Tuesday, July 08, 2025
87.0°F

Ironic comic or lying politician?

by Bob Phalen
| June 15, 2025 12:00 AM

Sen. Josh Kassmier, my “Republican” colleague, recently had a doozy of an opinion column (Did your Republican legislators represent you?, June 7) that’s very on-brand for his reputation of bumbling through things.  

First, that Kassmier has the gall to lecture about Republican values is comedic gold. He’s one of the leaders of “The Nasty Nine” senators who were infamously censured by the Montana Republican Party for handing control of the Montana Senate to Democrats. 

Could it be that Kassmier, who spent the entire legislative session kissing up to Democratic leadership, is now attempting to engage in covering up ahead of having to face voters in his very conservative district?  

He proceeds in his op-ed to claim that Senate Republican leadership opposed tax relief. It’s an odd claim given that Kassmier is standing right there in the pictures of Gov. Greg Gianforte’s press release touting the “Largest Income Tax Cut in State History” — a bill which all Republican senators proudly voted for. 

During the legislative session, Kassmier developed a reputation of having no clue what he was doing, subjecting senators multiple times to the awkwardness of him not being able to explain anything about the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars he was attempting to spend and the taxes he was attempting to raise in several pieces of legislation he carried. Despite witnessing that first-hand, I am still somewhat confident that Kassmier is capable of reading two sentences. Such a skill is relevant to another part of his newspaper column.  

He claims that the Republican senators he’s attacking “all voted for SJ 6, a measure to approve construction of a $160 million government office building for the Legislature in Helena.” Kassmier’s claim sounds like a scandalous expenditure of money that he staunchly opposed, until you realize two things: SJ 6 appropriated zero dollars to anything, and Kassmier himself also voted for it.  

The operative text of SJ 6 is only two sentences long. The second sentence clearly states “the 69th Montana Legislature does not consent to or approve any future option…to construct a new building.” 

If one assumes Kassmier’s ability to read two sentences, then the only conclusion one can reach is that he’s deliberately misleading Montanans, claiming a resolution does the opposite of what it says while hoping no one checks his own voting record on his made up talking point.  

There have been rumors that Kassmier and the rest of “The Nasty Nine” are using a public relations firm to try to cover up that they hijacked the Montana Senate to put Democrats in power, so maybe he can blame his hired PR guns for putting his name on such a nonsensical column.  

Then again, Kassmier spelled the Senate President Pro Tempore’s name wrong in it. “Bogner” is an easy one with only six letters. I find it hard to believe that anyone would pay for PR professionals who can’t spell simple names.  

Perhaps Kassmier did in fact cook up these comedic lies on his own.  

Sen. Bob Phalen, R-Glendive.