A crowd cheers and watches Democratic lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Raph Graybill at the Pub Station in Billings during a rally on Nov. 1, 2024 (Photo by Darrell Ehrlick of the Daily Montanan).
With less than 100 hours to go in an election season that has seemed to drag on for years, a group of Montana Democrats who are running for statewide office were sprinting across the state making their final pitches to voters and urging volunteers to get out the vote.
Montana has been the recipient of more polling than in previous cycles, largely due to the U.S. Senate race, and most of those have shown Democrats lagging behind Republicans. Recent elections in 2020 and 2022 have continued to strengthen the GOP’s numbers, so while Republicans have not been holding as many events, Democrats are stopping in dozens of places leading up until Tuesday’s election.
The message from the Dems was simple and repeated: The 2024 Election is a fight to bring back Montana, a reference to the harder political shift to the right, and an influx of new residents that has seemed to change the state from a ticket-splitting purple state to one that is nearly completely dominated by Republicans.
At a campaign stop in Billings on Friday afternoon in which several hundred people were nearly spilling out of the Pub Station in downtown, the lone elected Democrat at the statewide level made his pitch to continue representing Montana in the U.S. Senate, as well as possibly keep the nation’s upper chamber of Congress under Democratic control.
“Billings is the biggest population center in the state. How much we get Billings to turn out and vote is going to be the deciding factor on whether it’s going to be the Montana we know,” said incumbent U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat from Big Sandy who is seeking his fourth term.
Nearly all the top Democrats are on a whirlwind tour of the state, canvassing the state, rallying supporters and described it as a working weekend full of door knocking and talking to friends and family.
Most of the candidates spoke of the tight races between Democrats and Republicans both nationally and on a statewide level, although polls for Montana have shown a variety of results. Attorney and lieutenant governor candidate Raph Graybill urged rally-goers to keep on working with just hours left to go.
“The people who will decide these races are still out there, and they’ll be there till Tuesday,” Graybill said.
Graybill’s running mate, Ryan Busse, who is challenging incumbent Gov. Greg Gianforte, said that Graybill’s success as an attorney demonstrates what is wrong with the state.
Busse said that during the past four years, Graybill, as an attorney, has waged 19 different lawsuits focusing on violations of the Montana Constitution. Busse said that Graybill remains 19-0, winning every one of them.
“We shouldn’t need a Raph Graybill to protect the constitution,” Busse said.
Busse said new polling numbers that his campaign had received showed a tight race between him and Gianforte, even though others, like the Mountain States Poll, which was released on Tuesday, showed a nearly 20-point tilt toward Gianforte.
Busse said that the polls haven’t quite captured the dissatisfaction about Montana residential property taxes rising, something that the Democrat from the Flathead has laid at the feet of Gianforte throughout the election.
“Traveling the state, the one thing that I have learned is that Republicans don’t like property taxes,” he said.
A recent event in Cardwell, population 52, had more than 80 people, and Busse said that is the kind of energy that will help Democrats flip otherwise Republican voters.
“We don’t have to trust any broken national polls, because we know what is happening on the ground,” Busse said.
Democrat John Repke, who is running for state auditor against current Public Service Commission President James Brown, a Republican from Dillon, said that as much as policies are important, so, too, are the types of people that Montanans elect to represent and reflect them.
“Even more important is character,” Repke said, referring to recent reporting that showed Brown attending meetings at the auditor’s office using assumed names of fictitious superheroes in official sign-in records.
“He’s helped jack your utility rates up by 28%,” Repke said. “And he’s worked as an an attorney for out-of-state dark money groups.”
Attorney Ben Alke is running to unseat incumbent Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who has been recently mired in a several high-profile conflicts, including turmoil within the the Montana Department of Highway Patrol. Knudsen is also facing a suspension from the Montana bar after the Commission of Practice ruled that he had violated ethical rules during his tenure as the Attorney General.
Knudsen said he would appeal the recommended suspension.
“I get the pleasure of beating the worst attorney general in Montana history,” Alke told the crowd. “I want to give my children the Montana that I had. I am running because I am pissed off. I am upset at what is happening at the Department of Justice.”
Alke ticked off a list of former attorneys, both Democrat and Republican, who served as the Montana Attorney General and said that they had done a fair and impartial job until it came to Knudsen.
“We need to come together around the concept that justice needs to be fair and impartial,” Alke said. “If you’re doing the job of attorney general right, it doesn’t matter whether you are a Democrat or Republican.”
Montana legislator and former education advisor Shannon O’Brien, who is running for superintendent of public schools to replace Republican Elsie Arntzen of Billings, who has termed out of office, said that Montana was siphoning too much money from public schools and putting into private endeavors.
She’s running against Republican Susie Hedalen.
Calling Arntzen a “trainwreck,” O’Brien recounted a troubling recent audit in which $67 million of federal funding may have been used improperly. She said during her tenure, she’ll fight to fully fund education so that low teacher pay won’t mean that instructors are “second-class citizens.”