Ballots hit the mail today and voters will have to start making decisions. Recent court rulings overturn restrictive ballot initiative laws and remove a requirement for birth date verification on ballots. The race for a seat on the Supreme Court looks competitive. Debates heat up in the Senate race. And Trump may come to Montana to stump for the Republican candidate in the western district House race.
Campaign Beat is MTPR's weekly political analysis program. Sitting in for Sally Mauk this week is MTPR Statehouse Reporter Clayton Murphy, joined by Rob Saldin of the University of Montana’s Mansfield Center and Political Science Department, and Seaborn Larson, Senior Reporter at Lee Newspapers’ Montana State News Bureau.
Clayton Murphy Seaborn, a judge ruled this week that birth dates are not required on ballots this year. What's going on there?
Seaborn Larson You know, the effect of this officially is kind of nothing. Whether you fill out the birth date line on the outermost envelope or don't fill it out, election administrators will not look at that line to validate your ballot. But at the time of this district court ruling last week, ballots were already printed, getting ready to hit the mail. So while some people may scratch their heads at that, the message here is that you can vote whether you put your birth date on the ballot or not.
If you look at it more broadly, I think there is more of an abstract impact. That is another blow to the GOP's election security agenda. So many of these bills passed by Republican majorities at the Legislature have failed to hold up on legal challenges in Montana. That's things like eliminating election-day registration and additional voter ID laws. The state Constitution has a really high hurdle to impose regulations on the election process. So high that much of what the Legislature has tried has, according to the courts, gone too far in that they effectively narrow a person's opportunity to vote. The judge in this case from Lewis and Clark County said there was no evidence that the birth date requirement would really limit a person's right to vote, but the Montana Secretary of State's office didn't show enough evidence to get over that hurdle of enforcing that new regulation on voting.
Clayton Murphy And a few laws surrounding ballot initiatives got struck down in the Supreme Court too.
Seaborn Larson Right, so the Montana Supreme Court was really unified in this decision this week that the Legislature went too far on imposing limits on the citizen-led lawmaking process, finding those two should really be level with each other. When I'm talking about the citizen-led lawmaking process, voters would recognize that as ballot measures we see most cycles. It's how Montana legalized marijuana and enshrined abortion access into the state Constitution.
So in 2023, Republicans in the Legislature passed a handful of regulations, like a $3,700 filing fee to file a petition, and a new review by the legislators that would appear on that petition, saying a majority of lawmakers either supported or approved that proposal. There's another one to prevent ballot initiatives from being re-proposed every four years if it fails, and then there was also an attorney general review for "substantive legality." The Montana Supreme Court struck these down without much pause, saying the Legislature cannot impair that citizen-led process.
Seaborn Larson Now, voters are gonna see three ballot initiatives on the ballot this fall. That includes a proposal to preserve the nonpartisan nature of Montana's judicial elections. There's also another one to sort of fortify the ballot initiative process here at hand. And then we've also got the Montana Plan. That's a proposal to strike corporate spending in Montana of elections.
Clayton Murphy And speaking of the bench, it seems this Supreme Court race is shaping up to be pretty competitive.
Seaborn Larson Right, there's just one race for the Montana Supreme Court this year. It's a matchup between Amy Eddy and Dan Wilson. They're both district court judges from Flathead County and they've both been on the bench there about 10 years.
Listeners will likely remember Wilson from the 2024 election. He lost that bid to Judge Katherine Bidegaray. He's back and he's got the support of the Montana Republican Party in a big way. The GOP identified this race as one of their highest priorities earlier this year..
Wilson for his part has maintained that he would be an impartial jurist if elected. He describes himself as a constitutional conservative. What that means is he would adhere closely to the Constitution.
Eddie, meanwhile, has made impartiality from politics pretty much the whole brand of her campaign. She's also showing case statistics, like only 1.5% of all cases go to the Montana Supreme Court, to tell voters that despite the uproar from the partisan branches, the courts are working pretty well as is. Each campaign has about $300,000 going into October, although I expect we're gonna see a lot of outside spending coming in soon on this race by way of mailers and TV ads.
Clayton Murphy Rob, the guys at this podcast, "Beers, Buds, and The Big Sky" put on a debate for the Senate candidates last week, and things got kind of heated. Libertarian Kyle Austin really went for independent Seth Bodnar this time.
[Kyle Austin during the debate] "Stop defending baby Bodnar ... [Crosstalk] ... Baby Bodnar can be a man for once. I mean, I got some golf balls out there."
[Moderator] "Kyle, we're just going to cut your mic off. That's what's going to happen."
Clayton Murphy Now, I'm not sure what he was talking about with golf balls, but Rob, what does having a candidate like this in the race mean for everyone else, and why is he going for Bodnar?
Rob Saldin Well, in one sense, Clayton, of course, it doesn't mean much. Austin has no chance to win. The Libertarian candidate never does. Now, occasionally, Libertarians have the potential to be a spoiler. That dynamic was in play back in 2012, when Dan Cox pulled nearly 7%. And presumably, a lot of his votes would have otherwise gone to Denny Rehberg, who lost by just a few points to Jon Tester. In this Senate race, there probably will be some disgruntled Republicans who vote for Austin as a kind of protest vote against the GOP, but Kurt Alme has way less to be worried about on that front than Bodnar does with Bankhead.
And just in the context of this debate and these appearances more generally, Austin going after Bodnar makes sense just because among the three at that panel anyhow, Bodnar is the dominant figure. But I am sure that Bodnar would prefer that Austin wasn't around, if only because he's a thorn in his side and distracts from him getting his message out and taking it to Bankhead and Alme.
Clayton Murphy At Seaborn, Aaron Flint, who's the Republican running for the western House seat, might be getting the president to stump for him.
[Editor's note: After this episode was recorded,, MTN News reported President Trump will visit Kalispell on Oct. 14, 2026]
Seaborn Larson Right. That's what Politico was reporting last week. And as of the time of this recording, not a lot has been confirmed, although we expect it to come here soon. Sources are telling us it's looking like Kalispell next week is going to be the location of President Trump's visit. A lot of the questions around where he might end up were focused on what kind of venues he might attend. Bozeman, for example, back in 2024 was a great venue for the president's event over at Brick Breeden Fieldhouse. They were able to pack thousands of people into that arena, while Kalispell doesn't really have anything like that. But right now it sounds like Kalispell is going to be the site. We're not sure on date, time, or really anything right now, but this is part of a bigger 10-state swing through the northwestern part of the country while President Trump tries to rally Republican voters ahead of that November general election date.
Clayton Murphy So Rob, Flint's pushed back on some of Trump's policy choices like tariffs and imported beef, but definitely avoids pinning it on the president. Here's what he had to say when I asked about tariffs last week.
"I don't like us tariffing folks, and I don't want other folks tariffing us. But the big picture is, tariffs aside, what is the vision for the future of western Montana? I mean, I think that's really the question here, right?"
Clayton Murphy I'm curious, Rob, do you think a Trump stump is a good idea for Flint?
Rob Saldin Well, Clayton, the point here isn't so much to convince voters who are inclined toward Forstag that they should switch over to Flint. And it's not even to target those truly undecided voters. Rather, it's to make sure that Trump's voters show up and cast their ballots and don't sit it out. And this has been a real problem for Republicans in the Trump era. When the president isn't on the ballot himself, MAGA voters don't turn out in the kind of numbers that Republicans want and sometimes need. So normally a candidate like Flint would be thrilled to have a Republican president and indeed a Republican speaker of the house in Montana. But a Trump rally isn't as desirable as it was for Matt Rosendale back in 2018 when Trump made four trips to Montana in his vendetta against Jon Tester. Those visits weren't enough to drag Rosendale to the win, of course, but they probably helped. But Trump did come back two years ago, as you noted Seaborn, to stump for Tim Sheehy, who of course went on to win.
Now in both of those cycles, Trump was as always a polarizing and controversial figure, but Republicans were happy to have him because there's just no one else who can gin up enthusiasm among the MAGA base like Trump. This time though, Trump's in a far different position. There's a new Pew poll out that has Trump's approval at just 30 percent with disapproval at nearly 70 percent. That's just very bad. And perhaps, Clayton, more jarring than that is that among those who voted for Trump two years ago, only 67 percent approve of his performance now. So that shows some serious erosion among the MAGA base among his people. It's so bad, in fact, that we're seeing some Republican candidates distance themselves from Trump – and not just the Susan Collins types.
So, clearly, there's some nervousness out there, and I think a lot of Republicans are none too eager to have Trump swoop into their districts. Flint, though, he hitched his wagon to Trump long, long ago, and it's way too late for him to walk away.
Clayton Murphy Well, debates are starting to kick off. What's the schedule look like for next week, Seaborn?
Seaborn Larson Right, so this weekend we have the much-anticipated U.S. Senate debate with all four candidates for the first time. That's at 10 a.m. On Sunday, October 11th on Montana PBS and Montana Public Radio, on television and online.
Then on Tuesday at 8 a.m., Aaron Flint and Sam Forstag will debate on Nonstop Local, that's co-hosted with the Montana Free Press. Look online for that one afterward as well.
We also got a kind of a surprise debate on Thursday in the western congressional race between Flint and Forstag. That one was hosted by MTN News. That went online on Thursday, but airs on Friday, October 9th at 6 p.m. So radio listeners of this show can basically head right there as soon as we're done here.
Clayton Murphy I think that's all we have time for this week, guys. Thanks.
Campaign Beat is Montana Public Radio's weekly political analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined by Rob Saldin of the University of Montana’s Mansfield Center and Political Science Department, and Seaborn Larson, Senior Reporter at Lee Newspapers’ Montana State News Bureau. Tune in on-air Fridays at 5:45 p.m. during All Things Considered, or Saturdays at 9:45 a.m., before Weekend Edition. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
