Americans speak plainly. When they wanted a hard limit on the presidency, they wrote the Twenty-Second Amendment: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” A lifetime cap. Clear and decisive.
Montana’s voters spoke plainly in 1992 with CI-64, now Article IV, Section 8. They did not write a lifetime ban. They wrote a timeout clock: a candidate is barred from the ballot if he or she will have served “8 or more years in any 16-year period,” with each office listed separately — state representative, state senator, Governor, Attorney General and others. They did not prohibit moving between offices or returning after an eight-year break. The plain words say step away from that office for eight years, then let voters decide.
That matters because the Montana House and Senate are separate offices — different districts, terms, duties, and voters.
A legislative term begins the first Monday in January, which can fall anywhere from January 1 to January 7. To prevent confusion over those few days, Senate Bill 311 in 2011 defined a term year as January 1 through December 31 — the common-sense answer. The vote was not close or partisan. The Senate passed it 46 to 3, with my vote among the yeas, and the House passed it 93 to 7. House yes votes included Keith Regier, the current Senate President’s father, and Austin Knudsen, our Attorney General. That set the rules of the game legislators of both parties have run under since 2011, including when I filed this year.
Fifteen years later, with that law long on the books, Attorney General Knudsen took a position that guts the clarification he had voted for. His opinion came nine days before the deadline to certify the November ballot, in response to a question Senate President Matt Regier asked on July 9 — five weeks after my district had already chosen me as its nominee.
I learned of it on August 12 from a reporter. I had to ask him to send me a copy. Nobody from the state notified me before that. Thirty-six minutes later I called Steve Fitzpatrick — which is how the Majority Leader of the Montana House learned the opinion had disqualified him too. The question asked of the Attorney General named one person: “Representative Llew Jones.” One name. Seemingly to target me, using term limits.
What followed was a scramble. The case landed with District Judge Christopher Abbott. He heard it on August 18, with certification due August 20, and ruled the morning of August 19 — one week after the blindside began.
His opinion begins: “In Montana, the people are sovereign, and their will governs.” Judge Abbott found the eight-year break “appears to be the most natural reading” of what voters adopted. Its purpose, he wrote, was “to ensure that legislators not serve in either house more than eight years without taking at least an eight-year break in service.”
On the request itself, he was blunter. Regier’s question was not about Senate duties, Senate powers, or pending legislation. It was “about the electoral and political fortunes of the Republican Party in a partisan election.” Attorney General opinions, the court held, “are not a mechanism to advise any political candidate, committee, or party about how best to ensure they can field a candidate in an election.”
Timing speaks to intent.
This could have been asked a year ago — before filing, before the primary, before voters acted. Every previous opinion on this question was requested and answered well ahead of the election it touched. This blindside arrived nine days out. As Judge Abbott put it, “the current tumult is entirely the consequence of the choices to request, and issue, an opinion upending the status quo while an election is underway.” His principle was simple: “the goalposts should not be moved during the game.”
Hours after losing, the Attorney General asked the Montana Supreme Court to intervene and keep Fitzpatrick and me off the ballot. It refused the same afternoon — so quickly our lawyers never filed the response they had begun drafting. The court held that “a party cannot manufacture urgency or emergency.” Two courts, one day, same conclusion: the emergency was of the Attorney General’s own making.
The case is not over, and I will be glad when a court settles it once and for all. Meanwhile, taxpayers pay the Attorney General’s lawyers and we pay ours. Painful indeed. But the November ballot will carry the names voters chose on June 2. In Montana, that is how it is supposed to work.
I’m focused on real solutions for rural Montana.
Llew Jones is a Republican state representative from Conrad.