Montana Republicans continue to fail upward

Elsie Arntzen, Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction, walks into Parental Rights Education Action meeting at Crosspoint Church in Missoula, Montana on November 1, 2021. (Tommy Martino for The Daily Montanan.)

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Tammi Fisher, the former Republican mayor of Kalispell who now does a podcast called “Montana Values.” In one of the episodes of that podcast, Fisher and her co-host Mickey talk about how the current Republican party in Montana has gotten in the habit of ignoring, and sometimes even rewarding, bad behavior from members of their party.

There are many examples. 

Ryan Zinke resigned from his cabinet post in the Trump administration after allegations came out that he was misappropriating funds. That investigation is still on-going, but it didn’t stop Zinke from throwing his hat in the ring for the First Congressional race in 2022, and now running for re-election. His alleged misdeeds don’t seem to matter to the people in his district, and he won the last election. 

Another example—our attorney general, who is facing the possibility of being disbarred for his habit of completely disregarding legal protocol, which is kind of mind-boggling, when you consider that he’s the highest ranking lawyer in our state. 

The number of other Republican leaders in Montana who have faced legal charges, from Montana Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Troy Downing, who has been charged illegal hunting practices, to Public Service Commissioner Randy Pinnoci, who was arrested on felony charges for witness tampering, is more than troubling.

And both of these men are currently running for higher offices, with Downing filing in the second Congressional District. The fact that Pinnoci is going to trial later this month didn’t stop Tanner Smith, a Republican who has filed for the primary for governor, from naming Pinnoci as his running mate. 

But to me, the most egregious example in Montana of failing upward has to be Elise Arntzen, our current Superintendent of Public Instruction. As Fisher said, “aside from the fact that she can’t put together a full sentence, she has proven to be completely incompetent.” In 2021, the superintendents of schools from most of the major cities in Montana drafted a letter of no confidence to Arntzen. The letter included a long list documenting Arntzen’s failure to perform her duties in a professional manner. The letter was accompanied by a petition signed by more than 2,000 Montanans, supporting the claims by the disgruntled superintendents. There was a time when a politician who has inspired such widespread discontent would take it under advisement, and either resign or make an effort to improve their performance. 

Arntzen’s approach seems to be quite the opposite. Since then, she has been cited for passing a school bus that had its stop arm extended. She pleaded no contest. And just recently, she has found herself in hot water again when the Montana Quality Education Coalition filed a lawsuit charging her and her office, claiming that they have interfered with efforts to open several charter schools in Montana. Arntzen, of course, claims the charges are politically motivated. She seems to have no explanation for the fact that this keeps happening. 

And of course, because she is not eligible to run for re-election, she has also filed for the same congressional seat that Downing is running for. One that is being vacated, incidentally, by another scandal-ridden Republican, Matt Rosendale, and it’s not even worth going into detail about that guy, who is probably the worst Congressman Montana has ever seen. 

I asked Fisher during our interview what happened to her party, and her answer made a lot of sense to me. She said: “I don’t think it’s really what happened to the Republican Party, but what happened to Montana.”

Fisher believes that outside money has corrupted politics in Montana, and there’s plenty of evidence to support that. Just looking at the new guy in town, Tim Sheehy, who has come out of nowhere to make a run against long-time Senatorial stalwart Jon Tester. Much like Rosendale, Sheehy’s main credential seems to be that he’s rich; which is a sad commentary on the current state of Montana. With very few exceptions, Montanans have a long, storied history of showing appreciation for people who earned our respect, by working their way up to a position of leadership—people like Mike Mansfield, Jeanette Rankin, and Marc Racicot. With the exception of the Copper Kings, we have generally shown just the right amount of mistrust toward those who try to buy their way into office. And there has seldom been a time like now, where we were so willing to overlook blatant transgressions. 

The usual response to such claims is predictable—what about the Democrats? Feel free to let me know of any examples you have, because they are few and far between. 

The post Montana Republicans continue to fail upward appeared first on Daily Montanan.