9 March 2022 — 0937 mst
Montana’s candidate filing window closes Monday —
Democrats have filed in only 53 of 100 MT House seats
By James Conner
Montana’s Democrats are experiencing extraordinary difficulty recruiting candidates to run for the legislature. With the filing window closing in five days, only 64 Democrats have filed for the Montana House of Representatives, and for only 53 of that chamber’s 100 seats.
Almost twice as many Republicans, 117, have filed for the house. Only six house seats do not yet have a Republican candidate. Five districts have Libertarian candidates. One independent filed for HD-3. Her status is “pending;” independent candidates must qualify by submitting a minimum number of signatures.
You can monitor filings at the website of the Montana Secretary of State. Below, my spreadsheet of the number of filings by party in each house district.
In Flathead County, Montana’s fourth most populous, Democrats have filed for only two of the county’s nine house seats: incumbent Dave Fern in HD-5 (Whitefish) and newcomer Andrea Getts in HD-3 (Columbia Falls). HD-3 was represented by Democrat Zac Perry in the 2015, 2017, and 2019 sessions. He did not seek re-election in 2020, and was replaced by Republican Braxton Mitchell, who won in a landslide.
No Democrat has filed in HD-7 (downtown Kalispell), won last by a Democrat in 2008, which Cheryl Steenson defeated incumbent Republican Craig Witte by 14 votes. Steenson resigned after the 2009 session to take a job teaching in South America. The seat is open as incumbent Frank Garner has termed out. Thus far, two Republicans have filed to replace him. One, retired anesthesiologist Dave Ingram, is a Comstocker on Flathead County’s library board.
HD-7 is a longshot for Democrats nowadays, but it is not completely out of reach for a good candidate running a well managed, well funded, campaign.
In Lewis and Clark County, a Democratic stronghold, four Democrats and two Republicans have filed for HD-81, the most for any district thus far.
Democrats tend to file later than Republicans, and have trouble finding candidates in the state’s deep red districts where the candidate pool is small and the pool of Democrats willing to run knowing their chance of winning is perishingly small is smaller. Still, not having candidates in almost half of the house districts with the filing window almost closed is deeply troubling and augurs ill for progressive politics in Montana.
At this point, Democrats must stop looking for good fit candidates and accept all candidates not in jail and more alive than dead.