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May 8, 2025
Although Republican lawmakers failed to bring party identification to the ballot for Montana Supreme Court races, they did manage to pass two laws that might come into play in the 2026 race to replace retiring Justice Beth Baker.
The key word being “might.”
repealed a financial barrier preventing political parties from donating directly to judicial candidates. The Marion lawmaker testified early in the legislative session that the cap for party donations to candidates would be $84,150 for each primary and general election.
Candidates pay a lower rate for TV advertising than political action committees, which means party dollars in judicial races would have more stretch under the new law.
created performance evaluations for judges, including a “preelection” performance evaluation, which Montana’s Secretary of State was, in the initial form of the bill, to share with voters.
Enter Flathead County District Court Judges and . Both have declared their candidacy to replace Baker. Wilson, who picked up 46% of the vote in his 2024 loss to now-Supreme Court Justice , has been a district judge since 2017. He declared his candidacy April 9.
Eddy has been elected three times to the judgeship in Flathead County District Court. She was also Montana’s first asbestos claims court judge. Eddy filed May 6. Several attorneys told Capitolized that Eddy’s interest in the state Supreme Court was no secret.
Money might not flow as easily between the political parties and judicial candidates as the Republicans in the Legislature intended because, as the State Bar of Montana points out, HB 39 didn’t change the . Canon 4, Rule 4.3 of the code still doesn’t allow judicial candidates to accept money from political parties.
The rule could be changed to align with the new law governing political party donations to judges, said Chuck Denowh, who is managing Wilson’s campaign, though no one is trying now. There will be judges who, because of the rule, will avoid the donations allowed under the law.
The performance evaluations for judges, with amendments by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte accepted April 29 by the Legislature, might not be ready for the 2026 election, McGillvray said. The evaluations are to be done by a commission that needs to be created. Funding to get started becomes available July 1.
“I don’t think the commission would be up and running in time,” McGillvray said in a text to Capitolized. “If it is, it would only be a partial evaluation.”
Getting the evaluations to voters was a focus of SB 45. One of Gianforte’s amendments to the bill removes a requirement that the Secretary of State publish judicial performance reviews in the official state voter guide.
—Tom Lutey
What a Blast
Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers couldn’t recall another time in his 15 years as a lawmaker when so many bills over the course of a legislative session were blasted out of committee and onto the floor, bringing stalled-out legislation back to life. Legislative Services data shows that in April alone the Senate voted 39 times to blast bills out of committee and succeeded in doing so 28 times. So many times that , displeasingly declared the Wednesday after Easter break to be “Resurrection Day.”
Meanwhile, the House made nine attempts in April to blast bills to the floor, only succeeding twice.
The reason the Senate blasted so many bills from committees in the session that adjourned April 30 was because the chamber’s largest voting bloc, a group of nine Republicans and 18 minority Democrats, held control of the Senate floor but not any legislative committees. There were committee chairs in the D+9 group, which did not include anyone in Senate Republican leadership. On the Senate floor, the 27-member voting bloc was in charge. In committees, control was more likely to fall with the 23 Republican hardliners opposing the moderates.
“In many of the policy committees, ‘The 23,’ so to speak, retained the balance of power. And so they were shutting down a lot of the policy initiatives we thought were good policies,” Flowers said.
There were education bills, health care bills and tax cuts blasted to the floor of the Senate.
“It’s not like the 1970s gentille, ‘We must get together and discuss these things,’” said Jeremy Johnson, director of political science at Carroll College. “It’s raw power.”
Montana’s Legislature was the only one in the country Johnson knew of that was wielding blast motions to move its prevailing agenda, and it wasn’t the first time. He recalled a similar effort to blast the bill to create Montana’s expanded Medicaid program onto the House floor in 2015. It took five votes to get Medicaid expansion passed.
Things were calmer in the House this session, where a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers included , and . There were committee chairs in the House willing to send bills a bipartisan coalition supported to the floor.
—Tom Lutey