FL cannabis ballot measure has support in poll (Newsletter: June 10, 2024) - Marijuana Moment
Cannabis Control Division June Newsletter - Montana Department of Revenue (mtrevenue.gov)
Thanks for reading Montana Cannabis Guild Press Clips! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Cannabis : Law360 : Legal News & Analysis
ARTICLES
How and where does Montana Marijuana Tax Revenue get spent?
Colton Little | Nonstop Local Multimedia Journalist
Jun 8, 2024
How and where does Montana Marijuana Tax Revenue get spent? | Montana Politics | montanarightnow.com
HELENA, Mont. -Recreational marijuana has been legal now for a few years in Montana, and with that comes higher tax revenue from cannabis users.
Back in 2020, Montana voters passed ballot initiative 190 to legalize recreational marijuana in the state. It took effect January 1, 2021, giving the state the opportunity to make money based on specific tax rates on cannabis.
But how and where is the tax revenue being spent in the state of Montana?
Based on HB-701 which was signed into law back in 2021, there is a specific set of rules to how the state spends and allocates the money.
According to the Montana Department of Revenue (DOR). There are several different avenues in which the state can make money.
20% of retail sales of marijuana, marijuana products and live marijuana plants goes to the DOR.
4% of medical marijuana sales also goes to the DOR.
Additional legal fees such as licensing fees and workers permits
According to Susie Lindsay, the Lead Fiscal Analyst for the DOR, in 2023, Montana collected over $57.7 million from cannabis tax revenue. Of that $57.7 million, $47.7 million came from adult use sales, $3 million came from from medical use sales, and the rest were licensing and fees and other administration fees.
So how does the money get allocated each year?
Again according to HB 701, at the end of each year, the Department of Revenue must use money in the account to cover admin costs. For 2023, that number came out to be $5.6 million.
$6 million went straight to the Heart Fund account, which is an initiative helping people heal and end addiction through recovery and treatment.
After the heart fund gets their piece of the pie, the remainder of the funds get divvied out like this:
20% goes to Montana FWP
4% goes to the state parks
4% goes to trails and recreational facilities
4% goes to non game wildlife
3% or $200,000 (whichever is less) goes to Veteran Affairs
$150,000 goes to Crime control and crime team training
The remainder goes into the general fund
It was just last year that state lawmakers approved Senate Bill 442 which would change how that money was distributed. However, the bill wasvetoed by Governor Greg Gianforteand lawmakers saythey do not have enough votes to override it.
Colorado’s Weed Market Is Coming Down Hard and It’s Making Other States Nervous
06/09/2024
Colorado’s Weed Market Is Coming Down Hard and It’s Making Other States Nervous - POLITICO
DENVER —On Jan. 1, 2014, Iraq War veteran Sean Azzariti made headlines worldwide as thefirst person in the U.S. to buy legal weed.
More than 10 years later, 3D Cannabis, the dispensary in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea neighborhood where the historic purchase was made, displays a makeshift sign announcing it is “temporarily closed.” The windows and doors on the side of the building have been boarded up. Plastic bags, discarded coffee cups and other trash collect in the corners of the abandoned parking lot.
The dismal state of the historic site is a fitting symbol of the plight of Colorado’s cannabis market. What once was a success story has now left a trail of failed businesses and cash-strapped entrepreneurs in its wake. Regulatory burdens, an oversaturated market and increasing competition from nearby states have all landed major blows, leaving other states with newer marijuana markets scrambling to avoid the same mistakes.
For years, Colorado’s marijuana market minted successful local entrepreneurs who bootstrapped small businesses into national brands. The market drew aspiring cannabis professionals from across the country, whether ambitious college grads with a business idea or investors looking to get in on the green rush.
In 2020, the market soared to $2.2 billion. But just three years later, sales had plummeted to $1.5 billion, leading to layoffs, closures and downsizing. The market downturn has spelled trouble for state finances too: Colorado took in just $282 million in cannabis tax revenues in the last fiscal year, down more than 30 percent from two years earlier.
A messy assortment of factors has led to the pioneering industry’s struggles. A supply glut caused weed prices to plummet in the wake of the pandemic. The spread of cheap, largely unregulated intoxicating hemp-derived products further heightened competitive pressures. And marijuana remains federally illegal, subjecting operators to sky-high taxes and costly regulations.
“It’s like the wind in our cannabis sails in Colorado has just been sucked all the way out,” said Wanda James, founder of Denver dispensary Simply Pure, one of the first recreational dispensaries in the state.
But more than any other factor, Colorado’s market has been sapped by the rapid spread of legalization across the country. Neighbors New Mexico and Arizona are among the 24 states with their own adult-use legal marijuana markets, wreaking havoc on the business plans of dispensaries on Colorado’s southern border. Tourists who once flooded the state for the opportunity to legally experience Rocky Mountain highs have largely disappeared as the novelty has worn off. Even Texans aren’t driving north to buy weed anymore, satisfied with the proliferation of intoxicating hemp products in their own state.
Colorado’s trailblazing cannabis market is now a cautionary tale for states with their own nascent weed programs. A top New York cannabis official recently pointed to Colorado’s dramatic marijuana market downturn to justify regulators’ hesitance to issue too many licenses at once.
“We’re a victim of our own success,” said Jordan Wellington, a partner at Denver-based cannabis policy and public affairs firm Strategies 64. “New markets drawing investment away, new markets drawing purchasing away — all of these different things combined into the soup of the challenges [facing] Colorado.”
A few dispensary owners in the Mile High City have clung on through the market’s rise and fall.
Greg Gamet, 52, started Dank under the state’s medical marijuana caregiver program in 2009 with $6,000. Like many entrepreneurs who got into the industry in the early days, Gamet did it for the love of the plant. He was already operating as a medical marijuana caregiver, growing weed in his basem*nt, which perfumed his entire house.
When his wife got pregnant, she told him in no uncertain terms to get his grow out of their basem*nt. “Her ballbusting got me to this commercial space,” he says.
Dank is located in an industrial area of Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood. Cannabis consumers have to walk down a long hallway, past an auto shop and an upholstery business, to reach the dispensary at the back of the building. Posters of Bob Marley and botanical cannabis plants decorate the walls.
“The only landlord I could find crazy enough to sign a lease for us to grow weed,” Gamet says of the location. “He hated the government.”
Back in the days when the dispensary was printing money, Dank fed its employees, paid for all of their health insurance costs and even hosted weekly staff parties. Every time a cab driver pulled up to drop off a customer, that cabbie was getting a fiver.
“All that stuff went away,” Gamet says. “You used to run your business and not even worry about budgets … because it was just so much money. How can you screw up 50 percent margins?”
Savvy business owners have managed to survive the downturn, but others have gone out of business or left the state. The number of total cannabis licenses in the state dropped more than 16 percent in the past year alone, according tostate data. Cannabis jobs also dropped 16 percent in that same time, according to Vangst’s 2024 jobs report. It was the second straight year of job losses.
Southern Colorado cannabis retailer Maggie’s Farm, which benefited from out-of-state customers,abruptly shut down fiveof its eight dispensaries earlier this year, while Curaleaf, one of America’s largest cannabis companies,said last Januarythat it had shuttered its production and cultivation facilities in Colorado.
Karson Humiston personally felt the decline as in-person gatherings resumed after pandemic stay-at-home orders.
Humiston moved out to Denver right after graduating college to intern for Gamet in hopes of learning all she could about the industry. Soon, her side hustle that connected job seekers with cannabis industry employers grew so much that she quit the internship to focus on her business full time. Her 2016 cannabis career fair drew huge crowds, putting her business on the map. In 2017, job seekers lined up for hours outside the door.
“It was one of the most successful things we did,” Humiston said. “And then we did it again in 2018. And we did it again in 2019.”
The pandemic put a stop to the large, in-person gatherings. But last summer, with life returning to normal, the team decided to bring back its flagship event.
Not a single company signed up.
“Is something wrong with our sales team?” Humiston joked. She started calling cannabis companies too, who told her they just weren’t hiring.
The growth of Colorado’s cannabis market was still on an upward trajectory when the pandemic hit the U.S. in 2020. Forced to sit at home and armed with government stimulus checks, consumers fueled a boom in weed sales.
Denver initially closed marijuana stores, but public pressure prompted city officials to reverse course and allow dispensaries to stay open.
“We literally sold out in four hours,” says James, of Denver dispensary Simply Pure. “It looked like someone ransacked the place.”
Simply Pure saw its two biggest years during the pandemic, with sales up 60 percent. But that all came crashing down when cultivators thought the pandemic boost would last and increased cultivation capacity, James says.
Wholesale cannabis prices plunged from nearly $1,700 a pound to about $700 a pound,according to Cannabis Benchmarks.
“The only problem … for a long time was that there was never enough weed,” says Jon Spadafora, CEO of Veritas Fine Cannabis, a wholesale cultivator. “It was hard to produce enough to fulfill what the market needed.”
The seemingly ever-increasing demand prompted Veritas to steadily expand its production capabilities. The company was one of the early growers in Colorado to brand their flower products. It inked a deal to be the exclusive grower of Cookies products in the state — one of themost recognizable weed brands in the nation.
But as the country slowly started to return to normal, Colorado’s cannabis market started its precipitous decline.
“We all overestimated the market,” Spadafora says. “We all believed a little bit too much of our own PR.”
The rush to expand cannabis production and the changing dynamics of the pandemic made for a deadly combination of oversupply and price compression. Cultivators invested in expansion, with all their capacity coming online around the same time in 2021, Spadafora explains.
The style of cultivation that Veritas focused on — growing large plants that required a lot of labor — proved too inefficient to compete with other cultivators. In 2022, Veritas downsized — changing its cultivation style, improving efficiency and outsourcing to third parties.
At its height, Veritas had 144 employees. Now, it has 21.
Native Roots followed a similar trajectory. At its Mothership cultivation facility in Denver, the company used to produce about 32,000 pounds of weed a year. By mid-2023, it had cut production by half, says Jason MacDonald, who heads up production.
Production is picking back up, but the company is keeping a careful eye on the market. Part of what helped Native Roots weather the downturn is that it has 21 of its own dispensaries across the state.
“We want to be careful to make sure that we don’t oversupply ourselves,” MacDonald says.
This type of boom-and-bust cycle is to be expected for any state launching a new marijuana market, says Beau Whitney, founder of Whitney Economics, which tracks the cannabis industry. Initially, supply is low and profits are high, which draws in new businesses. As supply and consumer access catch up, prices drop. But there is a reason for newer marijuana-legal states to be cautiously optimistic. As the number of states legalizing cannabis steadily grows, Whitney says, the turbulent pattern of growth and decline should ease as cannabis prices across the country normalize.
While the market in Colorado overall has dropped more than 30 percent from its peak in 2021, sales in counties along the southern border have fallen nearly 50 percent as new markets in New Mexico and Arizona have boomed. Sales in Las Animas County, where Trinidad is located — less than 15 miles from the New Mexico border —have seen the sharpest drop in sales.
But it’s not just the spread of legal weed disrupting Colorado’s market. It’s also how states end up competing on regulations.
New Mexico legalized adult-use marijuana in 2021, with sales launching in April 2022. The state allows adults over 21 to purchase up to two ounces of weed at a time — double Colorado’s 1-ounce limit. Edibles in New Mexico can be produced with higher dosages, too.
Cannabis industry insiders believe New Mexico’s higher purchase limits are drawing residents from nearby states without legal cannabis who used to drive to Colorado to buy weed.
There’s also the added wrinkle of intoxicating hemp cannabinoids. The market for products like Delta-8 THC boomed in recent years as hemp producers figured out how to exploit a loophole in federal laws that allowed them to sell intoxicating products. Since then, many hemp producers have focused on the more lucrative intoxicating products, which aren’t subject to costly state cannabis regulations.
Last summer, Colorado’s Democratic governor Jared Polis signed a bill that severely restricted the sale of such products. But they’re still hurting marijuana sales elsewhere. Demand is higher in states without regulated marijuana. The market in Texas alone is worth $2 to 3 billion, accordingto a report from Whitney Economics. That’s about 50 percent larger than Colorado’s legal marijuana market.
“When you can buy [intoxicating hemp] products online with a credit card, click the ‘Subscribe and Save’ button so that it’s at your door every two weeks in a discreet package, and you’re not getting carded … why wouldn’t you want to buy online?” says Liz Zukowski, director of public affairs for Native Roots.
Colorado cannabis industry officials say the state’s onerous regulations and high taxes don’t allow them to compete with neighboring states, let alone the burgeoning hemp market. Seed-to-sale tracking, contaminant testing, license renewals, employee badge renewals — all of these regulations are costly to cannabis businesses.
Native Roots has 21 dispensaries across the state, most of which have both medical and recreational licenses. Those licenses come up for renewal separately every year, and there’s no way for the company to renew their licenses together at the same time.
But a bill introduced by Republican Sen. Kevin Van Winkle and Democratic Sen. Julie Gonzales would fix that, along with other regulatory burdens facing the industry like a requirement to use radio frequency identification tags for plant tracking. Polis signed the bill Wednesday.
“We want to look at the house we built 10 years ago and redesign it,” Van Winkle says, “especially when it comes to public safety.”
But that doesn’t address the high cannabis tax rates that rankle the industry. There’s a 15 percent excise tax on both wholesale and retail, which doesn’t account for local taxes. Because cannabis taxes were set by voters at the ballot box in the state’s 2012 legalization amendment and earmarked forschool infrastructure projects, lawmakers are limited in what they can do to change them.
"[With] the decline of revenues we’re now having to cut back on these very good programs,” Van Winkle said.
Marijuana’s continued federal illegality is another added cost.
“280E isthebiggest problem with the industry by far,” Gamet says, citing a federal tax code that prevents cannabis businesses from taking typical business deductions. “I’m very familiar with that because I’ve been audited every year since 2014. It’s a lot of lawyer expenses.”
It’s not that you can’t make money in the Colorado market anymore, says Chris Woods, CEO of Terrapin Care Station, which started as a medical cannabis operator in Boulder in 2009.
When it comes to maturing cannabis markets, “you always see the inflection points where you’re either going to have to double … your footprint in order to make money in terms of an economy of scale or take out additional capital to kind of deal with the market trends,” he says.
Instead, Woods decided to pull out of the Colorado market entirely, selling its five remaining retail licenses. The company will continue to be based in Colorado, where Woods lives. But going forward, the business will be focused on Pennsylvania — which only has a medical program but seemspoised to transition to adult use.
“The size of our business in Pennsylvania is like three, four times the size of what it is in Colorado,” Woods says.
For all the troubles that the Colorado cannabis market has endured, the state’s early foray into legalization has produced successful entrepreneurs — some of whom have expanded far beyond their home state’s borders.
If the now-defunct 3D Cannabis is a symbol of Colorado cannabis’ rise and fall, Wana’s Boulder production facility showcases the state’s lasting influence in the nation’s still-nascent weed industry.
Nancy Whiteman started Wana in 2010 with a focus on making cannabis-infused edibles, eventually deciding to specialize in gummies. At a time when other players in Colorado’s cannabis industry were downsizing or scaling back, Wana’s production facility in Boulder upgraded its kitchen. Now, the gummy production facility boasts the latest technology from the confectionery industry — a huge upgrade from staffers hand-mixing in pots.
For years, Whiteman was the sole owner of Wana, which netted her a windfall thanks to a deal with Canopy Growth, a large Canadian cannabis producer.
The deal was worth a total of $350 million. Canopy initially paid Whiteman $297.5 million for 85 percent of the company, essentially purchasing the option to buy Wana. It catapulted heronto aForbesranking of successful businesswomen. This month, on the heels of the Biden administration announcing plans to reclassify cannabis, the deal closed and Whiteman got the rest of her payout.
Whiteman recently announced that she would step down from her leadership role at the company and become a board member of Canopy USA. Wana Chief Marketing Officer Joe Hodas will take the reins as president this month.
The company has expanded to 17 states and Puerto Rico, and now has its sights set on Europe.
“Part of establishing our beachhead here early meant that, when people would come to visit, they would take product home with them,” Hodas says. He recognizes that the company would not have achieved its scale and reach without its early entry into the first legal cannabis market in the nation.
“On a standalone basis, we’re still very successful here.”
GOP Congressman Predicts Florida Voters Will Approve Marijuana Legalization, But Doubts Congress Will Advance Cannabis Banking By November
By Kyle Jaeger
June 10, 2024
A GOP congressman is predicting that Florida voters will pass a marijuana legalization initiative this November—but he’s less confident Congress will get around to advancing a cannabis banking bill by that time.
Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, spoke about a variety of marijuana policy issues during an interview with The Dales Report, a recording of which was shared exclusively with Marijuana Moment.
The congressman saidthe Florida legalization measure “will pass” come Election Day, adding that the state is “at the forefront of freedom” and could create a market that serves as a “model for a lot of other states.”
Recent polling on the Florida cannabis initiative has been mixed. While surveys have consistently found majority support for the reform, several have showed it coming up short of the required 60 percent threshold for passage. That said, a poll from Fox News that was released last weekfound the measure comfortably ahead at 66 percent support.
Mast said that Florida enacting legalization would add more pressure on Congress to address the state-federal marijuana policy gap.
“Every state that does that, it’s another case here federally to say, ‘Listen, you need to deal with [cannabis] banking, you need to deal with descheduling, you need to deal with states rights and put it down in the appropriate hands,” the congressman said during the April meeting in his office in Washington, D.C., with The Dales Report staff and cannabis reform advocates.
“There have been people elected in for simply [supporting] cannabis as an issue that probably would not have been elected otherwise, because that’s where the electorate is at,” he said.
In any case, Mast doesn’t anticipate that Congress will pass the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act by November. He said “there are individuals in the House that are holding up that,” but he also faulted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for not advancing that chamber’s version to the floor after it cleared committee last September.
“It’s something that cuts in multiple directions, cuts across party lines, Republican and Democrat. I just don’t see it as anything I’ve heard a lot of discussion about since early last year,” he said, adding that the reform has been placed “on the back-burner.”
However, the congressman was proven wrong in a separate prediction during the April interview. He projected at the time that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) would not move to reschedule marijuana this year and that the result would be “the status quo.” The Justice Department formally proposed moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) the following month.
Mast also criticized the double standards of certain colleagues on cannabis policy issues, contrasting their calls for states’ rights over abortion with their opposition to extending those same rights to marijuana laws.
“How does any different standard apply when it comes to cannabis?” he said. “In my opinion, if you were saying it this way for the last year in this debate [around abortion], you should say it the same way for this.”
Mast did help secure one recent marijuana reform win,leading an amendment that was attached to a large-scale spending bill and passed by the Housethat would authorize U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) doctors to issue medical marijuana recommendations to military veterans.
He’s also the sponsor of a separate bill meant toprotect the Second Amendment rights of people who use marijuanain legal states, allowing them to purchase and possess firearms that they’re currently prohibited from having under federal law.
Tester, Sheehy face off in first U.S. Senate general election debate
By:Jonathon Ambarian
Jun 09, 2024
Tester, Sheehy face off in first U.S. Senate general election debate (ktvh.com)
FAIRMONT HOT SPRINGS — On Sunday morning, Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and his Republican challenger Tim Sheehy went head-to-head in the first general election debate, for what will be one of the most closely watched races in the country this year.
The hourlong debate was sponsored by the Montana Broadcasters Association and the Greater Montana Foundation and held at Fairmont Hot Springs, in conjunction with the annual MBA convention.
Several times during the debate, the two candidates found themselves agreeing about which issues are key for Montana, with both saying they’re concerned about things like rising housing costs, veterans’ mental health and the threat from China. However, they also laid out some clear differences.
Both men accused the other party of politicizing border policy. Sheehy called President Joe Biden’s executive action this week to cap asylum requests “pandering” before an election.
“This was an intentional border crisis, and now they're trying to fool us to say we're going to solve it before we get there,” he said. “And time and time again, Joe Biden and Senate Democrats, including Jon Tester, have had the opportunity to shut down that border, pass legislation to do so. Instead, we've had messaging bills that are nothing but political theater that have continued this terrible border crisis. It's time to shut it down.”
Tester criticized Republicans in Congress who voted not to advance a proposed border deal that would have made changes to asylum rules and provided funding to expedite processing and expand security.
“That bill went nowhere,” he said. “Why? Because, quite frankly, people were told not to vote for it because they wanted to keep it a political issue in this country. It's one of the reasons my opponent said he wouldn't vote for the bill if he was in the Senate, before the bill was even released to read. Truth is, I was sent to Washington, D.C. to solve problems. There was a solution. Congress failed.”
The two men also sparred over their positions on abortion – Tester saying the right to reproductive freedom was on the line in the election, and Sheehy accusing Democrats of supporting abortions “up to the moment of birth.”
“I'll always protect the three rights for women – rape, incest, life of the mother – and at some point, the life of the baby does matter,” Sheehy said. “At some point, when the baby's viable, when it can feel pain, when it can come out of the womb and be a healthy child to grow and become our next generation, that baby has rights, too, and we have to have commonsense protections for the baby's life as well.”
“For you to say that we’re killing babies at 40 weeks is total B.S.” Tester responded. “The bottom line is nobody's talking about government taxpayer, payment for abortions. What we're talking about is who makes the decision. Do you want a politician or a bureaucrat or a judge to make the decision? If you do, vote for him. If you want the woman to make the decision, vote for me.”
Tester referred to his background as a farmer and former teacher in making the case that he represented Montana values that people coming in from out of state are trying to change. During a discussion about housing prices, he specifically referred to Sheehy, who grew up in Minnesota and moved to Montana in 2014 after leaving the military.
“We also need to be realistic about what's caused this problem,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of folks moving into this state, a lot of folks with thick wallets, a lot of folks that drive up the cost of housing, and quite frankly, it's resulted in unaffordability in housing. And I would just tell you, on the housing front, Tim Sheehy is not the solution; he's part of the problem.
“Well, you heard it again: If you come here from out of state, you're part of the problem,” Sheehy responded. “If you're not from here, Jon Tester doesn't think your voice matters apparently.”
Sheehy, a Gallatin County business owner, said he was proud of the jobs he had created in the state and that he had built affordable housing for his employees so they could live in the area.
Sheehy said Montanans are unhappy with what they see out of Washington, D.C., and that he’s the candidate to bring a change. He sought to tie Tester to the policies of the Biden administration.
“This agenda coming out of this White House has been empowered by the Democrat-controlled Senate – and primarily by a deciding vote that could have stopped so many of these bills, but 95% of the time supported them,” he said. “Jon Tester and I could both be good men who want the best for the future. We can also disagree on how that should be achieved. And right now, Democratic control of the White House and the Senate has led our nation to the worst condition we've been in in 40 years.”
Tester said there are issues he’s pushed back against the administration on, and he’ll continue to do so, but that he’s also proud of things achieved over the last three years.
“An infrastructure bill that's the biggest investment in infrastructure since the Eisenhower administration – something has been talked about my entire life and never been done, to make sure every road, bridge, people are wired with broadband, electrical transmission grid is up to 21st-century standards,” he said. “Things like the PACT Act, which deals with toxic exposure for our veterans, had never been passed. If you want to say I’m the deciding vote to beat that, I think would be a bad, bad decision.”
You can watch the full debateon the Montana PBS Facebook page.
The primary tug of war between hardline and moderate GOP legislative candidates
06.07.2024
As islong traditionin Montana politics, Tuesday night’s primary election saw a sweat-drenched tug of war play out in Republican legislative primaries between the hardline and comparatively moderate wings of the state’s currently dominant political party.
As MTFPreported last week, Conservatives4MT, a political committee aligned with the party’s moderate Solutions Caucus wing, spent nearly a quarter-million dollars defending Solutions Caucus lawmakers and supporting primary challenges against hardliners in 27 contested GOP primaries. Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, who hastaken heat from certain corners of the Montana GOPfor allying himself with prominent Solutions Caucus members, also took the somewhat unusual step of wading into legislative races this year by announcing endorsem*nts in 24 contested GOP primaries.
Noting substantial overlap between the governor’s endorsem*nts and the candidates backed by Conservatives4MT spending, Capitolized spent some timetallying up the results of those raceson election night. By our count, 18 of 24 Gianforte-endorsed candidates were clear winners or are leading in still-unofficial vote counts. Conservatives4MT posted a somewhat less successful record, with 16 of the 27 candidates it backed posting wins.
The comparatively moderate wing of the party saw some of its stalwarts fend off primary challenges, including House Appropriations Chair Llew Jones, R-Conrad, Rep. Ed Buttrey, R-Great Falls, and Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton. Several freshman lawmakers who drew primary challengers after sticking their necks out as comparative moderates in their initial terms survived primary challenges as well, among them Rep. Courtenay Sprunger, R-Kalispell, and Rep. Brad Barker, R-Roberts.
Hardliners did, however, pick off Rep. Tony Brockman, R-Kalispell, who lost his re-election bid to Lukas Schubert. Schubert, an 18-year-olddescribed by the Flathead Beacon as an “ultra-conservative challenger,”was backed by prominent hardline Republicans including Speaker of the House Matt Regier.
Regier, who drew national headlines during last year’s legislative session forhis handling of a dispute with transgender lawmaker Rep. Zooey Zephyr, D-Missoula, survived a well-financed primary challenge himself as he runs to move up to the state Senate. That opponent, Kalispell business owner Marquis Laude, spent nearly $69,000 on his campaign in addition to support from Conservatives4MT. Regier, who ran a comparatively cheap $14,000 campaign, handily won the primary on a 67-33 margin.
However, House Speaker Pro Tempore Rhonda Knudsen, the mother of Attorney General Austin Knudsen, lost her primary for an eastern Montana Senate district that spans Sidney, Plentywood, Scobey, part of Glasgow and portions of the Fort Peck Reservation. Her husband, Miles Knudsen, also lost a bid for a House seat that spans part of that Senate district.
In other notable Republican primaries, Rep. Josh Kassmier, a Fort Benton Republican who carried several of the governor’s priority bills in 2023, beat out Montana GOP vice-chair and state Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway, R-Great Falls, for a Senate seat representing rural areas around Great Falls. In Great Falls proper, Sheldon-Galloway’s husband, Rep. Steven Galloway, also narrowly lost his primary to Conservatives4MT-backed candidate Melissa Nikolakakos, the wife of Rep. George Nikolakakos.
With those mixed-bag results for the GOP tug of war, it’s difficult at this juncture to draw reliable conclusions about how primary outcomes will affect the policy coming out of the 2025 Montana Legislature, where lawmakers will likely tackle property tax, school funding and Medicaid policy questions that have historically divided the party.
Additionally, in some cases, the victorious Republicans will face Democratic opponents in this fall’s general election, though many of the districts involved are so Republican-inclined that their voters are unlikely to send a Democratic representative to Helena.
Thanks for reading Montana Cannabis Guild Press Clips! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
