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July 3, 2025

In Art Wittich’s telling, Montana’s recent red-wave elections haven’t created enough of a feeling of living in a deep-red conservative state. 

The new Montana GOP chairman — a former state lawmaker and longtime political operative — wants to change that.

Pitching his stump speech to party delegates in a Helena hotel conference room last weekend, Wittich attributed Montana’s somewhat marionberry vibe to state courts that have repeatedly struck down new GOP-backed laws and a faction of Republicans who worked with Democrats this year to pass major policy initiatives that, to Wittich’s nose, didn’t pass the conservative sniff test. Those included a Gov. Greg Gianforte-endorsed property tax overhaul that the new party chair deemed “atrocious.”

“We’re not delivering on the bold results that voters expect,” Wittich said. “We need property tax relief. What we got was an awful tax shift. A few people will get a property tax break and the rest of us will pay for that. It’s atrocious. We should never let that happen.”

More than 200 delegates, including state lawmakers and central committee members, agreed by a wide margin to elect Wittich as party chair for the next two-year term. The second top vote-getter, former U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agent Stacy Zinn, was later tapped as vice chair. 

Wittich promised new strategies for how the MTGOP will do political business, including creating a “red policy committee” to research and review new legislative proposals. Another change he floated: establishing a “conservative governance committee” to vet candidates and hand out party endorsements — a stamp of approval that could be leveraged during Republican primary elections. 

Wittich is no stranger to the internecine fights that have defined Montana’s Republican Party for much of the last decade. By some accounts, his name is woven into the origin story of the modern GOP’s feud between conservative centrists and hardliners. That tug-of-war over which sorts of Republicans get elected to the state Legislature has led to some wins for Wittich and his allies — and some bruising losses. In 2016, a state district court jury found Wittich guilty of violating campaign finance laws by illegally coordinating with third-party political groups during a primary election. The now-MTGOP chair was fined $68,232.58.

Throughout his convention speeches, Wittich offered thinly veiled criticisms of the so-called Conservative Solutions Caucus — the amorphous faction of Republican lawmakers spearheaded by Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, that has for years backed hardliner-loathed policies including Medicaid expansion and education funding reforms. 

Front of mind for Wittich’s audience was this session’s infamous state Senate alliance between nine Republicans and 18 Democrats — a partnership that muscled many bipartisan bills, often backed by Gianforte, across the finish line over the opposition of the chamber’s GOP majority. Outraged Republicans responded by impugning the nine senators as traitors to their own party.

The castigation of those lawmakers, including Sen. Wendy McKamey, R-Great Falls, Sen. Denley Loge, R-St. Regis and Sen. Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, continued at the convention. As one of the first orders of business, a majority of delegates voted not to allow “The Nine” to vote for party officers. Those members who’d shown up were asked to leave their seats and stand at the back of the room. 

Looking forward, Wittich advocated for a state GOP in which aspiring elected officials are rigorously evaluated by the state party apparatus for adherence to a set definition of Republican ideals. 

“They will be vetted, and if we determine that they are good for the party, we will endorse them,” Wittich said. The other faction of Republicans, he continued, “actually say they’re more conservative, and you are not … It will be very easy to tell the truth. We need to stop lying. We need to stop lying to the people of Montana. We need to stop lying to ourselves.”

Accurately foreshadowing his own election as party chair, Wittich continued:

“A new day starts in about an hour and a half.”

—Mara Silvers

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Last Respects

Prior Montanans lain in state in the Capitol include former governors Judy Martz in 2017, Tim Babcock in 2015, and Tom Judge in 2006, according to newspaper accounts retrieved by the Montana Historical Society. Babcock’s wife, Betty Babcock, was also accorded the honor in 2013, as were Gov. Donald Nutter and two aides following their deaths in a 1962 plane crash.

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Replacing Bertoglio

In June, Gov. Greg Gianforte tapped state Rep. Marta Bertoglio, R-Clancy, as his next director of the Montana Department of Commerce. The Jefferson County Republican Central Committee has now finalized a short list of candidates to take Bertoglio’s House seat for county commissioners to consider.

The pool of candidates voted on by the central committee included current committee Chair Terry Churchill, Ron Bartsch, Keith Foley, Jeremy Mygland, Mark Reinschmidt and Kirk Wagoner. The vote tally from the committee’s most recent meeting advanced Churchill with 10 votes, Reinschmidt with eight votes and Wagoner with six. 

As of July 3, the Jefferson County commissioners had not yet selected a replacement for Bertoglio’s seat.

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Programming Note

Dear readers: As we leave behind the crucible of political season and enter the swelter of summer, we’re changing up our Capitolized schedule from weekly to twice monthly. The next new Capitolized will be back in your inbox on Thursday, July 17, and every other week thereafter until election season rolls around again in spring 2026.

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