Montana Lowdown

Montana Free Press editor Brad Tyer has watched the news business evolve throughout his three-decade career in commercial and nonprofit journalism.

"Support for news-gathering organizations — the model has changed," Tyer tells Lowdown podcast host John S. Adams, his new boss. "But ultimately, a news-gathering organization has got to be supported by people who value the news-gathering."

A longtime editor of the weekly Missoula Independent, Tyer had a hand in hiring and mentoring several up-and-coming Montana reporters, including Adams, who joined the Independent staff in 2005. Tyer edited the Indy from 2002 to 2007, and again from 2016 through 2018, having written a book about environmental justice in Montana and worked as an editor at the Texas Observer in the interim. He found himself "underemployed" when the Independent was closed in 2018.

The timing turned out to be fortuitous. After a brief stint editing MTFP stories on contract from Missoula, he moved to Helena in August to join the growing MTFP staff full time, assigning and editing stories from staff and freelance reporters and developing editorial strategies for the future. He's also taken on the role of coordinating a statewide reporting collaboration among Montana newsrooms in partnership with the Montana Newspaper Association and the Solutions Journalism Network. The project, titled Graying Pains: Challenges and Opportunities in the West's Oldest State, will debut in early 2020.

Tyer's pivot from editor to guest on the Lowdown podcast lets listeners eavesdrop on a conversation between longtime friends and colleagues about the importance of building mutually supportive relationships between readers and newsrooms and the daily rewards of finding new ways to thrive in a business being forced to reinvent itself.

State Sen. Al Olszewski, R-Kalispell, served one term in the Montana House and two terms in the Montana Senate. Now he's hoping to move into the governor's office.

Olszewski, an orthopedic surgeon, is in a three-way Republican primary against U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte and two-term Attorney General Tim Fox.

One early poll shows Olszewski trailing both Gianforte and Fox with six months to go before the June 2, 2020 primary election. But Olszewski is convinced there are still plenty of undecided Republican voters, and says he has no intention of exiting the race, despite rumors suggesting he might drop out to become Gianforte's running mate.

"There are a lot of people that are spectating. I don't have that viewpoint. I'm in the arena. I'm fighting for governor," Olszewski says. "I'm in this game to win it. I am not going to peel off and become arm candy for Congressman Gianforte."

Olszewski is a staunch opponent of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai water compact, and during his interview on the Montana Lowdown podcast this week, he issued a warning to Montana's Republican U.S. Sen. Steve Daines. Daines recently visited the Flathead Valley with U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, who indicated that the Trump administration supports the compact settlement.

"This is a very divisive, and very decisive issue in western Montana," Olszewski says. "This is taking the water from 350,000 Montanans and giving it to a third party of 5,300."

Olszewski also says Republican voters in western Montana will express their displeasure about the compact at the ballot box.

"We're going to tell Sen. Daines we're unhappy, but how he's going to find out is whether they vote for him or not in a general election," Olszewski says. "So he has to make a decision: does he want to turn away the votes of western Montana, or does he want their support? He can decide."

On this week's podcast, Olszewski discusses his legislative experience, the CSKT water compact, his 2020 primary campaign, and more.

Billings native Dr. Peter Miller says chances are good that Montana will gain a second U.S. congressional seat following the 2020 Census.

Miller, a researcher at the Brennan Center For Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute at the New York University School of Law, has spent his career studying redistricting, voting, and elections.

The United States reapportions its 435 congressional seats every 10 years on the basis of state population. While seven states could conceivably gain a seat after 2020, Miller says a variety of calculation methods point to a consistent conclusion: Montana getting a second congressional seat for the first time since the 1990s, when it lost its second seat following the 1990 Census. Miller says that as a result of steady population gains in the state, Montana's Rep. Greg Gianforte now represents "the largest congressional district in the country."

The potential for a second seat in the Congress brings both opportunity and risk for both political parties in Montana. As Miller explains, "Every 10 years we have this moment where we adjust district lines for the purposes of accounting for population shifts. However, it's also a means by which legislative majorities have a potential to lock themselves into power for the next 10 years."

Miller describes how this potential can differ from state to state: After a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowed states to administer their own internal legislative boundaries, some states continued to do so via their state legislatures. Montana, however, was one of the first states to transfer the duty to a non-legislative redistricting commission, a change adopted at the state's 1972 Constitutional Convention. The state's Districting and Apportionment Commission consists of five members, with majority and minority members of the state House and Senate appointing one member each. Those four members collectively elect a fifth presiding officer. The commission oversees legislative boundaries for both federal and state legislatures.

The process of redistricting has grown highly contentious in recent years, with battles playing out in state courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. Miller traveled the country as part of his doctoral dissertation, attending numerous redistricting-related court hearings to gain insight into the various ways states address the issue, and the extent to which citizens might influence the process.

Miller talked with Montana Free Press editor-in-chief John S. Adams during a Nov. 14 interview for the Montana Lowdown podcast.

Simms rancher and U.S. House candidate Matt Rains says his military service, diverse career arc, and global travels give him a unique vantage from which to address challenges facing Montana and the country at large.

As Rains tells Montana Free Press editor-in-chief John S. Adams, "I can speak for the agriculture, I can speak for the energy sector, I can speak for the military."

Asked whether he could work on those issues from a seat in the state Legislature, Rains — who has no prior legislative experience — says he was advised by state Democratic leadership that he would make a compelling candidate in the U.S. House race. "My voice, I feel, is absolutely best utilized at the national scale," he says.

A former West Point cadet who flew Black Hawk helicopters in South Korea and Iraq, Rains later traveled the world as a photographer, documenting humanitarian crises in Kenya, Afghanistan, and Myanmar. After returning to the U.S., he put his engineering degree to use inspecting coal and gas plants for a national energy company.

Rains returned to Montana in 2018 to help his mother run the family ranch. When Republican U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte announced he would seek the governorship instead of running for re-election to Montana's sole U.S. House seat, Rains said, he saw an opportunity to put his professional experiences to use in congress.

As a Montana native who grew up watching his parents raise quarter horses and cattle, Rains says the primary reason he's running for congress is to help ensure that farming and ranching remain viable options for future generations of Montanans. "We have to find a way to make sure that ranchers and farmers can prosper on the ranch, otherwise rural Montana's going to just vanish," he tells Adams.

To that end, Rains stresses the need for rural broadband, statewide cellular coverage, and country-of-origin labeling to help make Montana farmers and ranchers globally competitive. "There hasn't been somebody in the House that has really been a champion for agriculture, on either party, for a while," Rains says. Republican House candidate Joe Dooling is also campaigning on an ag-centric platform. Rains is in a three-way primary for the Democratic nomination with 2018 nominee Kathleen Williams and state Rep. Tom Winter of Missoula. Rains' conversation with Adams, in which he also discusses energy, climate change, health care, and rural brain drain, is featured on this week's Montana Lowdown podcast.

Growing up on the Flathead Indian Reservation, Shane Morigeau says, he experienced firsthand the depredations of predatory insurance and securities scams on the sick, the poor, and the systemically marginalized. Morigeau began his advocacy on behalf of those victims first as a lobbyist and attorney representing the reservation, and later in the House, where he has represented residents of northwestern Missoula's House District 95 since the 2017 session.

Morigeau is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination for state auditor, also known as commissioner of securities and insurance, the top official tasked with overseeing the insurance and securities industries in Montana.

In a new interview with Montana Free Press editor-in-chief John S. Adams, Morigeau draws a contrast between himself and the two Republican candidates in the race, describing commercial real estate business owner Troy Downing as "a multi-millionaire and self-funded," and Nelly Nicol as "an insurance industry insider."

Morigeau also levels criticism at current state auditor and Republican U.S. House candidate Matt Rosendale, telling Adams, "[O]ne of the things that the auditor's office did the last session was let the funding for several [department] jobs fizzle out." Rosendale requested a $650,000 cut in funding for his office during the 2019 session.

"I envision the auditor's office being a watchdog consumer protection agency, where it's going after bad-faith actors and holding them accountable," Morigeau tells Adams. "I want to be proactive. I actually want to go out and keep people … updated as to what the current schemes are."

Morigeau says he didn't necessarily identify with one party or another in his younger days, but chose to run for state representative in 2016 as a Democrat because he saw mostly Democratic lawmakers supporting the issues important to his community.

In 2019, Morigeau worked with House colleague Rep. Rae Peppers and state senators Frank Smith, Jason Small, and Fred Thomas to pass a package of bills aimed at combating the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous people in Montana, garnering mostly bipartisan support.

Morigeau's conversation with Adams is featured on the Montana Lowdown podcast, a weekly publication of Montana Free Press.

Joe Dooling sees a narrow path to securing the Republican nomination for the 2020 general election for Montana's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. While he acknowledges he's in for an uphill battle against several primary opponents who have previously held statewide offices, he also says he thinks GOP voters are becoming wary of Republican churn, and he takes aim at primary opponents State Auditor Matt Rosendale and Secretary of State Corey Stapleton for shifting their campaign sights from their incumbent offices to the House race.

Dooling's comments came during a late-October conversation with Montana Free Press editor-in-chief John S. Adams on the Montana Lowdown podcast. Dooling, a former chairman of the Lewis & Clark County Republican Central Committee, tells Adams, "[A]ll the money we raised in a two-year period of time, we spent to help get the Republicans elected to the [state] land board. And for all those guys to abandon ship in the middle, I just don't think they should be rewarded for that behavior."

Both Rosendale and Stapleton currently serve on the land board, along with fellow Republicans Attorney General Tim Fox and Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen. Gov. Steve Bullock is the sole Democrat on the board, which administers Montana's state-owned lands for the benefit of the public school system. Arntzen is the only board member campaigning as an incumbent in 2020, and is currently running in an unopposed primary against lone Democratic challenger Melissa Romano. All other current board members are campaigning for new offices, creating an opportunity for a significant land board shake-up after the general election.

Dooling says his political ambition stops at the House seat, telling Adams, "I don't have the desire to be the governor, I don't have the desire to be a senator. I'm just going to be the congressman, and when I'm done being a congressman, I'm going to go back to the farm that Julie and I built in the Helena valley." Dooling's wife, Julie, is a Republican state representative serving House District 70. The 2019 session marked her first term in the Legislature.

Dooling also criticizes the Rosendale campaign for benefitting from spending by out-of-state PACs including Club For Growth, and notes that the majority of recent campaign contributions to Rosendale come from outside the state, which FEC filings confirm.

"We have somebody from out of state, who moved here, getting out-of-state money, trying to represent Montana, and I think the Montana voters are going to see through that," Dooling says.

A farmer and rancher from Helena, Dooling grew up watching his family labor to get their agricultural products into global markets. Today he supports President Donald Trump's global trade policies and likens the process of implementing them to surgery, saying "a little bit of pain" now could result in a future in which Montana farmers have an increased ability to sell commodities in foreign markets.

Dooling says, "I support what Trump is doing, because we have to get this level playing field … I know from a stockgrower's point of view, from a farm bureau point of view, free and unrestricted access to trade is what we're looking for."

Dooling went on to discuss a range of topics with Adams, weighing in on the congressional impeachment inquiry, Syria, the coming impacts of automation, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes water compact, climate change, and more.

It was a Helena reunion last week when Montana Free Press editor-in-chief John S. Adams sat down with filmmaker Kimberly Reed to discuss their involvement in Reed's 2018 documentary film, Dark Money. Their conversation is the latest installment of the Montana Lowdown podcast, a weekly production of Montana Free Press.

Reed says she was drawn to the topic of dark money in politics after watching the state of Montana mount a defense of its century-old prohibition on corporate political spending against the Supreme Court's controversial Citizens United ruling in 2010, which effectively overturned the state law. Reed spent six years making the film, which focuses much of its attention on her home state of Montana. The film illustrates the influence of untraceable corporate money on Montana elections in an era of diminished watchdog journalism, and features Adams as a reporter investigating the issue. The film was shortlisted for the Academy Awards in 2019.

The issue gained prominence during Montana's 2008-2012 election cycles, when a scandal involving dark money groups, including the American Tradition Partnership and Montana Citizens for Right To Work, ensnared nine Republican candidates in an investigation into campaign finance violations. Allegations of dark money coordination have continued to dog both Republican and Democratic candidates.

As Reed tells Adams, "I felt like Montana was the canary in the coal mine when it came to some of these tactics that were being used. But you know what? The canary lived." Reed adds, "You can't have a healthy democracy unless you have a healthy fourth estate, unless you have healthy watchdog journalism that is holding power accountable."

Much of Dark Money focuses on a paper trail of postcard mailers that were sent to Montana voters sharing disparaging — and sometimes dishonest — remarks about challengers to candidates supported by the dark money groups. Reed notes that this paper trail is notably absent from today's political disinformation campaigns, which are largely waged online. She tells Adams, "One of the reasons that we were able to tell the story that we did in Dark Money is because there was this physical evidence … One of the things that's scariest about how democracy is being thwarted today is because it's really hard to track those digital ads."

Reed continues to be involved in campaign finance transparency and watchdog journalism issues through the film's social media outreach, and via national speaking engagements promoting the film. Dark Money has garnered a number of awards and accolades, most recently as one of five films to earn the 2019 Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts, an annual honor awarded by the American Bar Association.

Democratic state Rep. Tom Winter says his 2018 win in a historically conservative Montana House district resulted not from partisan appeals, but from knocking on doors, listening to constituents' concerns, and promising to represent those concerns in the state Legislature. Winter now hopes to ride that same strategy all the way to Washington, D.C., where he wants to serve as Montana's lone voice in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Winter recently interviewed on the Montana Lowdown podcast, where the candidate spoke with host John S. Adams about his belief that attempts to categorize Montana voters as urban or rural, liberal or conservative, serve only to benefit the powerful. Winter says his 2018 election suggests that Montana voters care more about issues than about ideology, asking Adams, "Does anyone think that the government's doing very well right now? Do we feel that we're in a position of strength as a state, or as Americans? Because I certainly don't feel that way."

Winter unseated incumbent Republican Rep. Adam Hertz by 39 votes in the 2018 race for House District 96, which covers most of the Frenchtown area west of Missoula. Winter went on to introduce a relatively large list of 23 bills during his freshman session, addressing a variety of issues including health care, minimum wage, mobile home tenancy, and marijuana legalization, among others.

He's now set his sights on Montana's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and he makes it clear that while he's eager to weigh in on issues including public lands, corporate tax breaks, and the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, he sees the most pressing need for his voice in Congress in the formation of a plan to deliver health care to all Americans.

"We need to have a champion for rural and underserved communities and make sure that they are involved in the health care decisions coming up," Winter says.

Winter also talks about his experience as an EMT, and watching his sister grapple with the health insurance system while navigating her diagnosis with a chronic medical condition.

Winter is one of three Democrats vying for the party's nomination. Three-term state representative and U.S. House candidate Kathleen Williams was a recent guest on the Montana Lowdown, and both candidates are competing with Simms rancher and political newcomer Matt Raines. The Republican primary includes Secretary of State Corey Stapleton, former state Republican Party chair Debra Lamm, State Auditor Matt Rosendale, rancher and Lewis and Clark County GOP Central Committee chairman Joe Dooling, and Corvallis School District Superintendent Tim Johnson. Incumbent U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte has opted not to stand for re-election, choosing instead to run for governor.

"How does our economy look? Is it what we want it to be? Can we identify aspects that we're concerned about?" These are some of the questions Montana Free Press reporter Eric Dietrich set out to answer when analyzing projections from the Montana Department of Labor and Industry, which has just released its 10-year outlook for 2018 to 2028. The state anticipates tens of thousands of annual job openings, Dietrich says, "but how many of them are actually good jobs?"

Dietrich has reported for Montana Free Press since 2018, when he came on to develop his Long Streets economic reporting project, in which he uses data and visualization tools to provide a detailed look at Montana's economic future through a variety of lenses.

Dietrich's latest story, called "What Jobs May Come," examines state economists' forecasts for job openings, wages, and job turnover in Montana in the coming decade. The numbers show an earnings gap between workers with higher education and those without, and suggest that while a limited number of manufacturing jobs should continue to offer good opportunities for employees without a college degree, there may be more lucrative employment in the trades.

"I think if you can get into a training program that prepares you to be an electrician or a plumber or a boilermaker, you can make a decent living," Dietrich says. "You know, electricians make a better wage than half the college-degree fields we're talking about here."

In an interview on the Montana Lowdown podcast this week, Democratic U.S. House candidate Kathleen Williams responded to charges by Republican House candidate Debra Lamm that Williams is "too extreme for Montana" and supports "Medicare for all."

"I think what that says is that they're very nervous," Williams said. "If they want to paint me with labels into a box that I don't fit in, it just shows that they're concerned that I'm really the right fit for Montana."

Williams, a former three-term Montana state representative who began serving in 2011, is campaigning a second time for the state's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. She tried unsuccessfully to unseat incumbent (and current gubernatorial candidate) Greg Gianforte in 2018, after surprising many observers by winning the Democratic primary despite being significantly outspent by opponents Grant Kier and John Heenan. Her 24,000-vote general-election deficit against Gianforte was regarded by some as a success in its own right, as Williams came closer to unseating a Republican House incumbent than any Montana Democrat in nearly 20 years.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has put the current race for Montana's U.S. House seat on its "Battleground Map," meaning the committee considers the race competitive.

Williams talked with Lowdown host John S. Adams about her career in natural resource management, her legislative accomplishments, and her hope of helping fill a policy-making void in a Congress she criticized as "showing no leadership on thorny issues, whether it's health care, or immigration, or international economic policy."

Williams also shared her top congressional priorities, including a health-care plan that would give people over the age of 55 the option of buying into Medicare, and spurring new economic growth via innovative agricultural activity in Montana.

In addition to Williams, the Democratic primary includes Missoula state Rep. Tom Winter and rancher Matt Rains. The Republican primary includes former chair of the state Republican Party Lamm, Secretary of State Corey Stapleton, State Auditor Matt Rosendale, rancher and Lewis and Clark County GOP Central Committee chairman Joe Dooling, and Corvallis School District Superintendent Tim Johnson.