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Elections

In Montana’s Race for House District 6, Two Health Care Workers Appeal to Voters from Opposite Sides of the Political Divide

Amy Regier, a registered nurse and incumbent Republican legislator seeking her third term, faces a challenge from Democrat Velvet Phillips-Sullivan, a reflexologist and aromatherapist from Whitefish

By Tristan Scott
Velvet Phillips Sullivan (D) and Amy Regier (R), candidates for House District 6. Hunter D'Antuono | Flathead Beacon

In August 2021, when the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) issued an emergency rule promoting parental rights as the final authority on masking mandates in schools, the agency cited “a number of scientific studies” indicating that universal mask use among children can adversely affect their health and development. In response, the Montana Nurses Association called the rule’s reliance on non-peer-reviewed sources “junk science.”

That didn’t sit right with Amy Regier, a registered nurse in Kalispell first elected in 2020 to represent House District 6, which includes the rural communities west of Kalispell, in the Montana Legislature.

“Mask mandates in schools are certainly causing harm to mental health, while the protection masks in schools provide from Covid is uncertain at best,” Regier wrote in a guest column published by the Flathead Beacon a month after the emergency rule’s promulgation. “A person with any critical thinking skills doesn’t need a peer-reviewed study to question why mask mandates are the choice being made. At a minimum, that choice should be made by parents who know their child’s needs best. That lack of critical thinking discredits the Montana Nurses Association.”

With an eye this election cycle toward clinching her third term as a Republican state lawmaker in a deeply conservative district, Regier’s resolve to let parents determine what’s best for their kids in the classroom hasn’t softened. But as Regier continues to define herself as one of the Montana Legislature’s staunchest advocates for restricting access to abortions, including by weighing in on who can perform them and who can receive them, as well as supporting a statewide ban — “I support upholding life, respecting life,” she told the Beacon — her critics wonder why the parental rights principle is antithetical to supporting a woman’s right to choose.

That question is especially relevant to Velvet Phillips-Sullivan. A reflexologist and acupressurist in Whitefish who is running as a Democrat against Regier in House District 6, Phillips-Sullivan said there’s a flawed logic to the argument that a parent should have decision-making authority over a public-school classroom but not over their own reproductive rights.

“I have three daughters of child-bearing age, and I think their right to privacy and their right to choose to do with their wombs what they choose to do with their wombs is their right and their right alone,” Phillips-Sullivan said in an interview. “My mom never felt like she had any right. She was forced to have a child at 16, then put it up for adoption, so I grew up with a mother who never felt that she had rights. I believe it’s critical that every individual woman has the right to make that decision for herself.”

Although Phillips-Sullivan gives anti-abortion advocates no quarter when it comes to a woman’s right to choose and said she’s running in House District 6 in large part because of her opponent’s record restricting abortion access, as well as other intrusions into the lives of Montanans, she acknowledges a willingness to find a middle ground with Republican lawmakers.

At the height of the pandemic, Phillips-Sullivan said she saw firsthand how the statewide masking mandate and other Covid-19 mitigations weren’t a one-size-fits-all solution, and she recognized a need for compromise. The masking rule in particular presented complications for Sullivan while working at open-air markets, where some of her clients were uncomfortable masking in public, while others were uncomfortable working with someone wearing a mask.

“During Covid, my list of clients really expanded to include conservative and libertarian types who didn’t want anyone telling them what to do. I built relationships with them, and we learned from one another,” Phillips-Sullivan said. “When the pandemic first started, I was working on clients seated in a lawn chair at the Whitefish Farmers Market. I was kneeling at their feet, and I would wear a mask, especially if their immune system was compromised. One guy would have panic attacks when I had my mask on, let alone being forced to wear one himself. It made him deeply uncomfortable and, as a health care worker, I want to be able to recognize that.”

A map of House District 6. Image courtesy Montana Legislative Services Division

The nuanced relationship between health care providers and their patients is something Regier is sensitive to, too.

During the 2023 legislative session in Montana, for example, lawmakers passed a record number of abortion restrictions, including Regier’s House Bill 303, which allows medical providers to withhold services based on “ethical, moral, or religious beliefs.” The law provides sweeping legal protections to health care practitioners who refuse to prescribe marijuana or participate in procedures and treatments such as abortions, medically assisted death, gender-affirming care, or others that run counter to their ethical, moral, or religious beliefs or principles.

“I was proud of that because it protects health care workers so they can opt out of procedures that violate their conscience,” Regier, who chaired the powerful House Judiciary Committee, said in an interview. She also defended the so-called “right of conscience” bill against charges from opponents that it allowed medical providers to discriminate against patients by choosing who they treat.

According to Regier, the law is non-discriminatory in that it is “about the procedure, not about the patient.”

“It is not discriminatory. It just allows people to work within their conscience,” Regier said, recalling how she educated her fellow lawmakers about the bill’s scope. “I had to walk a lot of people through it. But once they understood the concept, it was well-received because who is going to vote against working within their conscience?”

The way Phillips-Sullivan sees it, there’s a distinction between working within one’s conscience and working within the constitution.

“Twenty years ago, I was on the Whitefish City Council, and I made an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Montana, so when the party in power started messing with something that I am really proud of, and which I’ve sworn to protect, I got concerned,” Phillips-Sullivan said of her decision to seek office. “But at the end of the day I have always been a free thinker. I’ve never aligned with a single political party. I’m socially progressive and fiscally conservative. Honestly, I hate politics. I hate the dysfunction on both sides. But if I’m going to lose this election, I am going to lose it going after those that are the most extreme, and Amy Regier’s record is extreme.”

As a graduate of Flathead High School and a product of the Kalispell Public Schools system, which is struggling to keep up with the costs of educating students and funding teachers’ salaries, Regier said she thinks schools “need to look at their own budgets to see what needs to be trimmed to make it work.”

“That kind of speaks to households struggling to meet their own budgets, and needing to budget more responsibly,” Regier said.

Although childcare is one of the most frequent sources of financial strain on a household, Regier does not support a publicly funded pre-kindergarten option, saying it “undermines parental responsibility” and wondering “where would that funding come from?”

She does support public measures to solve the illegal immigration “crisis,” voting earlier this year to convene a special session to implement authority at the state level to protect Montana from an influx of illegal immigrants.

The general election is on Nov. 5. Absentee ballots were sent out Oct. 11. 

Read more about the candidates running for Legislature in the Flathead and Tobacco valleys here, and find out what legislative district you live in here. Check your voter registration here.