Montana
Montana Republican Party called on to end GOP fighting • Daily Montanan
Some Republicans believe results of the legislative primary mean it’s time for the Montana Republican Party to mend an intraparty fight and move in a new direction.
Rep. George Nikolakakos, R-Great Falls, even said GOP Chairman Art Wittich should step down.
“What he has done is divided the party, created a war, and now we’re basically in shambles, putting Humpty Dumpty back together again,” said Nikolakakos, who won a primary race over current Public Service Commissioner Randy Pinocci with 68%.
This week, some heavyweight conservatives that earned the ire of the Montana Republican Party secured victories in state legislative primaries — but not all.
Republican Reps. Llew Jones of Conrad, David Bedey of Hamilton, and Nikolakakos of Great Falls won their Senate primaries, and Rep. Brad Barker of Red Lodge did so in the House.
But the state GOP also saw some Republican incumbents it had sought to remove ousted. Those include Sen. Shelley Vance, among a group of GOP senators that collaborated with Democrats in the Senate in 2025.
In red Montana, primaries can be decisive races in many legislative districts.
Winning candidates at odds with the state GOP said they crossed the finish line in the primary despite bruising campaigns, significant pressure from the state GOP and Wittich, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in attack ads.
But Wittich said Democrats tried to improperly influence Republican primaries, and the state GOP fought Republicans who didn’t push back and will continue to fight that influence through the general election.
“This was unprecedented. We gave them the opportunity to reject that interference, and instead of rejecting it, Brad Barker told me to go to hell,” Wittich said.
Wittich also said it isn’t surprising to see sitting lawmakers such as Jones and Bedey win given they’re known names, and he rejected the idea he should turn over the reins.
He may double down.
“If anything, I’m going to accelerate this process of looking at legislators’ votes and making sure they account when they are voting to weaken Republican leadership, voting to weaken Republican policies, and voting to weaken the Republican party,” Wittich said.
State GOP ‘message to purge fell flat’
In some cases, Republicans who pushed against their own party said they were helped when voters took offense at smear tactics. They said it took punch and persistence to counter unrelenting attack ads.
“The more people fought, the better they did,” Nikolakakos said.
Wednesday, Nikolakakos said Wittich’s attempt to take control of the party failed, as did the costly ads by the GOP and outside groups.
“They savaged me,” he said.
In 2025, nine Republicans in the Senate worked with Democrats as an ad hoc majority of 27, marginalizing a more conservative faction of Republicans.
That sometimes fragile coalition helped steer significant legislation including residential property tax relief — albeit a controversial version that landed in court.
Primary outcomes mean in 2027, the Senate could operate with a similar working majority of 26.
Wittich was elected chairman in June 2025 with a mission to further deepen the shade of red in Montana, but Nikolakakos said he ran his race bucking the idea he needs to bow to the state GOP.
“With my first speech on the Senate floor, I’m gonna call him (Wittich) out and remind him I do not work for him, that I work for the people of my district,” Nikolakakos said.
Jones, in his 10th election for the Montana Legislature, said he’s never seen more falsehoods in a campaign, and he’s glad the primary is in the rearview mirror.
The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee has shaped the state budget and was a top state GOP target.
In some cases, Jones, of Conrad, said the smears from outside groups offended voters that supported him and helped turn people out. Jones beat Rep. Zach Wirth, elected in 2024, by 4 points.
“Chair Wittich’s message of purging those who don’t swear fealty to the platform on his biggest targets didn’t work,” Jones said. “It fell flat.”
An ‘existential threat’ to the state GOP
Wittich earlier said the state GOP wanted to root out Republican candidates who were actually more aligned with Democrats.
To that end, the state GOP targeted some Republican lawmakers it viewed as out of step with its platform, including Nikolalakos, Jones, Bedey and Barker.
Bedey edged out his GOP opponent with just 51% of the vote in red Ravalli County, and Barker pulled in 64% of the vote in Carbon County.
Wittich said in general, incumbents largely win, so wins by known lawmakers in this primary shouldn’t be considered a rejection of the state GOP. But he said the GOP’s message isn’t about individuals.
“This is an existential threat to the Montana Republican Party, and we had to speak with a clear and loud voice to reject that interference,” Wittich said.
Among the wins for the state GOP was the ousting of Vance, of the Belgrade area, and defeat of the challenge by Sen. Jason Ellsworth in a House race hundreds of miles from Hamilton, where he’s lived and held a Senate seat.
Vance and Ellsworth were two of “The Nine” senators who broke with party leadership in 2025 to work across the aisle and pass major bills, leading to admonishment by the state GOP.
Ellsworth, who was all but removed from office last session, lost to Montana Freedom Caucus Chairman Jerry Schillinger, of Circle, who had support from the state GOP and bested Ellsworth with 86% of the vote.
Vance, the only member of “The Nine” seeking reelection to the Senate, lost to Rep. Caleb Hinkle by 48 points. Hinkle, in the Legislature the last three sessions, is backed by the state GOP.
Finley Warden, who bested incumbent Rep. Linda Reksten with 65% of the vote, said he rejected the idea a split exists with Republicans — he said some candidates use the GOP label to win but are “fake Republicans.”
Warden, on a state GOP Honor Roll, said talking to Republican voters at a grassroots event in nearly any part of the state is evidence.
“They will tell you that they want true conservative Republican representatives that actually follow through on the things that Republicans promise,” Warden said, pointing to smaller budgets as an example.
Into the general election, legislative session
Even staunch conservatives such as Speaker of the House Brandon Ler, of Savage, and the state GOP’s own vice chairperson, Stacy Zinn, of Billings, failed to earn the party’s nod in the Honor Roll it released in April. But they won Tuesday.
Wittich said he wasn’t on the committee that named Honor Roll candidates “supporting Republicans.
But he said it’s possible Ler, as speaker, was held to a higher standard, given the Democrats at the end of the 2025 session said “they got everything they wanted.”
Ler, who could not be reached for comment after the primary, won with 56% of the vote.
Wednesday, Zinn said her opponents tried to cast her as a “malcontent,” but she said asking questions doesn’t mean you’re not a team player.
She also said it’s time to reevaluate the Honor Roll and the strategies of the state GOP and end the fragmentation. Zinn won with 61% of the vote.
“I can tell you right now people (Republicans) are not going to be Kumbaya initially, but it’s time to put the voters and constituents first,” Zinn said.
Editor’s note: Reporter Micah Drew contributed to this story.
Six months before the legislative session is slated to kick off, a group of Republicans in Senate leadership have thrown their support behind a flat income tax proposal for 2027, thrusting one of Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s long-term priorities into the spotlight.
A Monday press release cited support for the policy from Senate President Matt Regier; Senate President Pro Tempore Ken Bogner; Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvray; all the Senate majority whips; and Greg Hertz, R-Polson, who heads the Senate Taxation committee. Regier has requested a bill draft to “lower Montana income tax rates” for the 2027 session.
“The governor is encouraged by the growing support for his call for a flat income tax and looks forward to working with the legislature to deliver on this promise to Montanans,” said Kaitlin Timken, the governor’s director of communications. “In 2027, Governor Gianforte is focused on securing a fair, flat income tax rate to continue Montana’s strong economic momentum and return money back to Montanans who work hard to earn it.”
For the last three legislative sessions, the legislature has slashed income tax rates, moving the top income tax bracket from 6.9% to 5.4% during Gianforte’s tenure. The state has also moved from seven different income tax brackets to two.
Even as members of Senate leadership proclaim their support for the move to a flat income tax ahead of 2027’s session, some have found themselves at odds with more aggressive efforts to slash income taxes before.
During the 2025 session, for instance, the governor’s income tax proposal in Senate Bill 323 was tabled in Hertz’s Senate Taxation Committee. It would have cut the top-bracket tax rate from 5.9% to 4.9%. Hertz told the Montana Free Press at the time the legislation “pulls off too much money, too fast, at the top.” What eventually passed in 2025 in the form of House Bill 337 was a phased decrease of that top-bracket rate from 5.9% to 5.4%, along with raising the maximum threshold for the lower tax bracket, which stands at 4.7%.
Regier cited “momentum” on the issue as the reason Senate leadership has jumped into the fray to back the idea now. He said getting Senate leadership on board included some debate on the issue. But ultimately, there was agreement that the governor’s position was right on flat income tax. Regier pointed to both income tax and property tax cuts as topics of importance to Senate leadership ahead of 2027.
“We’ve had large, large surpluses in the past two sessions,” Regier said in an interview with the Beacon. “I’m looking at another surplus session. We have cut income tax the last two sessions … so it’s, to me, the premise of this — and to a lot of Republicans — is government is not a business. We should only take enough money from the people to operate government, and so we shouldn’t be running surpluses like that.”
During a February discussion with the Mountain States Policy Center, a right-leaning think tank, Gianforte said he hoped to get the state to a 4.7% flat income tax rate. A 2029 biennium report from the Legislative Fiscal Division projects that move would decrease individual income tax collections by an estimated $130 million per year by fiscal year 2029.
In Montana, income tax makes up the lion’s share of the state’s general fund, accounting for 66% of general fund revenues in fiscal year 2025, per a recent historical analysis from the Legislative Fiscal Division. Those dollars fund schools up to the Base Amount for School Equity, state supported public health programs, and salaries and pensions for state employees, among other items. In recent years, the state’s general fund has been flush with cash, in part thanks to higher-than-anticipated income tax collections.
Sen. Dave Fern, D-Whitefish, a seasoned legislator who serves on the Revenue Interim Committee, said several factors have contributed to the state’s revenue growth. In his estimation, those include high in-migration since the COVID days, more wealth in the state with people working remotely and making higher salaries, and more federal dollars going into people’s pockets thanks to pandemic-era policies.
Even so, Fern and most of his fellow Democratic caucus members have long been skeptical of the flat income tax idea. He cautioned that creating and maintaining a tax structure that keeps Montana’s general fund coffers at a sustainable level is important. Fern added he’s an advocate for maintaining the state’s current income tax levels for another two years to gain a better understanding of what Montana’s growth will look like moving forward — particularly as he anticipates changes coming down the pike.
“Beyond two years, do we have the capacity to deal with what we’re doing?” Fern said. “Will that growth rate of revenue, more income, more people moving here — will that continue? And you know, my reaction is, it will be neutered a bit, getting back to a more normal rate of growth.”
He also pointed to the 2029 biennium outlook, which identified provisions of 2025’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that that could lower the amount of income tax the state collects. And, depending on the recommendations of the School Funding Interim Commission, which Fern sits on, he said the state could be looking at a different way of bankrolling school districts, which he anticipates could have a higher price tag on it than what has been status quo.
“It’s much easier to cut taxes than increase taxes,” Fern said.
For Gov. Gianforte, the same thing Fern identified as a holdup when it comes to a flat income tax rate serves as a go sign.
“The real advantage of a flat tax is once you get there, it’s very hard for future legislatures to raise it, because they’ve got to raise the tax on everybody, right?” the governor said at the Mountain States Policy Center discussion in February. “So, the penalty is higher.”
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Ye (the artist formerly known as Kanye West) is facing yet another lawsuit over allegations of unlicensed sampling — only this time, it’s centered on a video clip of the rapper’s infamous 2013 fight with paparazzi.
In a case filed Wednesday (July 15) in Los Angeles federal court, the celebrity news agency Bauer-Griffin claims that Ye, French Montana (Karim Kharbouch) and others used audio from the headline-grabbing incident in “Where They At,” released in 2024 off French’s Mac & Cheese 5.
The May 2013 video, which also features a pregnant Kim Kardashian, shows West charging at a photographer outside a Los Angeles restaurant and shouting “don’t take no photos” and a string of profanities: “All of you m*therf*ckers stop it, man!”
The clip appears prominently in the intro to Montana’s song — a use that the lawsuit calls “blatant and willful” copyright infringement.
“Given Mr. Ye’s history of numerous confrontations with paparazzi, the video was highly newsworthy,” the agency’s lawyers write in legal documents obtained and first reported by Billboard. “Listeners immediately recognized the audio sample that begins the infringing record as being copied from the video.”
Ye has been sued over a dozen times for allegedly using unlicensed samples and interpolations in his music, including a high-profile battle with Donna Summer. In May, he lost a jury trial over using an uncleared sample in an early version of the Grammy-winning “Hurricane” from Donda. He had testified at trial that he’s “very generous” about giving credit and compensation when it’s due, but that “a lot of people try to take advantage of me.”
In Wednesday’s complaint, Bauer-Griffin says the creators of “Where They At” showed no such respect to its rights in the video of the paparazzi incident, using it despite being well aware that sound recordings must be licensed when any amount is directly sampled into a song.
“In the music industry, copyrights are prevalent and well understood,” lawyers for the agency write. “Every defendant knew that they needed to have but did not have permission to use the audio sample.”
Reps for both stars did not immediately return requests for comment. The lawsuit also names as defendants producers Dem Jointz (Dwayne Abernathy Jr.) and BoogzDaBeast (Jahmal Gwin), as well Gamma, the label that released the song, and its distribution unit Vydia.
The confrontation at issue in Wednesday’s lawsuit was one of two high-profile scuffles with paparazzi that year for the rapper, who was then still known as Kanye West. Two months later, he clashed with photographer Daniel Ramos outside of LAX, resulting in a civil assault lawsuit that the star eventually settled two years later on the eve of trial.
As many celebrities have learned over the years, simply appearing in a photo or video does not give someone any legal rights to it. Ownership of such material is always retained by the creator — an inconvenient fact that has sparked lawsuits against Jennifer Lopez, Miley Cyrus and Dua Lipa.
It’s unclear who filmed the May 2013 incident, which happened outside a Beverly Hills restaurant minutes after the star had also been filmed accidentally banging his head into a signpost while trying to avoid other photographers. But the rights to the footage have been owned by Bauer-Griffin from the beginning: When TMZ first posted it at the time, it came with a watermark crediting the agency.
“The infringing record has been widely distributed on various streaming platforms, in flagrant violation of plaintiff’s exclusive rights under copyright laws,” Bauer-Griffin’s attorneys write. “Plaintiff brings these claims to vindicate those rights.”
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