Montana
Poll finds Jacobsen, Busse most favorable in Montana’s Western District primaries
In Montana’s Western District Democratic primary, Ryan Busse leads in favorability and familiarity, with Christi Jacobsen ahead among Republican candidates, according to a new Montana Free Press-Eagleton poll of registered voters.
Busse, a former Democratic candidate for governor, and Jacobsen, Montana’s secretary of state, were both on the ballot in 2024, when Busse won 43% of the votes in the 16 counties that comprise the Western District but only 38.6% of the total vote across the state. Jacobsen won 61.4% of the vote in her race, outperforming President Donald Trump.
In the poll, conducted in late April and early May, 32% of respondents said they viewed Busse favorably and 27% said they viewed Jacobson favorably. But among Democrats, 75% of respondents said they had a favorable impression of Busse, while 55% said they had a favorable impression of Sam Forstag and 47% said they had a favorable view of Russell Cleveland, two of the other Democratic candidates. Among Republicans, Jacobson had a 41% favorability rating while candidate Aaron Flint had a 40% rating.
Flint, a conservative radio talk show host, leads Republicans in first quarter fundraising and all candidates in PAC contributions. President Trump has also endorsed Flint, which could have some weight at the ballot box. According to the poll, 55% of Republican voters in the state are more likely to vote for a candidate if Trump has endorsed them. The other Republican in the race is Al ‘Doc’ Olszewski, a former state legislator and 2022 primary candidate for U.S. House, who received a 17% favorability rating among all Montanans and a 29% rating among Republicans.
In the Democratic race, Forstag, who leads all candidates in campaign spending, was unidentifiable to 53% of respondents, while Cleveland, who is only 1 of 2 candidates in the field to receive zero PAC contributions, was identifiable to 58% of voters. Matt Rains, the other candidate without PAC contributions, was unidentifiable by 60% of respondents.
The poll of Western District voters was conducted by the Rutgers-New Brunswick Eagleton Institute of Politics. The margin of error is +/-4.3%. Voters were not polled about Libertarian Nick Sheedy, or independent Kimberly Persico.
The MTFP–Eagleton poll surveyed 815 Montana registered voters who were invited by text message to complete an online survey. Data was collected from April 29, 2025, to May 7, 2026.
Participants were recruited using a probability-based method, meaning they were randomly drawn from the state’s registered voter file so every voter had a known chance of being invited. The results were weighted during analysis to reflect the demographics of Montana’s registered voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.3 percentage points. You can find more about the methodology here.
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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