Son looks to fill father's former House seat

A new face in local politics comes with a familiar name as House District 4 candidate Matt Regier campaigns for the seat in which his father termed-out.

Regier said he never had the ambition to get into local politics, even as he watched his father, Keith Regier, serve in the district that covers Badrock and surrounding areas.

“The deciding factor for me to run was when School District 5 added transgender language to their policy, opening doors to a lot of really unsafe policy,” Regier said.

In August of last year, The Kalispell District 5 School Board added the words “gender identity, sexual orientation and gender expression” to its anti-discrimination policy.

The move took place as a trend developed across the nation to institutionalize grounds for students to fight discrimination who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer. The Kalispell policy allowed students to contest an administrator or teacher denying them equal access to programs, activities or services based on how they present their gender or sexual identity.

Regier said that language endangers “traditional American values.” He also said it could lead to confusing questions — such as whether a male would be allowed to use a female locker room.

“We’re under [national] pressure to adopt policies like this … but we don’t even know what it means,” Regier said. “As a nation, we’re at a crossroads for what values we’re going to embrace. Not just social values, but think about socialism versus capitalism. Setting that tone on a local level is very important.”

His opponent, Deborah Gentry, has run an inactive campaign as the nominated Democratic candidate. The Daily Inter Lake was unable to meet Gentry for an interview.

An active Bernie Sanders supporter, Gentry announced on a Facebook post Aug. 1 that she was so ashamed of the Democratic Party she had re-registered.

“Not sure how anyone one could support a habitual liar, but there you go. Shillary supporters can have her. The rest of us don’t want anything to do with her or HER party #DumpDems,” Gentry wrote. “Happy to leave my name on the ballot but I’m not a Democrat and I’ll see about getting it removed.”

According to the Secretary of State’s Office, Gentry made no effort to remove her name from the ballot. The deadline to withdraw was Aug. 15.

Gentry wrote in her post that she still had hope for the United States that voters would see that “corporations and government are in bed together.”

“I really have no complaints about our local government or representatives,” she wrote. “Montana is just a great place to live. I am blessed beyond belief.”

Regier said if elected, he would prioritize keeping the state debt-free. He said bills often include excessive spending. He used a $150 million infrastructure bill that failed to pass during the 2015 session as an example.

“The governor wanted to push that bonding through, but it included $40 million for a museum and a gym renovation, that’s not infrastructure,” he said. “The republicans that blocked that blocked the state from going into debt.”

He said for a future infrastructure bill to pass in the 2017 legislative session, the wording would have to fall directly to infrastructure. Instead of borrowing money for road and infrastructure improvements across Montana, he said he would support a bill supplied by existing funds.

Regier said he would also work to preserve and extend Montanans’ rights.

One example he gave was strengthening Second Amendment rights. He fears that people who have treated the right to own a gun responsibly will suffer as the nation responds to a growth in mass shootings.

“There should be higher consequences for people who misuse guns,” he said. “I’m saying, like somebody that goes on a shooting spree … let’s not blame it on the gun, let’s blame it on the person.”

He said another way to grow Montanans’ rights is to transfer federal management to state control.

Opponents to the transfer have said the added financial burden on already stretched-thin state resources would be more costly than beneficial. Regier said he believes the transfer to state control will be more financially productive.

“I think federal lands cost about $4 an acre to manage, and state lands make almost $1 in acre in profit. So you have a $5 swing there just in costs,” he said.

According to a public lands report by the Property and Environment Research Center, from 2009 to 2013, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, and Arizona earned a combined average of $14.51 for every dollar spent managing state trust lands. During that time, the federal land agencies made 73 cents for every $1 it spent on federal lands. But, studies have revealed there would be large costs for states considering the transfer. A 2012 public lands study from Utah found taking over land management would cost the state government $275 million a year.

“There are some difficulties, but I believe Montanans can manage Montana better than Washington bureaucrats,” Regier said.