Ryan Hunter Prevails in Kalispell’s Three-way Mayoral Race
The 49-year-old city councilor won with 2,930 preliminary votes, edging out local businesswoman Kisa Davison and council member Sid Daoud
By Zoë Buhrmaster
For the first time in over a decade, Kalispell residents voted in a new mayor to oversee one of the fastest-growing cities in the West. Mayor-elect Ryan Hunter, a city councilor for the past two terms, attributed winning the nonpartisan mayoral race to “a lot of miles” logged walking door to door and talking with voters.
“You just can’t beat those conversations in terms of understanding the city and having the voters understand me as a candidate,” Hunter said. “Ultimately, I’m a firm believer that it’s those kinds of deep conversations that win elections.”
Hunter won with 2,930 preliminary votes, though the results remained unofficial as of Nov. 5. Local businesswoman Kisa Davison lost by a narrow margin with 2,667 votes, followed by current council member Sid Daoud at 1,790 votes.
Kalispell’s sitting mayor, Mark Johnson, announced in January that he would not seek reelection, setting the stage for the three-way race that culminated in Hunter’s victory on Nov. 4.
First elected to city council in 2019, Hunter will continue to serve in his role as councilor through the end of the year before he’s sworn in at the beginning of 2026, kicking off his four-year term.
Throughout his campaign, Hunter framed his platform with policies often associated with left-of-center candidates; for example, he has supported tightening development restrictions around wetland buffers, setting design standards along the Parkline Trail, and prioritizing affordable housing, safe streets and walkable neighborhoods — initiatives he hopes to begin working on right away. At the beginning of his term, the mayor-elect will also oversee the campaign to recruit a new city manager and lead the effort to fill his open seat on city council.
“Exhausted” and “anxious for what’s to come,” Hunter thanked his supporters and those who helped him along the campaign trail while acknowledging the difficulty of a three-way race against Daoud and Davison.
“A campaign like this doesn’t work as a one-man show,” Hunter said. “Also, the other candidates in the race ran incredibly tough campaigns. They put a lot of effort into it, and they did a great job, and I just have a tremendous amount of respect for them. I look forward to working with both of them moving forward.”
The municipal election for the region’s largest city (population 31,296) wasn’t without its mudslinging, however, including an unsubstantiated online smear campaign against Davison that prompted the candidate to rebuke the rumors.
“While I’m proud of the campaign we ran, I am deeply disappointed that one of my opponents encouraged supporters to spread vulgar and false attacks instead of focusing on the issues that matter to our community,” Davison said. “Kalispell deserves campaigns built on respect, not division.”
Several keyboard warriors slung arrows at Davison with one hand while praising Daoud in the other. Daoud spoke with some of the online commenters, he said, and asked them to stop engaging “because I don’t want my campaign to be associated with any of that kind of thing.”
“I’ve never put anything out like that, and I’ve never encouraged my followers or any of the people that supported me to make any kind of bad accusations or spread rumors,” Daoud said. “I didn’t like the association that made it seem like those two things were intertwined, like it was some kind of ploy or something — that’s not the case.”
With a close three-way race, many of Davison’s supporters blamed her loss on Daoud, speculating that he split the conservative ticket. Although Daoud ran for the U.S. Senate in 2023 as a Libertarian and is no stranger to running as a third-party candidate, he waved off critics. Daoud has served as a council member for Ward 4 since his first term began in 2020 and was reelected for a second term in 2023.
As the first candidate to file for the mayoral race in April, Daoud called the ticket-splitting accusation a misrepresentation.
“There’s some stuff out there right now about how I split the vote, which I don’t understand because I’ve been on council — I’m in my second term right now — I got in the race, and I was the first one to announce,” Daoud said.
Although the mayoral race is nonpartisan, Hunter’ campaign was the most left-leaning, politically speaking; he advocated for local government playing a role in crafting solutions to the affordable housing crisis, for example, and supports limiting developer subsidies.
He also earned endorsements from left-leaning advocacy groups. One of the groups, Big Sky 55+, manages the Montana Senior Vote Action Fund and advocates for policy reform while focusing on a suite of issues that affect senior Montanans, ranging from affordable housing and property taxes to Medicaid and long-term care.
Tammi Fisher, a former Flathead County prosecutor who served as Kalispell’s mayor from 2010 to 2014, said she ran her mayoral campaign as a fiscal conservative. She pointed out that three-way elections often fail to provide a clear mandate on what voters want out of an election.
“When you have two candidates, you can read a mandate from those results,” Fisher said. “When you have three, you generally have a turd in the punch bowl, because that skews the results.”
During his campaign, Hunter said he recognized the need for better communication on city council and management of public funds.
“There’s a lot coming up, there’s a lot to be done,” Hunter said. “It will probably take some time to work through it all but I’m definitely eager to work with my fellow council members and the public.”
For Kalispell city councilors, Wes Walker beat out incumbent Sandy Carlson for Ward 1. Lisa Blank won Ward 2 unopposed, and Kyle Waterman won Ward 3’s seat with a double lead over Kyle Voigtlander, Brenton (Wes) Gardner following behind at 140 votes. Incumbent Jed Fisher won Ward 4’s seat against Bruce Guthrie, 788 to 543 votes as of Nov. 5.