How much more contempt can the GOP show the voters of Montana?
A new shitty bill passing through the Montana legislature has come to our attention. Senate Bill 566 revises our election laws to provide for a top two primary for the U.S. Senate office. SB 566 has just passed out of the Montana Senate will be sent over to the Montana House this week.
What fresh hell is this?
SB 566 requires that the two candidates who receive the most votes in a primary election for a U.S. Senate seat advance to the general election irrespective of party affiliation. That would mean that if two Republican candidates get more votes than a Democrat or Libertarian in the primary elections, then whoops-a-daisy – no Democrat nor Libertarian can be on the ballot in the general election.
If you didn’t know, a lot of voters don’t vote in primaries. The majority of voters vote in general elections. Also, Republicans tend to vote more reliably in primaries than Democrats.
Clearly this bill is targeted right at U.S. Senator Jon Tester
Tester has announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2024. It’s especially telling that SB 566 has an immediate effective date and termination date. That means the bill will be (1) in force as soon as it’s passed and approved and (2) no longer in force after June 30, 2025. Conveniently, that’s right after the 2024 election!
What are Great Falls legislators doing to stand up for Montana voters? SB 566 just passed through the Montana Senate. Let’s take a look. EVERY GREAT FALLS SENATOR VOTED FOR THIS PARTISAN POWER GRAB: Emrich, Fitzpatrick, McKamey, and Trebas
The third reading of SB 566 before it passed over to the Montana House.
Our current GOP government in Montana is just a bunch of ghouls trying to silence the voice of the voters. Disgusting.
Question the Montana GOP needs to ask themselves. (And the answer is Yes!)
While Cascade County residents are watching in horror the complete trainwreck of elections under newly elected Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant, how are things going in the Montana Legislature?
First the good news.
Ha! I kid, there is no good news. We elected clowns so now we get clownery.
Ok, fine I take that back. There is some good news. A big thank you to the people speaking up and testifying against hateful legislation. Democrats and members of the public are still pointing out illegal and thoughtless aspects of these bills. I’m thankful that people are trying to defend Montana’s citizens from our extremist Republicans legislators.
The latest stupidity from our Great Falls Legislators
The good news is that thanks to the efforts of passionate testimony, we have managed to reject some ultra stupid bills by Great Falls legislators. Like SB 235 by Senator Daniel Emrich — an effort to ban teachers from teaching scientific theory and SB 497 by Senator Steve Fitzpatrick — an effort to destroy stream access for Montana anglers. Buh-bye bad bills.
Well. I’m sorry. It continues to be very bad. Shocking no one, Republicans continue to attack abortion rights, LGBTQ rights and pass bills to benefit the uber rich.
I can’t list all of the bad bills here, so I’ll just mention some of the worst and point out where our Great Falls delegation is failing us.
Abortion Rights
Great Falls Representative Lola Sheldon Galloway, our local delegation’s best handmaiden to the patriarchy, has two disgusting bills to highlight. The bills both passed out of committee based solely on Republican votes. HB 937 forces more onerous licenses for providers and facilities that perform abortions. HB 786 adds more burdens on abortion medication providers. The goal of this legislation is not to protect people with uteruses or keep us safer. (Despite the gibberish Lola likes to spout.) The real goal is to dissuade patients and medical providers from providing necessary healthcare. Wow Lola, why do you hate people with uteruses so much?
Lola Sheldon-Galloways’s bitterly ironic campaign bench ads from 2022
More Stupidity on Healthcare
Senator Daniel Emrich, R-Great Falls continues to fight established medical knowledge and try to stop immunization requirements with his SB 450. SB 450 has now passed from the Montana Senate to the Montana House. Before widespread vaccination, measles caused an estimated 2.6 million deaths each year. But who cares if your child catches a preventable and potentially fatal disease? Isn’t it better to be them to be immunization-free and dead?
LGBTQ+ Bigotry
Even though our Great Falls delegation aren’t the primary sponsors on several hateful anti-LGBTQ+ bills, they sure are fine voting for them.
But why listen to an expert when you can listen to your bigoted impulses, right Montana Republicans? It has passed though the legislature and these Great Falls legislators voted for it:
Fred Anderson
Ed Buttrey
Steve Galloway
Steve Gist
Scot Kerns
George Nikolakakos
Lola Sheldon-Galloway
Daniel Emrich
Steve Fitzpatrick
Jeremy Trebas
Thank you to Senator Wendy McKamey for voting no on SB 99. Senator McKamey was the ONLY Great Falls legislator that didn’t vote to pass this hate.
Knowing the homophobia of our governor, SB 99 will be signed into law and then the taxpayers get to pay for the lawsuits. Meanwhile trans youth are treated as punching bags.
Where does that leave us?
I wish I could end on a lighter note, but our Great Falls delegation and other Montana Republicans continues to let down Montana’s citizens. Keep speaking up and let them know we are watching and disagree with their hateful attacks on our rights. You can send a message to a legislator using this form: https://leg.mt.gov/web-messaging/ or give them a call, they love it. The general switchboard is (406) 444-4800 and your message will be delivered to a legislator
Last night, Montana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Elsie Arntzen, hosted a forum at Heritage Hall at Great Falls College MSU and it was standing room only. Several Great Falls legislators, school board members, and school district superintendents attended the event.
Why such impressive attendance?
In the days before the event, Great Falls Rising had sent multiple emails with a forwarded message from Great Falls Public Schools Superintendent Tom Moore. In the message, Moore stated “none of the superintendents have received personal invitations to attend” the four events that were scheduled by the Office of Public Instruction (OPI) and he urged people to attend the meeting. To be honest, there has been a lot of broken trust between the OPI and Montana’s public schools. A year ago, the superintendent of every AA school in Montana signed a letter of no confidence in the OPI due to several failings during Superintendent Arntzen’s tenure. A motivation to rally around our schools might have packed the room.
What was the event’s purpose?
Ironically for a meeting about “bridging” communication, communication of the meeting’s purpose was poor. After the first 45 minutes of the forum, one audience member took the mic and asked the question on many of our minds. “What is the purpose of this meeting?”
Elsie Arntzen took back the mic and gifted us with an incoherent, rambling statement. I wrote, “WTF” in my notebook because her answer made zero sense.
Excuse me, what?
The questioning audience member tried to ask her question again, but Elsie either didn’t want to provide the real reason and/or was unable to articulate a response. Great Falls Public Schools Superintendent Tom Moore stepped in and briefly explained that he understood the purpose of the meeting was to have a conversation with the newly elected legislators in our area. To engage our parents, school leaders, and legislators in discussing issues of mutual interest before the upcoming legislative session. It was nice of Moore to try to hypothesize why Arntzen decided to host these forums.
Okay, Superintendent Moore’s answer made some sense – but – an astute audience member asked a great follow-up question. Why were these meetings only scheduled in the “more red” cities of Kalispell, Great Falls, Billings and Stevensville? Why weren’t forums scheduled in Helena, Bozeman, Butte or Missoula? On brand, Superintendent Arntzen’s response was a confusing paragraph of buzzwords. While her answer made little sense, she implied meetings would be held in the bluer cities in the future.
Nothing political to see here people!
If Superintendent Arntzen was expecting a venue to spew anti-public school and “parental choice” gibberish, she sure didn’t get it. When newly elected Daniel Emrich (SD-11) stood up and said that if you want to raise teachers’ salaries, you need to cut administrators’ – the crowd booed! A teacher spoke up and said that we need to keep public dollars in public schools and loud applause broke out.
What did other Republican legislators have to say?
Besides Emrich, a couple other Republican legislators in the room spoke and had tense interactions with GFPS Superintendent Moore. Jeremy Trebas (SD-13) pressed Moore about accountability for student achievement. Moore responded with a graph visually demonstrating all of the extra demands we have put on the shoulders of our educators over the past decades. Scot Kerns (HD-23) complained that communication between the schools and the public needed to be a two-way street. Moore responded by saying there were procedures in place to request information, fill out a form to release salary information. Kerns loudly interjected that he had filled out the form. Moore responded that other legislators have made an effort to go to the schools and work with administrators and teachers directly. It seemed as if he was calling out Kerns’ accusations of non-transparency as being in bad faith.
Tough subjects were raised. I’m glad our legislators were there to hear them.
People brought up the fact that taxpayers are tapped out for increased property taxes. Multiple audience members mentioned that our students needed more mental health and prevention services, not less. That subject was raised in a direct response to Arntzen’s proposed elimination of mandated school counselor ratios.
Based on the mood in the room, I felt hopeful. Because the word had gotten out, there was a strong, pro-public school sentiment in the room. We didn’t have the attacks on our schools seen at the Kalispell and Stevensville forums. People were speaking out and paying attention. If we want improved student achievement, we need to invest in our children. We can’t do that by asking more and more of individual taxpayers. The state needs to allocate monies properly to fund our PUBLIC schools. An audience member asked, “Who is going to want to teach in five years with these attacks on our public schools?” You heard us, Great Falls legislators. SUPPORT OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
It’s been a couple weeks since the 2022 general election and What the Funk is here to talk you through the shitshow facing Montana. In Cascade County, with a 59% voter turnout, in every contested race, the Democrat lost. Republicans flipped two senate seats and retained all of their house seats. And yes, that means Republicans now have a supermajority in the state legislature and the governorship. They’re already introducing constitutional amendments left and right. We were worried this would happen if voters gave Montana Republicans a supermajority. You can read our full blog post about it here, with an overview excerpt below:
First, they will be able to propose constitutional amendments by referring them to the ballot, if they garner the support of two-thirds of legislators. That means that 100 politicians in Helena can put amendments to our constitution on the ballot. Currently, amendments can only be proposed by gathering enough citizen signatures. It’s hard to do, meaning that lots of amendments are proposed, but few actually make it to the ballot.
Second, a supermajority can call for an unlimited constitutional convention by referring a convention call to the ballot. If approved, a convention can propose changes to virtually anything in the constitution by a vote of the delegates.
What other impacts can we expect from this election?
Beyond the changes to the legislature due to the election, the Cascade County Commission is now a completely Republican board. Rina Fontana Moore is also out as Clerk and Recorder (pending the results of a recount in a race with only a thirty vote lead by her opponent). Republican County Commissioner Joe Briggs has stated that he plans to propose an ordinance change to move elections under the county commission.
Things look pretty bleak, but we did see a few glimmers of hope from our statewide elections. The State Supreme Court Justices Gustafson and Rice handily retained their seats. Gustafson was especially impressive – withstanding a full court press of Republican endorsements and campaigning for her opponent. A strong judicial branch is still part of Montana’s government!And LR-131, the truly shitty bill that attempted to interject the government into grieving families’ healthcare decisions for their dying infants, was voted down with a statewide vote of 53% Against to 47% For.Montana voters realized how shitty that bill was!
What fresh hell can we expect in the upcoming 2023 legislative session?
As mentioned above, the Republicans are already proposing numerous constitutional amendments. On the abortion rights front, Republican Representative Jennifer Carlson out of Manhattan has already requested a draft bill “to establish an infant born alive is a person.” Wait a minute, that is some loaded-ass language. Where have we seen that misleading wording before?…….THAT IS FUCKING RESURRECTED, ZOMBIE LR-131!!! A draft of the bill isn’t available yet, but that working title has the exact phrasing that was in LR-131. Did Montana voters not send a loud enough message to Republicans on what we think of LR-131???
It’s official, we are in the bad place.
We have to keep calling out this bullshit and informing the public when these elected officials hurt Montanans. What the Funk is keeping an eye on other poisonous draft bills requested for the 2023 legislative session. We will keep you posted as these hateful attacks on our rights wind their way through the legislative process.
When you think of what we need in Montana politics, do you think, “More laws proposed and voted on by multi-millionaires!” If that’s your stance then George Nikolakakas is your guy. George is running for one of Great Falls’ house districts as a political newcomer. As a multi-millionaire, George has self-funded his campaign to the tune of $47,000+. Whew. That’s quite the bucket of money to draw from for a $100 per day legislative pay.
What kind of legislator can we expect if he is elected?
George is a proud conservative with the funds and free-time to plaster his image on bench ads, billboards, and on those political mailers we all know and love. I’ve never met George but I’ve had the pleasure of seeing his diatribes on various Facebook posts. It’s interesting to see politicians claim their priorities are X, Y, and Z as if their other positions won’t impact us just as much. The Montana GOP is just two seats away from a legislative supermajority. And we all know their agenda if they get that supermajority. Re-writing our Montana Constitution that protects our environment and human rights. It’s not a guess what Republicans will do when they are elected in our state. They have told us their priorities in their party platform. You know the one where they say no abortions with no exceptions for rape and incest. What a Pro Mother-Killing stance.
If you elect George, will you get a sycophant to the Republican party platform? We can’t 100% know as he is new to the scene. But we can let him tell us in his own words what he thinks about abortion.
Here’s the problem with George’s “moderate” position on abortion. Abortion is healthcare and one in four women will need an abortion in our lifetimes. It’s not a wedge issue, THIS IS OUR LIVES. I guess it’s easy to overlook pregnancy risks if you don’t have a uterus. Must be nice not to be worried about that and focus on other things.
With a stance like that, we can assume that he will vote in line with all the other Republican extremists in our state and continue to remove our healthcare access. Relegating women back to the 1950s, the conservative dream.
But we still have time. Do not vote for “moderates” coming for your rights. We have until November 8th, let’s show up for ourselves and future generations.
