In Conservative Flathead, Democrats Double Legislative Presence from One to Two

Longtime Whitefish representative Dave Fern, the de facto elder statesman of the Flathead County Democrats, didn’t waste any time mooning over his election win on Wednesday morning. Instead, the four-term representative, who picked up a commanding 52% share of the vote to defeat Republican challenger Doug Adams in Senate District 2, woke up before the sun and headed out to collect his campaign signs.

“I’m a full-service operation,” Fern said of his DIY campaign apparatus, which functioned well on a newly drawn district map that exceeded his expectations, breaking in his favor by a four-point margin. “According to my 2024 prediction sheet, I had Fern winning by between one-half point and one point. It was supposed to be very close, so I was kind of surprised it was not as close as we thought. I think that what helped was that voters are familiar with my name and, using Whitefish as my base, I think I had quite a few Republicans supporting me.”

Likewise, Debo Powers, the Democrat from Polebridge who voters elected in House District 3, had collected about half of her signs before noon, which is no small feat in a rural-hybrid district that runs from Whitefish to Olney and Polebridge to Essex, nor for a campaign that began revving its engine in January in preparation for a primary contest against Guthrie Quist. And likewise, Powers’ margin of victory fell 52% to 48%, edging out Republican candidate Cathy Mitchell by fewer than 240 votes, according to preliminary election results from Flathead County.

Acknowledging that most Democrats in Montana and across the U.S. woke up to a bleaker political reality as Donald Trump stormed back to power and Montana’s three-term Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester lost his high-profile election to Republican combat veteran Tim Sheehy, Fern and Powers said they were pleased to have won so that the real work can begin.

But in deep-red Flathead County, the only two Democrats to succeed on Election Day also acknowledged that their hard work never really stopped or started.

“We were out there knocking doors and talking to people every single weekend, and because I had a primary election I started at the beginning of the year,” Powers said. “But people have been very excited about this race up here in the northern Flathead Valley, and I feel very honored that the voters in my district placed their faith in me. I look forward to serving all the citizens in my district, no matter what party, and I’m looking forward to going to Helena to address all the issues that face us.”

Other Flathead Valley Democrats worked hard, too, but they still lost, which Fern said is a combination of the redistricting and a reality in Republican-dominated Flathead County, where 65% of voters supported Trump. In House District 4, a race that the Montana Democratic Party funneled resources toward, Whitefish Republican Lyn Bennett defeated Democrat Lindsey Jordan 52% to 48%.

Still, Fern said the state’s new legislative district map helped the party kick a firmer foothold into the GOP’s supermajority, picking up as many as eight seats across Montana, while the passage of Constitutional Initiative 128 that expressly defines access to abortion as a constitutional right in Montana indicates that the groundswell of Republican support is more nuanced. While Fern handily won four elections in Democratic Whitefish, he needed to earn votes in conservative-leaning Columbia Falls to secure a spot in the Senate.

“The Dems did pretty well in the Montana House and we’re seeing a working coalition coming together in the Senate. You could attribute that to a couple of things: redistricting and spreading out that concentration of Democrats a little bit, and then hard work by the candidates. But overall, this is a very Republican, fairly conservative area with streaks of libertarian viewpoints as we saw with the passage of CI-128,” Fern said. “One could say that the Flathead Democrats are a well-structured, well-funded, well-organized apparatus with lots of volunteers, but if we aren’t selling a product that a majority of voters want, that doesn’t necessarily yield a victory.”

In his conversations with voters, Fern said it wasn’t uncommon to encounter Republicans who confided he was the only Democrat they intended to support, which he said he believes is a result of his across-the-aisle work on the Behavioral Health Systems for Future Generations Commission and Gov. Greg Gianforte’s Property Tax Task Force, as well as his efforts to craft workforce housing solutions. As the owner of Whitefish Chimney Solutions, Fern said he’s spent his career talking to community members of all stripes about real issues facing Montanans.

“It’s just part of my nature. Working on these nonpartisan boards, when we don’t necessarily have to identify our political affiliations, we find more commonality,” Fern said of his experience working on property taxation and mental health. “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you put your political party away. Everyone wants property taxes to be reduced and be more equitable, and everyone knows someone who has a mental health issue, and they all want the system to work better. Those are the issues, along with housing, that I could talk about while knocking on doors, and they’re really not that political.”

In her second run for office after a brief sting filling in for a legislator who stepped down at the end of the 2019 legislative session, Powers outlined her priorities to advocate for “public lands and a clean and healthful environment.”

“I would say to my fellow Democrats, please don’t give up hope,” Powers said. “We have a lot of work to do because so many of the things that we think are important, we are going to have to work hard to protect,” Powers said. “We are going to have to work harder than ever before. I just don’t want people to give up hope because there has been so much enthusiasm. I have seen it firsthand. But we have to be forever vigilant.”

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