Flathead Valley Primed for Several Competitive GOP Primaries

After a dramatic week of last-minute filing changes, Montana’s primary election slates are set, and in the Flathead, voters can expect competitive Republican primaries in a slew of state-level House races and for the state’s Public Service Commission.

Voters will also have a chance to weigh in on primary contests on both sides of the aisle for the state’s federal offices.

This year’s primary election is slated for June 2.

On the Republican side, four local House districts are primed for primary activity.

House District 3, a competitive district between Democrats and Republicans containing part of Whitefish and Columbia Falls, will see a Republican face-off between Cathy Mitchell and Derek Peachey. Mitchell, a nurse, was the Republican nominee for the district in 2024, but lost to Rep. Debo Powers, a Democrat, by around 200 votes. Peachey, an entrepreneur, is a political newcomer whose website states his priorities are property tax reform, business growth and school choice. Powers has filed on the Democratic side of the aisle to defend her seat.

In House District 4, which encompasses much of Columbia Falls, incumbent Rep. Lyn Bennett, who was a freshman legislator in the 2025 session, has drawn a pair of challengers in Shaun Pandina and Nathan Purdy. Pandina, an entrepreneur, has run for office before. He first ran for a seat on Kalispell Public Schools’ board of trustees in 2023. In 2024, Pandina mounted an unsuccessful challenge against state Rep. Courtenay Sprunger for her House seat, which runs through the heart of Kalispell. Purdy owns a medical imaging service. Bennett, for her part, is a registered nurse and formerly served as president of the Glacier Country Pachyderm. She cast 91% of her votes with the Republican majority during the 2025 legislative session, per the Montana Free Press capitol tracker.

State Rep. Amy Regier has long been the Republican serving House District 6, in northeastern Kalispell. But Regier is looking to move up to the state Senate this year. In her wake, HD 6 will see a Republican primary contest. Jim Riley, a business consultant and former member of the Smith Valley School board of trustees, emerged as one of the leaders of the state’s parents’ rights movement post-COVID. He’s running for the seat against Arthur Dunn.

And in Sprunger’s HD 7, which runs through downtown Kalispell, the two-term state legislator will see a primary challenger in Luke Maxwell. Sprunger faced Pandina in the primary in 2024 and handily defeated her opponent then. But she has been contending with outside noise in her district since February, when Americans for Prosperity-Montana identified her as a target of one of its “accountability campaigns.” The group has targeted several moderate Republicans around the state for their votes on the state budget (a must-pass item at the legislature) and on property tax reform. AFP-Montana director Jesse Ramos said the organization’s accountability work is separate from explicit endorsements.

Flathead County’s Public Service Commission district will also have a competitive Republican primary. Dr. Annie Bukacek, who has held that position since 2022, will face off against David Sanders, the PSC’s former executive director, and Joe Dooling, a Republican activist who lost the Republican primary for PSC District 5 against Bukacek in June 2022, as she angles to keep the seat.

In the last election cycle, the Flathead County Republican Central Committee (FCRCC) doled out endorsements in some local legislative races through a vetting process several candidates declined to participate in. Mostly, those endorsements sidelined moderates for more-conservative newcomers — and some candidates took issue with the process, calling it “disappointing” and “divisive.”

FCRCC Chair Al Olszewski said the committee plans to vet candidates and dole out endorsements again in this year’s primaries, though has yet to make final decisions on who might receive the party’s backing. He said all candidates will have the opportunity to fill out a questionnaire based on the Republican Party’s platform. A vetting committee will look over the questionnaires and interview candidates before bringing recommendations to the central committee for a vote.

“And we’re allowed to, in our bylaws, we can endorse more than one person if we want, or endorse nobody,” Olszewski said.

On a personal level, Olszewski said he thinks it’s healthy to have at least three people in each legislative race.

“When you have a lot of people in an election … these people dialogue,” he said. “They’re forced to tell you what they believe in and what they think. And I will tell you, when a person has to really think and talk out loud what they believe, you know, they get better, and they refine their thoughts.”

While Olszewski confirmed the local arm of the Republican Party plans to endorse candidates in races for the state legislature, the state GOP has remained mum on the topic thus far. But it did promise last week in the wake of last-minute filing shakeups it would not endorse candidates in any of the party’s federal competitions. Olszewski said the FCRCC’s bylaws allow it to endorse candidates in federal races — and in nonpartisan ones — but he said there hasn’t been a demand for endorsements in federal races at this point.

Olszewski himself is running for office this cycle, looking to become his party’s nominee to take over U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke’s House seat. Zinke, the incumbent who was expected to mount a re-election campaign, announced last Monday he would not seek the office again. Olszewski, along with conservative radio talk show host Aaron Flint and Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, all filed for the House seat.

Olszewski had previously tried for the seat when it was first redrawn and came in just 2,000 votes behind Zinke in the primary in 2022. Flint has long loomed large in Republican circles, hosting several of the state’s highest-profile GOP figures on his radio show. When he announced his candidacy last week, he quickly clinched endorsements from Zinke and from President Donald Trump, along with U.S. Sens. Tim Sheehy and Steve Daines. Jacobsen, for her part, has also heralded her relationship with the president in her campaign announcement.

The House race isn’t the only federal one on the ballot, as Montana has a Senate seat open after Daines, the incumbent, withdrew his candidacy in the final 10 minutes of filing last Wednesday. In his place, Kurt Alme, the U.S. Attorney for Montana, filed for the Senate. An endorsement for Alme accompanied Daines’ announcement that he wouldn’t run for the seat — though Alme does have Republican challengers in Lee Calhoun and Charles Walking Child. Neither of those challengers has held office before.

Across the aisle, Democrats have fielded a full slate of candidates to run in the Flathead Valley, which is considered a Republican stronghold.

“I think that there’s a lot of dissatisfaction with the representation that we have because they don’t give much evidence of an actual connection with their constituents and with actually solving problems that we have in the valley,” said Ron Gerson, the chair of the Flathead Area Democrats. “And I think Democrats have a problem-solving attitude, rather than a culture war type creation of problems that don’t really exist.”

Fielding a candidate in every race is a move Olszewski called “smart.” He explained if a candidate is running unopposed in the general election, it affords them more time to begin working with bill drafters on potential laws for the next legislative session — but if a candidate has an opponent, they cannot start that process until they’ve won the general election. He said the state GOP has similarly tried to field candidates to run even in Democratic strongholds, like Butte and Missoula.

Democrats have one House seat where there will be a competitive primary in the area — in House District 1, located in the northwest corner of the state encompassing Eureka. Dakota Adams, the son of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes who ran for the district in 2024, will face off against Roberta McCanse.

Other than Adams and Powers, the incumbent in HD 3, all the party’s candidates are political newcomers, according to Gerson. He said the local party has no plans to make endorsements in any primary races and plans to support all Democratic candidates in the general election.

Democrats will also have competitive primary races for both the western congressional district and for the U.S. Senate seat.

Candidates hoping to clinch the Democratic nomination to run in Montana’s first congressional district are: Ryan Busse, a Kalispell-based former firearms executive who ran for governor in 2024; Russell Cleveland, a Navy veteran and rancher from St. Regis; Sam Forstag, a wildland firefighter and local union leader from Missoula; and Matt Rains, a former Blackhawk pilot who most recently served as the chief of staff for the Montana Farmers’ Union. The four had their first Flathead meeting earlier this week, where they started drawing dividing lines between their campaigns on issues like campaign finance. That seat is widely viewed as Democrats’ best chance for a high-profile pickup this election cycle.

And for the U.S. Senate seat, four Democrats have filed for the race: Reilly Neill, a former legislator from Livingston; Alani Bankhead, an Air Force veteran from Helena; Michael Black Wolf, a tribal historic preservation officer from Hays; and Michael Hummert, of Helena.

Democrats running for the seat, though, have been rankled following former University of Montana president Seth Bodnar’s announcement that he’d run for the seat as an independent. His announcement came following a text message from former Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester calling the state party “poison” for his 2024 re-election campaign.

But locally, Gerson sees his party as engaged and energized as this year’s election cycle continues ramping up.

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