Incompetence meets corruption

Montana Republicans have made a few mistakes of late, what in baseball would be called “unforced errors,” meaning they were all avoidable.

Last week the Montana Senate censured former Senate President Jason Ellsworth for ethical violations and cancelled his ability to go on the Senate floor for life. It was the best that they could do.

They tried to expel him from the Senate three times but failed because Democrats and a few Republicans voted against the motions.

Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvray surmised that the Democrats had an ulterior motive in “protecting” Ellsworth from expulsion, which was to retain Ellsworth ‘s ability to vote on legislation, which the censure motion preserved.

As reported in the Daily Montanan, McGillvray said, “Democrats don’t protect corrupt Republicans out of principle.”

That political considerations entered into the calculations is not exactly surprising.

But hold on a minute. Republican senators were the guys who put Ellsworth in the presidency in the 2023 session. Ellsworth’s ethics were a little shaky then, and the senators knew it.

They could be forgiven for not knowing that Ellsworth entered into a settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission in 2009 for telemarketing fraud where his firm, Your Magazine Provider, Inc., allegedly called customers to sell them subscriptions to magazines at one price but then charged the customers a higher rate than the customer had agreed to.

But they couldn’t have avoided knowing that in 2021 Ellsworth confronted a Highway Patrolwoman who had pulled him over for going 88 mph in a 55-mph construction zone – at night. At the traffic stop he got out of his car and repeatedly refused to follow the patrolwoman’s orders to return to it. He also threatened to call the Highway Patrolwoman’s boss, Attorney General Austin Knudsen for protection.  

He later pleaded guilty to “obstructing a peace officer.” The Helena Independent Record asked to view the dash-cam video of the stop which Ellsworth fought to keep private but lost at both the Broadwater County District Court and the Montana Supreme Court.

Maybe Democrats don’t put corrupt Republicans in positions of power in the first place.

Then the Montana Republican Party excommunicated nine Republican senators who have often sided with the Democrats on floor votes.

The rebellion of the Republican senate members was also a result of ineptitude. In order to contain the potentially independent Republican thinkers of the Senate the leadership created a new Class One committee named the Executive Branch Review Committee, especially to keep some senators from having influence in other important committees.

This needs a bit of explanation. There are three classes of committees. Class one committees meet every weekday morning and members assigned to those committees are excluded from other Class one committees because, well, they meet at the same time.

To this committee they assigned five of the soon-to-be excommunicated Republican senators, including former Senate President Jason Ellsworth, as well as three Democrats, among them Democratic Minority Leader Pat Flowers. Here was a recipe for rebellion.

On the first day of the session the five Republican members of the Executive Branch Review Committee teamed with the Democrats and four other Republicans to re-write the rules by changing the committee’s status to “on-call” and reassigning the members to committees they had expertise in.

So, the Republican leadership annoyed five of their members and expected them to sit down and behave. Well, they didn’t. They teamed up with the Democrats from time to time and frustrated the Republican agenda.

What were their transgressions? Besides independent thinking, Senator Gregg Hunter (R-Glasgow) walloped Rhonda Knudsen, the mother of Attorney General Austin Knudsen 62% to 38% in the Republican primary, and Senator Josh Kassmier (R-Fort Benton) likewise beat Republican Party vice-chair Lola Sheldon-Galloway by 64% to 36% in their primary race.

Some of the excommunicated Republican senators could prove problematic for the party going forward. Four of them will still be in the Senate for the 2027 session. They may have long memories.

Montana Viewpoint has appeared in weekly and online newspapers across Montana for more than 30 years. Jim Elliott served 16 years in the Montana Legislature as a state representative and state senator. He lives on his ranch in Trout Creek.