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State executive offices up for election in Montana this year

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State executive offices up for election in Montana this year


HELENA — Every four years, Montanans elect not only a governor, but four other state executive officeholders – together, the five members of the state land board.

Currently, all of those offices are held by Republicans. MTN has already looked at Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s bid for reelection and at his challenger, attorney Ben Alke, a Democrat from Bozeman. Now, the races are beginning to take shape for three other land board offices.

Jonathon Ambarian

Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen filed for a second four-year term earlier this month, telling MTN she promised voters not to seek higher office while she was still eligible to run for this one. She said she considers her first term to be a success, and she plans to point to record business registrations in the state and reduced red tape.

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If she’s reelected, Jacobsen says she wants to continue to focus on election integrity measures. She says she hopes the Montana Supreme Court will allow provisions like stricter voter ID to go into effect, after they faced legal challenges.

“We’re working hard and fighting to keep those on the books into the next term,” she said. “So there’s always room for improvement. We’re already starting to talk with the legislators about possible legislation for next time around to continue to improve elections in the state of Montana.”

Jesse James Mullen

Jonathon Ambarian

Running against Jacobsen is Jesse James Mullen, a Democrat from Deer Lodge. He owns a chain of small community newspapers in Montana and five other states, though he’s stepped back from the company during the campaign. This is his first statewide campaign, after he ran in a special election for state senate last year.

Mullen criticized Jacobsen’s office for their frequent involvement in lawsuits, saying it shows actions the secretary of state should have been taking without being taken to court. He says, as a business owner, he can bring an emphasis on “customer service” to the office’s interactions with businesses and the public.

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“A good secretary of state should be a caretaker of the position,” he said. “A great Secretary of State isn’t going to be out in the media all the time because they’re doing the job and making sure Montanans can prioritize their own lives, their own careers and their own businesses.”

Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen will be termed-out at the end of 2024 after serving eight years. Two of her former deputy superintendents have expressed interest in succeeding her.

Susie Hedalen

Jonathon Ambarian

Susie Hedalen, the superintendent of Townsend Public Schools, filed for the Republican nomination last week. She worked at the Office of Public Instruction for three years, including serving as deputy superintendent for education services. She previously worked as superintendent in the Arrowhead School District, and prior to that in various other educational roles, starting as a classroom teacher.

Hedalen also serves as vice-chair of the Montana Board of Public Education. She says the various roles she’s held have given her an understanding of what school leaders need and how OPI can support them. She also wants to emphasize listening to parents’ concerns.

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“I want to make sure that we bring education back to basics, and what I mean by that is that we have a well-rounded education that is built on the foundational skills that our students need – reading, writing, math, science, those skills that are going to bring them through along the way.”

Hedalen’s campaign has touted support from Republican leaders like Gov. Greg Gianforte, Knudsen and – on Monday – U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke.

Sharyl Allen

Jonathon Ambarian

Sharyl Allen, currently the superintendent-principal for Harrison Public School, told MTN she intends to file as a Republican candidate in the coming days as well. Allen was deputy superintendent under Arntzen for three years. She had previously been a superintendent in Conrad and Boulder, a principal in Great Falls and a teacher in Augusta.

Allen says, during her time in the superintendent’s office, she got experience working firsthand on educational initiatives like student assessments and teacher residency programs. She says OPI needs to do a better job of being responsive to local school leaders.

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Allen says she’s shown herself to be an innovator and risktaker throughout her educational career.

“I think the question is, what do you believe in most? And for me, it’s always fighting for kids and the opportunities that they need,” she said. “I love kids, I believe they have incredible potential that often is untapped, I fight for them and I will continue to fight for them, and will ask Montanans to join us.”

Shannon O'Brien

Jonathon Ambarian

The Democratic candidate running for superintendent is state Sen. Shannon O’Brien, D-Missoula. She’s worked as a high school teacher, helping students access college, and as dean of Missoula College – as well as serving as education policy advisor to former Gov. Steve Bullock.

O’Brien says she wants to rebuild the Office of Public Instruction, saying many school districts aren’t receiving the support services they should be. She argues Arntzen’s office has been too focused on issues that aren’t important to families, and she believes she can get that message across to people regardless of their political party.

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“We have mental health issues, we have safe schools we need to focus on, and we have a teacher shortage crisis going on right now,” said O’Brien. “So, first of all, I think we need to focus on what’s most important to our families and our children and our teachers. And secondly, we need to make sure that our public schools are protected and our quality public schools in our rural towns are supported, and those teachers have the support that they need to do their job.”

State Auditor Troy Downing could run for a second term, but he’s campaigning in the Republican primary for Montana’s eastern district seat in the U.S. House – leaving the office, which regulates the insurance and securities industries in the state, open for now.

James Brown

Jonathon Ambarian

The only candidate to file for auditor so far is Montana Public Service Commission President James Brown, a Republican from Dillon. Brown ran a prominent campaign for Montana Supreme Court in 2022, and says that helped him introduce himself to voters statewide.

Brown believes the state auditor and the PSC share similar regulatory roles, and duties to serve the public.

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“Part of the reason I ran for the PSC in 2020 is because I believed I had a skill set in order to bring balance to that commission,” he said. “I feel like I’ve successfully done what I’ve started out to do at the PSC, and I believe that my skill set now is a better fit at the moment for serving as state auditor.”

Brown, an attorney, says he holds an insurance producer’s license, and that he got it to better educate himself about insurance issues that came up in his practice. However, he hasn’t worked actively in the insurance industry, so he says he’d have knowledge without the worry of a conflict of interest.

Any candidates still wanting to file for these and other state offices still has almost a month to do so. The deadline is March 11.





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Montana Lottery Mega Millions, Big Sky Bonus results for May 8, 2026

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The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.

Here’s a look at May 8, 2026, results for each game:

Winning Mega Millions numbers from May 8 drawing

37-47-49-51-58, Mega Ball: 16

Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.

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Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from May 8 drawing

09-14-18-20, Bonus: 16

Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from May 8 drawing

14-16-21-43-51, Bonus: 03

Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

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When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?

  • Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
  • Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
  • Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
  • Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
  • Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
  • Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
  • Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
  • Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.

Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.

This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.



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“It’s Life Alert or rent”: Montana trailer park tenants are on rent strike

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“It’s Life Alert or rent”: Montana trailer park tenants are on rent strike


Mobile home residents in Bozeman, Montana, say they’re being forced to choose between paying rent and paying medical costs.Courtesy of Jered McCafferty

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35-year-old Benjamin Moore has lived in Mountain Meadows Mobile Home Park, outside Bozeman, Montana, since he was 17. This month, for the first time, he’s withholding his rent.

On May 1, Moore received a rent bill for $947, up 11 percent from the month before, and the second hike in nine months—the product of the park’s sale to an undisclosed buyer. 

Moore hung a sign on his trailer that says “RENT STRIKE.” He and his neighbors in Mountain Meadows and nearby King Arthur Park, organized with the citywide group Bozeman Tenants United, are collectively withholding over $50,000 a month from their landlord. 

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Historically, trailer parks have been a relatively affordable housing option—a third of trailer park residents in America live below the poverty line. But on average, their cost of living has risen 45 percent over the past decade. By unionizing, the Bozeman trailer park tenants believe they might be able to fight the most recent rent hike—especially given the state of their housing. 

For years, tenants say, the maintenance hasn’t been attended to: tree limbs hang perilously over trailers, and water shutoffs are a regular occurrence. “I cannot recall a time in the past 20 years where we had three straight months of water and power working all day, every day,” Moore said. 

Shauna Thompson, another resident, calls the water “atrocious…like a Milky Way, like you’re drinking skim milk. It’s very nasty and turned off all the time, without any notice.” And tenants allege that they’ve experienced retribution for maintenance requests, punitive eviction attempts, and unsafe conditions. 

A group of protestors in support of a rent strike rip up rent notices.
Members of Bozeman Tenants United, including Benjamin Moore and Shauna Thompson, rip up their rent increase notices. Jered McCafferty

“It’s really hard on people here,” Moore said. Some residents are “already paying their entire Social Security check for rent. It’s a very poor neighborhood. We’ve got old folks. We’ve got young families. We’ve got working-class people who can’t afford anything else.”

For the past four decades, a group called Oakland Properties has owned both trailer parks. When they learned about the sale, tenants were scared that their parks would be bulldozed, or that their rent would be increased even further, forcing them to move. 

The tenants attempted to buy the parks themselves, but were decisively outbid. The winning bidder demanded an NDA. The transaction should be finalized next month, park owner Gary Oakland said, but residents still don’t know who’s going to own the land they live on.

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This month’s rent hike, Oakland acknowledged, was “part and parcel” of the sale. But for tenants, it’s a catastrophe. On top of the $947 lot rent—more than double the national average—many residents also pay off home loans on their trailers, as well as insurance and utilities costs.

Oakland calls claims of broken utilities “nonsense”: “If it was such a bad place to live, why would the homes be selling for such high dollars?” he said. The rent strike, Oakland points out, is “just a group of people not paying their rent.”

Some people are rationing their medication to make ends meet, Moore said. “There’s one person who canceled Life Alert. It’s either Life Alert or rent, and if you don’t pay rent, they evict you and throw you in the streets.” 

An older woman in a wheelchair with oxygen tubes holds a rent notice and a rent strike sign.
Many of the tenants of King Arthur and Mountain Meadows parks rely on a fixed income to pay their rent.Jered McCafferty

Tenant organizers across the nation have found a foothold in recent years organizing against individual landlords, and Bozeman’s tenant union, situated in one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, is no exception. Tenant unions from Los Angeles to Kansas City to New York have organized to win rent freezes, maintenance, and security in their homes.

Mobile home parks—increasingly private-equity-owned and uniquely at-risk in the face of climate disasters—are organizing, too: a group of trailer park residents in Columbia, Missouri, unionized in February. In Montana, as Rebecca Burns recently wrote for In These Times, mobile homes were already once a site of tenant organizing: buoyed by the state’s miners unions, the first Bozeman-area mobile home tenants’ union won an agreement with their landlord in 1978.  

Oakland says park residents “have been terrorized by the union,” and plans to evict the strikers. The strikers say they’ve retained a lawyer and will fight to stay in their homes.

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“I wish none of this was happening,” Moore said. “Your utilities should work. Your place should be safe. You should be able to get in and out of it. These are the absolute basics, and they just haven’t kept them up. And if you call them on it, they threaten you.”



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Montana’s fastest man who started as a walk on

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Montana’s fastest man who started as a walk on


Karsen Beitz arrived at Montana with no scholarship offers, one remaining walk-on spot and no guarantee that his track career would last.

Now, the former Sentinel High School standout is one of the fastest athletes in Montana history.

Beitz, a Missoula native and junior sprinter for the Grizzlies, has turned an unlikely college opportunity into a record-setting career. He owns Montana’s 100-meter and 200-meter program records and enters next week’s Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships as one of the top sprinters in the league.

Coming out of high school, Beitz was a football and track athlete without a Division I offer.

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“I was upset about it,” Beitz said. “But at the same time, I was fine with just going to college and living a normal college life.”

That changed after conversations between Sentinel coach Dylan Reynolds and Montana coach Doug Fraley.

“You may not think he’s a D-I prospect based on his times,” Reynolds told Fraley, “but I’m just telling you, if he gets in the right program, he’s going to be a D-I runner.”

Fraley had one walk-on spot left on his roster. He brought Beitz into his office, talked with him and decided to take a chance.

“I liked him. We had a good conversation, so I decided to give him the last walk-on spot,” Fraley said. “I’m sure glad I did.”

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Beitz became a Division I athlete in his hometown, but his first goal was modest. He wanted to prove he belonged and earn a scholarship.

He did that quickly.

As a freshman, Beitz placed at the Big Sky Outdoor Championships and helped Montana’s 4×100-meter relay reach the podium with a school-record performance.

“There was no doubt he earned that scholarship,” Fraley said.

Beitz continued to climb in 2025. He placed second in the 200 meters at the Big Sky indoor meet, but a hamstring injury kept him out of the outdoor championships.

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“It sucked to deal with,” Beitz said. “But I’m young and still had two years left, so I shifted my mindset to how I could come out these next two years.”

He has not looked back.

Beitz won the 200 meters at the 2026 Big Sky indoor championships, the first individual conference title of his track career. His time of 21.09 seconds edged Idaho State’s Alex Conner by one-hundredth of a second.

“I think the best part about it was seeing how happy Doug was,” Beitz said. “He was jumping up and down, gave me a big hug. After last year, I knew what I was capable of, so to go out there and do it was amazing.”

Then came the outdoor season.

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In April, Beitz broke Montana’s 58-year-old 200-meter record, running 20.55 seconds at the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate in Long Beach, California. The previous record had stood since 1968.

Two weeks later, he added the school’s wind-legal 100-meter record, running 10.25 seconds at the Bengal Invitational in Pocatello, Idaho. Which broke a 44-year-old program record and gave Beitz both sprint marks.

“He’s a really competitive guy, and he wants to be the best in the Big Sky,” Fraley said.

The records have not left Beitz satisfied. They have made him hungrier.

“You have all these goals and numbers in your mind,” Beitz said. “Then once you hit those numbers, you’re not satisfied. There’s just more numbers to chase.”

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The next chase begins at the Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships, scheduled for May 13-16 in Portland, Oregon.

After college, Beitz hopes to follow his mother’s footsteps and become a pharmacist. Maybe even the world’s fastest pharmacist.

“If I’m running around the hospital talking to doctors,” Beitz said, “I’ll do it pretty fast.”

From a walk-on few people noticed to a conference champion and school-record holder, Beitz has become Montana’s fastest man — and he is not done running.



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