Republicans Vote to Replace Rep. Llew Jones on the Ballot for State Senate in Response to Term Limit Dispute

One of the Legislature’s most powerful members could be replaced on the general election ballot, against his will, by his longtime friend after a Monday night vote.

A 12-member subcommittee of the Montana Republican Party convened by Zoom Aug. 17 and chose Ted Kronebusch, chairman of the Pondera County Republican Central Committee and retired businessman, to replace Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, in the race for Senate District 9. Kronebusch and Jones have been close friends for more than 50 years.

The vote to replace Jones was spurred by a legal opinion on the state’s term limit law issued last week by Montana Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen that effectively blocked Jones from being eligible to run for the state Senate this election cycle. Jones has served in the Legislature for more than two decades.

The maneuver is the latest development in years’ worth of ideological infighting among Montana Republicans, and it arrives as a lawsuit on the new term limit interpretation is still playing out in court and a deadline for finalizing the November ballot approaches, meaning it’s possible that Jones remains on the ballot despite Monday night’s vote. 

Jones, in the estimation of many observers, is the most powerful Republican legislator currently serving in the 150-person body. He has been the unofficial leader of a relatively centrist and highly influential faction of GOP lawmakers for nearly two decades, putting him at odds with the hardline bloc of the GOP and the Montana Republican Party, a private organization that sets policy priorities. The state Republican Party was intent on unseating Jones in the June primary and backed his opponent, Rep. Zack Wirth, R-Wolf Creek. Jones beat Wirth by four percentage points, or just over 200 votes.

Wirth was the only other candidate vying to replace Jones Monday night, but Kronebusch prevailed. 

The 12-member committee was composed of three registered Republicans each from Pondera, Teton, Toole and Lewis and Clark counties, the four counties that make up Senate District 9. 

One of Pondera County’s three committee members was Jones’ wife, Carole Jones. Kronebusch was in a room with Carole during the Zoom meeting and spoke through her computer to participants. 

Kronebusch said he’s been involved with Republican politics for most of his life, and that he is in favor of continuing the expanded version of Medicaid because of small rural hospitals’ reliance on the program. Maintaining Medicaid expansion has long been one of Jones’ top policy priorities, for similar reasons. Kronebusch also said that as a member of a large Catholic family, he’s pro-life. 

“It’s a fact that at conception, there is a live human being in the womb of the mother,” Kronebusch said.

Montana Republican Party Chairman Art Wittich, who has historically been at odds with Jones, called the selection process “fair” during a press conference immediately following the vote. 

“I’m just satisfied that we will be able to have a Republican name on the ballot, so that a Democrat doesn’t win by default,” Wittich said. “So we’ve done our part.”

For nearly 15 years, Montana has had what are often referred to as “soft” term limits. In practice, that means, for example, a legislator could serve the statutory maximum of eight years in the state Senate, then serve eight years in the House, and then immediately return to the Senate. Knudsen’s opinion bucks former Democratic Attorney General Steve Bullock’s 2012 interpretation of an amended state law that allowed for the practice.

Switching from one chamber of the Legislature to the other to avoid the state’s soft term limits, like Jones is attempting to do again, has become common among some longtime legislators of both parties. 

Rep. Steve Fitzpatrick, R-Great Falls, who is running for House District 24, believes Knudsen’s opinion could get him kicked off the general election ballot this cycle as well. HD 24 includes only Cascade County, where the Cascade County Republican Central Committee will choose an alternate candidate in a meeting that’s slated for Tuesday evening. Fitzpatrick did not have a primary challenger, and if the central committee decides to select no one to replace him, the Democratic candidate will automatically win, which would be a major pick-up for the minority party.  

If both Fitzpatrick and Jones are taken out of the running, the Legislature will lose two of its most influential — and sometimes polarizing — lawmakers. 

Late last week, Jones and Fitzpatrick sued the attorney general and the secretary of state following Knudsen’s opinion. Kronebusch is also a plaintiff in that case as a registered voter in Pondera County who, their attorneys argue, is being deprived of the right to vote for the candidate voters selected in the primary. 

Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Christopher Abbott set a hearing in that case for Tuesday afternoon. 

Abbott was not the original judge on the case. Knudsen on Monday filed a request that Lewis and Clark County Judge Mike Menahan recuse himself from the case because in 2011, when the judge was a Democratic state representative, he voted in favor of a bill that ultimately became one of the laws at the center of the current dispute. Knudsen, who was serving in the Legislature alongside Menahan at the time, also voted in favor of the bill.

Looming over the dispute is a deadline of Aug. 20, which is 75 days before the November general election, the date by which Montana’s secretary of state is statutorily required to certify candidates to appear on the ballot. It’s unclear what will happen if the case has not been resolved by Aug. 20. Knudsen’s opinion explicitly requires the secretary of state to certify ballots in a manner consistent with his legal opinion unless that opinion is overruled by a court. 

The secretary of state’s office did not respond when asked how it plans to proceed.

A resolution adopted by the Montana Republican Party acknowledges that state law does not include an explicit procedure for replacing a candidate in this circumstance.

“Whereas while the ‘Statute’ requires the MTGOP to appoint someone to replace a candidate in certain circumstances, the Statute does not prohibit the MTGOP from designating a nominee to replace a candidate in other circumstances,” the resolution reads.

In a Monday court filing, Jesse Laslovich, the attorney for Jones and Fitzpatrick and the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Montana under President Joe Biden, argued that the state Republican Party should not be able to replace Jones as it did Monday night. 

Laslovich wrote that the state party acknowledged that it may replace a candidate in certain circumstances, but that “the situation before the court is not one of them.”

“We’re not required to do this,” Wittich said during the Monday night press conference. “But we’re certainly not prohibited.” 

This story originally appeared in the Montana Free Press, which can be found online at montanafreepress.org.