6 June 2022 — 1012 mdt

Montana’s congressional primaries are not
the elections most important to our daily lives

By James Conner

Montana’s primary election month ends tomorrow, when Election Day voters, mostly Republicans, go to the polls to cast their ballots. As of yesterday (download spreadsheet), 41.7 percent of Montana’s 472,509 absentee ballots had been returned. That’s 26.5 percent of Montana’s 743,506 registered voters. Montana’s Census estimated population for 1 July 2021 was approximately 1.1 million.

These numbers will be updated later this morning. A registered voter turnout of 50 percent or so would be within the normal range for a midterm primary in Montana, but some contested primaries could draw higher turnouts.

The marquee primaries are for Montana’s two seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, but the elections for Montana’s legislature, supreme court, and Public Service Commission, will have the greatest direct impacts on the daily lives of Montanans.

In the Flathead, I’ll be watching the Republican primaries in house districts 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, and in senate district 4. In these districts, the ultra right wing official GOP candidates are being challenged by a well financed slate of Republicans who are deeply conservative, but who are not neo-John Birch Society ideologues. I’ll take a closer look at these primaries tomorrow.

Both the Republican and Democratic primaries for PSC 5 (Flathead, Lake, Lewis and Clark, and Teton Counties) are contested. Ann Bukacek and Joe Dooling have dominated the spending in the four-candidate GOP primary. In the two-man Democratic primary, John Repke (endorsed by Flathead Memo) and Kevin Hamm enjoy a rough financial parity, but Whitefish based Repke may receive a larger home county vote than Helena based Hamm.

The nonpartisan supreme court elections are top two primaries. Position 1 (Jim Rice, incumbent) has two candidates. Both will advance to the general election in November. Position 2 (Flathead Memo endorsed Ingrid Gustafson is the incumbent), has three candidates, so one, probably Michael McMahon, will be kicked to the sidelines by the voters.

In-person voters may have the opportunity to sign petitions to put various initiatives on the ballot.

The National Weather Service forecasts a partly sunny primary election day for the Flathead with a high of 67°F, ideal conditions for an in-person election. I recommend that both poll workers and voters wear N95 masks.