, 30 years later, Racicot has been excoriated by the Montana GOP for making legal arguments against letting Donald Trump run for president in 2024. Once Montana’s attorney general, Racicot filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that allowing Trump on the 2024 Colorado ballot violated the 14th Amendment, specifically concerning the presidential oath of office relative to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Natelson was a guest speaker at the Montana Republican Winter Kickoff the weekend of Feb. 7, where he appeared by video to rail about several state Supreme Court rulings against Republican legislation.
“The fault here is not with the Legislature. Republican legislators have not been deliberately or inadvertently passing unconstitutional bills,” Natelson said in the recorded presentation.
Whose piggy bank supports the think tank? According to tax data aggregated by ProPublica, Mountain States Policy Center, based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, receives support from Yes Every Kid, Inc, part of the Stand Together Network affiliated with Charles Koch, a billionaire champion of libertarian ideals. Another supporter is NetChoice, which serves as a bridge of influence between tech companies and the American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative bill mill known as ALEC. Four other contributors are the donor-advised funds National Christian Charitable Foundation, Fidelity Charitable, American Online Giving Foundation, and Donor Advised Charitable Giving.
—Tom Lutey
D Trip’n in MT-01
If the four-deep line of Democrats vying for a chance to run against Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke in Montana’s Western Congressional District isn’t a strong enough measure of liberal interest in the district, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee offered more Tuesday.
The “D Trip,” as the main campaign committee of U.S. House Democrats is known, announced that Western Montana’s House District MT-01 is one of 44 Republican-held districts nationwide now considered “in play” in 2026.
“Zinke’s addition to the DCCC’s Districts in Play sends the clear message that Democrats know Montana voters are souring on his wildly unpopular record of raising costs, attacking affordable health care, and hurting working families,” the campaign committee said in a press release.
Historically, special recognition by the DCCC has been an unreliable indicator of committee investments in Democrats’ House campaigns, or in race outcomes. In 2024, after including Montana’s Western District in its “Red to Blue” program, the PAC spent $95,000 in independent expenditures, coordinated costs and communications supporting Democrat Monica Tranel. The PAC reported spending nothing opposing Zinke, who was reelected by seven points.
In 2020, the DCCC added Montana’s then single House district to its “battleground map” and spent $190,157 coordinating with the campaign of Democrat Kathleeen Williams. That year the DCCC spent $1.57 million opposing Republican Matt Rosendale, who won more than 56% of the vote.
Williams had also received the “Red to Blue” designation in 2018, when she got a $744 donation from the PAC, which spent $380,000 opposing incumbent Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte, who won by 5.1 percentage points. Two years later, Gianforte was elected Montana governor.
—Tom Lutey
‘We’re vetting some candidates’
Will the Montana GOP, the official organizing body for the state’s dominant political party, take sides as Republican candidates compete against each other in the GOP primary election in June?
It’s an open question — and one that has for months been the subject of accusations by incumbent Republican lawmakers who are on the outs with GOP leadership after bucking the party line during last year’s Montana Legislature. Some of those incumbents have argued the state party is looking to punish them in ways that depart from past practice.
As state party chair Art Wittich took to a country club podium last week in Great Falls to introduce the party’s 2026 legislative candidates, he offered a few hints — but stopped short of offering a firm answer.
“This year we’re doing a few extra things,” said Wittich, a former Senate majority leader and longtime hardliner who was elected Montana GOP chair last summer. “We’re vetting some candidates, we’re asking some questions.”
Fallout from contentious legislative votes on property taxes, budget bills and whether to expel former Senate President Jason Ellsworth over corruption allegations remains a flash point for Montana Republicans. The state party organization has, for example, spent months using its website and social media feeds to highlight criticism of the second-home property tax measure passed last year. That policy, a centerpiece of Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s 2024 reelection campaign, was ultimately passed after its Republican backers negotiated with some Democrats to overcome opposition from elements in both parties.
While formal candidate filing doesn’t open until Feb. 17, public announcements and campaign finance reporting indicate that a slew of districts will see competitive GOP primaries. In many cases, candidates aligned with the party’s hardline right wing are teeing up to challenge Republican lawmakers who bargained with Democrats on the property tax bills and other issues last year. The results of those races will, in all likelihood, determine whether similar wheeling and dealing across party lines is a significant factor in 2027.
Among the major contests shaping up are for control of north-central Montana’s Senate District 9, where House Appropriations Chair Llew Jones — a longtime legislator from Conrad who championed the property tax measure — is facing Rep. Zack Wirth, a Wolf Creek lawmaker who is campaigning against “career politicians.” At the southern tip of the Bitterroot Valley, Rep. David Bedey, currently chairing a once-a-decade study of the state’s school funding system, is running for Senate District 43 against Rep. Kathy Love, who has criticized Bedey for supporting what she calls “the most confusing property tax shift in the nation.”
Some of the aisle-crossing Republicans, like Bedey, have accused the state party of interfering in primaries already, pointing to a party candidate questionnaire they say is intended to collect evidence to justify endorsing their opponents. Such endorsements, Bedey wrote in a November letter published by the Daily Inter Lake, would be a departure from the Montana GOP’s past practice.
“At issue is whether the party will remain a ‘big tent’ coalition that welcomes a broad spectrum of conservative voices, or is to become limited only to those who swear allegiance to a narrow, right-wing definition of conservatism and obediently follow the party line,” Bedey wrote.
At last week’s event, Wittich described the questionnaire as more common sense than sinister.
“Party designation matters. When voters see an R or a D, it matters,” he said. “And so we decided that this cycle, when people file for office, we’re going to send a very simple questionnaire as to why they’re running and self-declared as a Republican. The Republican Party has a very clear platform.”
Standing before a crowd of Republican candidates, with the party’s most prominent dissenters notably absent, he also denied that party leaders have even decided what to do with questionnaire results yet.
“We have made no decision as to what we are going to do with that information,” Wittich said, noting that candidate filing will be open through March 4.
“We probably will do something with that information,” he added, “because we think that that serves Montana voters.”
—Eric Dietrich
A governor’s dozen
Gov. Greg Gianforte has made 13 Montana district court appointments and will make his 14th when he replaces Judge Brenda R. Gilbert, who serves Park and Sweetgrass counties in the Sixth Judicial District.
Gilbert has announced she will step down June 1. Any attorney who’s been admitted to practice law in Montana for at least five years, and who has resided in the state for at least two years, can apply.
The application deadline is March 16. The public can comment on nominees for 30 days after the filing deadline.
—Tom Lutey