2022 News in Review

The end of one thing and the beginning of another can be a valuable time for reflection, and the cusp of a New Year presents a time for reflection on a large scale. The media industry adage that the news never stops suggests a kind of futility at the prospect of ever successfully keeping up with the events, developments, changes, and historical moments that present the backdrop to life. Still, it’s worth a shot. Flathead Valley residents are close to leaving behind a year that included waning pandemic precautions, institutional turmoil, a packed election cycle, and extreme weather. What follows is a look back at some, but not all, of the major stories and events of 2022 for Flathead Valley residents, beginning with this fall’s general election. 

In Montana’s newly formed First Congressional District spanning portions of the western side of the state, Whitefish Republican and former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke defeated the Missoula Democrat and attorney Monica Tranel. Zinke captured 61% of votes in the Flathead, while Tranel received 35%, and Libertarian John Lamb received 4%. District-wide in 2022, the margin between the two major party candidates was tighter, with Zinke receiving 50% of the vote and Tranel 46%.

The 2022 race between Zinke and Tranel wasn’t called in Zinke’s favor until about 24 hours after the polls closed, and neither candidate publicly questioned the results. Ultimately, the congressional seat was decided by less than 10,000 votes, and the results yielded Republicans yet another major political victory in Montana.

Zinke had narrowly defeated Kalispell physician and former state Sen. Al Olszewski in the Republican primary, emerging with a margin of victory of less than 2 percentage points. Republican voters rallied behind Zinke in the general, proving that he remains politically viable in Montana politics. While serving under former President Donald Trump, multiple ethics investigations were launched into Zinke’s conduct as Interior Secretary, and he resigned as those investigations remained ongoing. In February 2022, a federal investigation found that Zinke had misused his position in the federal government to advance the 95 Karrow development project in Whitefish, and that Zinke had failed to disclose details of his involvement when questioned by ethics officials. Investigators forwarded their findings to the U.S. Justice Department, which declined to prosecute. Zinke has denounced the investigations into him as “meritless” and “witch hunts.”

Across 12 races in Flathead County for Senate and House seats in the state legislature, Republicans won out 11 times, including in five uncontested races. The lone exception was in the House District 5 race, where Whitefish Republican Lyn Bennett fell to incumbent Whitefish Democrat Rep. Dave Fern. Fern won the race by around 1,300 votes.

Republican incumbent County Commissioner Pamela Holmquist survived a rare write-in challenge organized by Republican Jack Fallon, who she defeated in the Republican primary earlier in the year. Fallon had lost the primary to Holmquist by 40 votes. County election results showed Holmquist with 28,266 votes, compared to 11,825 write-in votes.

County voters also chose Dr. Anne Bukacek, a Republican, to represent them in a newly formed Public Service Commission District 5. Bukacek received 61% of the Flathead County vote compared to 39% of the vote received by her opponent, Whitefish Democrat John Repke. District-wide, Bukacek received 56% of the vote compared to Repke’s 43%. The Republican-controlled state utility regulator has been beset by scandal in recent years. Bukacek, a Kalispell resident, resigned from her position on the Flathead County Board of Health in March 2022, saying at the time that she wanted to avoid any “perceived conflict of interest between the PSC and this board.”

An anti-vaccine and anti-abortion activist in the Flathead, Bukacek had been in open conflict with other members of the health board over COVID-19 mitigations and the county’s response, and had organized protests against public health measures. Republican former board member Bill Burg, and Republican former health officer Joe Russell, co-authored a letter denouncing her PSC candidacy. As of late November 2022, COVID-19 had infected more than 32,000 Flathead County residents and killed nearly 300 of them since the pandemic began. Statewide, COVID-19 has caused the death of more than 3,500 Montanans out of nearly 320,000 cases. Of those cases, more than 13,000 have resulted in hospitalizations.

Amid the rise in vaccine availability, pharmaceutical treatments, increased population immunity and decreased severity of illness, many communities in America saw their populations ease up on COVID-19 precautions. While Flathead County had been among the laxer areas in the nation when it came to COVID-19 restrictions, precautions continued to wane in 2022, with some local organizations finally returning to hosting in-person events that for years had been canceled, postponed, or adapted to create socially distant conditions.

In April 2022, the county made it two weeks without a single COVID-19 hospitalization. In mid-February, Logan Health Medical Center in Kalispell had closed its COVID-19 intensive care unit, and in March the hospital announced on its Facebook page that it would be discontinuing its weekly report of COVID-19 hospitalizations. Statewide reporting of COVID-19 data also slowed down. The spring slowdown came months after a nationwide home testing kit shortages in January left the Flathead City-County Health Department temporarily without tests to hand out to the public. At the time, the county had more than 600 active cases, and the health officer at the time, Russell, had estimated there were hundreds more active cases that were not being reflected in publicly available data. As of Dec. 23, Flathead County was reporting 45 active cases and community levels were considered low, according to data from the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services.

Russell, who led the Flathead health department for more than 20 years, came out of retirement in 2020 to resume his role as health officer after the resignation of interim health officer Tamalee St. James Robinson. In the summer of 2022, he once again left his position and was replaced on an interim basis by Jennifer Rankosky, who served as the health department’s population health manager. Rankosky went on to ask to be hired on a full-time basis, and was officially hired on a two-year contract in December, ending a multi-year search for a permanent health officer that stretched back to the early months of the pandemic.

Even as some institutions returned to a sense of normalcy in 2022, other community institutions experienced upheaval, with few so publicly as the ImagineIF Library.

Book challenges, resignations and losses in funding all roiled the quiet hallways of the county library system over the last year. Reporting from the Beacon found that a Sept. 27, 2021, email from ImagineIF Library Trustee David Ingram sent out to other trustees, as well as county commissioners, included a link to a video from a Virginia school board meeting where two queer-themed books, “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison and “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe, were being discussed. As Ingram noted in his email, both books could be found at the ImagineIF Library, and he intended to review the library’s collection development policy in the near future.

In response to the email, library trustee Doug Adams expressed hope that someone would file a complaint about the books and acknowledged that it would upset interim ImagineIF Director Martha Fuhrman, and that the board should begin thinking about what to do if she were to resign before the library had a new director. In emails, both Ingram and Adams expressed a desire to find a Christian library resource to guide them in developing the library’s collection.

In late 2021, Fuhrman resigned, putting the library in a position where it had lost its interim and former director in a six-month span. In January of 2022, the board opted to hire Ashley Cummins, the director of a library in Alabama, as its new library director at a reduced salary. Despite the payroll savings, however, Cummins’ hiring cost the library $35,000 in annual funding because she lacks a masters in library science degree, which is a library director requirement for libraries to be certified in the state of Montana in a community of the Flathead Valley’s size.

In August, library staff in Kalispell found five books with bullet holes had been left in the overnight drop box, prompting closures for all library branches amid a law enforcement investigation, which ultimately determined it was an isolated incident and that there was no threat to the public.

In October, less than a year after her hiring, Cummins interviewed for a library director job in Oregon, and in an email sent to library staff obtained by the Beacon she questioned if she had moved thousands of miles from her family only to be manipulated, publicly insulted and used as a pawn in a political game. In November, the Beacon reported that ImagineIF Libraries Assistant Director Sean Anderson was resigning from the library, and that in an email to staff and trustees he said it was “largely due to the ongoing toxicity with the library board, the County Commissioners, and the impact that their influences has had on our collective ability to offer free, fair and excellent library services.” Prior to his resignation, Anderson had been asked by trustees not to attend board meetings in an official capacity unless his presence was requested.

In early 2022, the board voted to keep “Lawn Boy,” and later voted against keeping “Gender Queer.” More book challenges have followed, including against “Why Children Matter,” a Christian parenting book by northern Idaho pastor Doug Wilson who has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a proponent of radical “neo-Confederate” ideology. The board voted unanimously to retain the book in October. Trustees also voted to keep “Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness,” which was challenged by a woman who believed the book was racist and “harmful to children.”  

As some local institutions found themselves in metaphorically troubled waters, area residents found themselves in actual troubled waters, when in June parts of the county saw the worst flooding since 1975. Record rainfall and flooding advisories prompted evacuations of low-lying residential areas, and closures of fishing access sites.

Cool, wet weather stretched further into the summer before fire season erupted in late July near the Lake County town of Elmo on the Flathead Indian Reservation. By early August the human-caused fire had grown to more than 20,000 acres in size and had destroyed eight structures, including homes. The fire ignited just a couple days before the one-year anniversary of the Boulder 2700 fire, which burned 14 primary residences in 2021, and forced Polson-area residents to flee in the night. Firefighters on the Elmo fire faced unusually difficult conditions, including sustained periods with red flag warnings. The fire led to widespread evacuations, and at one point threatened the Lake Mary Ronan area. Firefighters, assisted by six scooper plans were able to prevent the fire from crossing Lake Mary Ronan Road, which was feared to be the last real barrier to the fire making a run further north. By Aug. 18, the fire was 78% contained and crews were patrolling and mopping up along containment lines.