Supermajority power has led to corruption

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

John Dalberg-Acton wrote that in 1887, and 136 years later Montana’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives has proven the truth of that statement.

I approach this subject with an extensive background of legislative knowledge based on 32 years of working with legislators, first as a journalist covering the Montana Legislature for more than two decades and then as a member of a state agency’s management team for eight years.

After knowing thousands of lawmakers and their chosen leaders, I can tell you what has occurred in the House this session is unprecedented.

Montanans handed Republicans such massive majorities in the House and Senate that party members came into this session believing they could do whatever they wished. With a puny Democratic presence and a GOP governor, Republicans had the power to pass anything.

One of the first actions of the Republican-controlled House was to harass one of their own so badly she resigned two weeks into the session, because she had voted differently than GOP leaders told her.

Then with barely two weeks remaining in the session, the House Republicans book-ended their dictatorship by punishing Rep. Zooey Zephyr, a Missoula Democrat. Her crime: Speaking truth to power in criticizing the GOP majority for supporting a bill banning gender-affirming care.

While Republicans may not have liked Zephyr’s remarks, nothing she said was out of line when considered with the thousands of comments made during House debates during the years I was there. Indeed, the words she chose were the same as have been uttered recently in political venues throughout the country without the draconian “discipline” handed out by Speaker Matt Regier, according to a multi-state analysis by the AP.

Regier, with unanimous backing of his lemmings. refused to let Zephyr, a transgender woman, speak on the House floor. Zephyr rightly pointed out the move disenfranchised her 11,000 constituents by denying them a voice. Citizens showed up to complain about that and Republicans decided to punish Zephyr for that, too. They claimed she had somehow signaled for the protest to begin in the House gallery, but they could not describe what they supposedly saw.

Zephyr was banned from the House chamber, foyer and gallery. Shutting her up wasn’t enough; Republicans wanted her out of sight.

The next day, Zephyr took a seat on a bench in an area dominated by a popular snack bar between the House and Senate chambers. There, she planned to monitor the floor session and exercise her right to vote remotely on bills being debated.

But punishment wasn’t enough; Regier decided to bully Zephyr. In a video, Regier tells Zephyr she could not work where she was sitting, even though he acknowledged it was a public space. He wanted her out of the public eye, hidden away in the House minority leader’s office. The problem is that Regier’s authority does not extend to the area he was trying to police.

House rules give him authority to “maintain order in the House, its lobbies, galleries, and hallways and all other rooms in the Capitol assigned for the use of the House.” The orderly area where Zephyr worked is a common area that has never been assigned to either the House or Senate. It is an area where citizens, lobbyists and legislators randomly gather and it’s no more an area assigned to the House’s authority than the local McDonald’s.

Republican leaders went further, saying they would not allow any lawmaker to speak if they were not trusted to uphold the undefined “decorum.” In other words, legislators would be muzzled for even thinking about not toeing the GOP line. The “thought police” are alive and well in Montana.

This fiasco should scare the hell out of Montanans.

House rules give the speaker immense authority over behavior of members when it comes to “decorum.” But nowhere in the rules is the word defined. As a result, any speaker has the absolute power to decide what constitutes a breach of “decorum.” Doodling at one’s desk? No microphone for you! Picking one’s nose? Get out!

The point is such unbridled authority, backed by a speaker’s majority, can be used to hand out politically motivated punishment, whether deserved or not. No one should use such power to dictate who can effectively serve in the Legislature or to intimidate those with differing views.

Regier’s ludicrous belief that he can decide which people may sit in which public hallways of the people’s Capitol is almost more frightening. It demonstrates a stunning ignorance of freedom and democracy and his inane willingness to embrace arrogance, intolerance and petty vindictiveness.

Congratulations Montanans. You created super-majorities with enormous power. Unfortunately for us all, they are using it to corrupt the democratic process by wielding an iron fist to silence opposition from within their own party and beyond.

Who’s their next target?

Bob Anez was a journalist for 30 years and covered the Montana Legislature for 24 years for the Associated Press. After retiring, he was the state Corrections Department’s communications director for eight years.