HELENA — The state’s schools chief, who recently announced her candidacy for the U.S. House, said she was twice convicted of driving under the influence in the 1980s.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau told the Great Falls Tribune that she made poor choices but learned from her mistakes.
Juneau said she was arrested for her first DUI in 1986 when she was attending what is now Montana State University, Billings. Her second DUI arrest came in 1989 when she was a student at MSU in Bozeman. She was fined after both DUIs and spent seven days in jail after her second conviction.
“I think voters will understand mistakes made a long time ago can be recovered from,” she said. “I still think I can be a great leader.”
Juneau said two weeks ago that she would seek the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House seat held by Republican Ryan Zinke. Zinke’s office had no comment.
Juneau became the first Native American woman elected to statewide office in Montana when she won the superintendent’s race in 2008. She was re-elected in 2012.
She graduated from the Bozeman campus, earned her master’s degree at Harvard and received a law degree at the University of Montana. She taught English in Browning and clerked for the Montana Supreme Court before becoming director of Indian Education for All in the Office of Public Instruction in 2005.