Moderates buck Regier, wrest control of Senate

Moderates seized control of the Montana state Senate during an after-dark floor session Monday in a power flex by 18 minority Democrats and nine maverick Republicans signaling their dissatisfaction with the Senate’s pace of business under Republican President Matt Regier.

Over the course of several hours, the group that has prevailed on some of the Senate’s major fights since January boosted their numbers on key committees and brought more than 20 motions to advance log-jammed House bills as Republican leaders looked on, powerless to stop them.

Each vote was punctuated with a 27-23 outcome that GOP leadership, despite having a 14-member advantage, couldn’t crack. 

The committee reassignments loaded the Rules and Senate Finance and Claims committees with lawmakers capable of girding the group from retaliation and advancing moderate spending priorities.

The late-night floor session — coincidentally on Presidents Day — also came after the Legislature’s primary bill to renew Medicaid expansion, House Bill 245, narrowly passed a Senate committee by a 6-5 tally Monday. The deciding vote came from Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, who opened the 2025 session warning against Medicaid spending and adding to the national debt.

Moving Medicaid expansion out of the committee appeared to be a concession from Republican leadership on at least one of the most hot-button policy debates this session.

McGillvray declined to comment to Montana Free Press on the motivation behind his vote Monday afternoon. He left the hearing room after having his hand shaken by Bob Olsen, the president of the Montana Hospital Association.

The sponsor of the Medicaid expansion bill, Rep. Ed Buttrey, R-Great Falls, told MTFP that he wasn’t sure what moved McGillvray to vote in favor of the bill.

“I’ll take it,” he said, before sitting in the Senate gallery to watch the evening session.

On the Senate floor, McGillvray suggested that the push to change committee assignments was an overreaction to his attempt to revisit the rules debate that derailed the first two weeks of the Senate’s work. 

“This is just ridiculous, ridiculous,” McGillvray said. 

The majority leader had scheduled a meeting of the Senate Rules Committee for Tuesday afternoon, unsealing a controversy that threw the Senate into chaos on the first day of the 2025 session. That’s when nine Republicans sided with the chamber’s Democrats to dismantle committee appointments they considered punitive. Days later, Republican leaders launched an investigation into the face of the GOP faction of the coalition, Sen. Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, the chamber’s former president.

The bipartisan coalition of 27 lawmakers has effectively voted down attempts by leadership to recapture the rules debate. The group has also killed several bills important to the 32-member Republican majority.

What followed McGillvray’s remarks Monday was a slate of motions to assign to committees multiple House bills that were transferred to the Senate nearly a month ago, but have seen no action since.   

“We have work to do in the Senate. And we have committees that aren’t meeting because supposedly they don’t have work to do,” Ellsworth told MTFP during a break in the proceedings. “And you have 100 bills that are sitting there. You have confirmations from the governor. You have nominations for all the board appointments, which are citizens trying to serve.”

The standoff in the chamber was often punctuated by jokes, jabs and colorful disruptions, as many lawmakers bemoaned the strange turns of the evening.

Early in the night, as Regier reviewed a stack of motions proposed by Sen. Josh Kassmier, R-Fort Benton, another Republican audibly whistled “Entry of the Gladiators,” a circus theme song, into the chamber’s tense silence.

At another point in the meltdown, Ellsworth ducked into a Senate hallway to vape. He returned to the threat of an ethics complaint by Sen. Barry Usher, R-Laurel, for violating decorum.

Another lawmaker, Sen. Ellie Boldman, D-Missoula, broke out a large bucket of popcorn during another brief pause. The delay was requested by a Republican lawmaker who asked that printed copies of each bill be handed out to members’ desks.

Sen. Theresa Manzella, R-Hamilton, began distributing slices of pepperoni pizza to surrounding lawmakers after 8 p.m. Kassmier and other Republicans who have often joined Democrats were conspicuously passed over.

Lawmakers appeared confused at several points in the night about which motion they were debating. Dueling motions to change the referral of bills, stop debate and suspend Senate rules entirely created crossed wires and other delays. Consistently, the will of Democrats and the Republican defectors won out.

In the days preceding the Monday night takedown, Legislative Auditor Angus Maciver referred a speedy investigation into alleged misconduct by Ellsworth to the state Department of Justice. 

Regier had requested that Attorney General Austin Knudsen weigh in on the Ellsworth investigation, but Republican leaders lost control of the ordeal a week later to the bipartisan Senate coalition that steered Monday night’s Senate floor session. The group voted to fully turn the investigation over to the Justice Department, arguing that Republicans had lost all impartiality in their dealings with Ellsworth.

During the Monday fracas, leaders of the 27 lawmakers indicated that they had spoken with Regier about what was to come.

Tom Lutey is a reporter for the Montana Free Press, a nonprofit newsroom, and can be reached at tlutey@montanafreepress.org.