Democrats gave Sen. Ellsworth more power

By now, everyone reading this has likely heard about the allegations of waste, fraud, and/or abuse of taxpayer money by Sen. Jason Ellsworth, a Republican from Hamilton who until recently was the president of the Montana Senate.

I find myself in an interesting position on this matter, as I’m both the chair of the Senate Ethics Committee that could be called on to formally hear these allegations, and I’m also a member of Senate Republican leadership serving as a majority whip. Because of my role on the Ethics Committee, I need to refrain from weighing in on the specifics of the allegations against Ellsworth in this column to maintain due process for the senator. 

But I feel compelled as a member of leadership to inform Montanans about the strange political dynamics in play. There is a reason that Ellsworth is no longer president of the Senate. The vast majority of the Senate Republican caucus learned his true nature over the past several years and knew that we needed to turn the page to new leadership. 

When Republican senators caucused, chose leadership and made committee assignments in November, a majority of Republican senators elected Sen. Matt Regier as Senate president instead of Ellsworth. Ellsworth was not placed on any committees with too much power or with too much involvement in spending taxpayer money. Most Republican senators recognized these as things that needed to be done even before we knew about the new allegations of financial misconduct. 

Then, on the very first day of the 2025 legislative session, Senate Democrats did something nonsensical and surprising. Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers, a Bozeman Democrat, got all Democratic state senators and a small group of Republican senators to give Ellsworth a bunch more power. 

Flowers and Senate Democrats changed the Senate’s rules to make Ellsworth the chair of the only committee that has authority to exercise the Legislature’s constitutional duty to confirm Gov. Greg Gianforte’s entire cabinet. Because of Flowers and the Democrats, Ellsworth now has massive influence over every state agency. 

Democrats also voted to put Ellsworth on the powerful Senate Finance and Claims Committee, which has control over the state’s budget and every large expenditure of taxpayer money. Most of the small handful of Republicans who voted with the Democrats to give Ellsworth all this power can be forgiven for that mistake, as most of them are freshmen in the Senate and/or don’t know Ellsworth well.

Flowers has no such excuse. He’s worked with Ellsworth for years, complaining about broken deals and a lack of trust. Yet for some incomprehensible reason, he and other leaders of the Senate Democrats still burned down their bridges with the majority of Senate Republicans to give Ellsworth the power he desires. 

Bizarrely, it’s not Republicans who are propping up alleged corruption by a Republican senator. The blame for that rests squarely on the shoulders of Flowers. 

Sen. Sue Vinton, R-Billings, is Senate majority whip.