In House District 13, Two Political Newcomers Square Off

House District 13, the Lake County district that includes Polson, has been held by a Republican for more than a decade. This year, self-described moderate Democrat Dalton Bradford hopes he can change that.   

“I’m just a hometown guy,” Bradford said. “My wife would say I’m overly humble, but that truly is me. I don’t view myself as someone over-the-top spectacular like I know everything. I’m just a guy who is eager to learn; I’m a guy who loves his community and I’m just eager to be able to give back to the community that helped raise me. That’s kind of who I am.” 

With the national environment favoring the party out of power and local and local Democrats having scaled up their operations to focus on HD 13, Bradford is running on the idea that the community where he grew up wants a representative willing to work with others on issues that matter.    

Linda Reksten, a former Polson Schools superintendent, has represented HD 13 since 2023 and was willing to cross the aisle on issues she saw as important to her district. During the most recent session, she bucked her party to vote for Medicaid expansion and a pair of property tax reform bills that have divided the state GOP.  

In the Republican primary, Reksten drew a challenger in Finley Warden, a 20-year-old college student who campaigned as the “true Republican” in the race and promised to adhere to Montana GOP principles. He beat Reksten by a wide margin.  

“I am a conservative, and I hold many beliefs that are deeply important to me that’s mainly rooted in my faith as a Christian,” Warden said. “From there, looking at the world today, I view the Republican Party as being the party that’s most aligned with Christian and conservative values, but also the values that really built our state, of free markets, of free enterprise, of building an economy that works for people, that has allowed me to have success in my life, that’s allowed our state to see extraordinary success.”  

Warden sees himself as a “common-sense” candidate who hopes to uphold faith, family and freedom.  

Bradford, 30, a descendant of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, has deep roots in Montana and in Polson, the town where he grew up.  

He cheered at Polson High School, where he now helps out as an assistant coach, before attending the University of Montana and earning a bachelor’s degree in history with an emphasis in political science. He works as an agricultural and residential appraiser for the Montana Department of Revenue.  

Bradford had long toyed with running for office without fully committing. His path to filing ran through Lisa Linnenkohl, a 2023 transplant to Polson who became chair of the Lake County Democrats last November.  

“I have to be honest: I was not going to touch Linda Reksten’s race,” Linnenkohl said. “And I told her that. I was not gonna touch her race. I had other races I wanted to focus on.”  

While she didn’t agree with Reksten on everything, Linnenkohl appreciated her focus on local issues, like the Mission Valley Ice Arena, and her dedication to the community. But the risk of not fielding a candidate if Warden, a more conservative candidate, made it through the primary felt too great. She began searching for a Democrat, a search she described as challenging until she met Bradford.  

Linnenkohl recalled sitting down to coffee to talk it over as he mulled filing. To her, challenges like affordability have created a crisis for younger generations.  

“How do we solve these problems? I also know a lot of young folks who are just like, ‘I’m not gonna vote because it’s not gonna make a difference,’” Linnenkohl said. “But what struck me about Dalton is he goes, ‘listen, I was raised by a single mom. I watched her struggle. I watched what it took to put food on the table.’ He goes, ‘I have voted in every election since I was 18. I’ve been registered. I vote. I participate.’ And for me, it all of the sudden took it out of this hopelessness to someone who actually wants to make his hometown a better place for people.” 

Bradford has taken that seriously on the campaign trail. He filed as a Democrat because he leans left of center, but he describes himself as “fiscally conservative,” with an appreciation for helping the little guy. He has earned support from former Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, the Montana Federation of Public Employees and the Montana AFL-CIO.  

Warden is finishing his senior year online at Liberty University, a private evangelical school with a physical campus in Virginia.  

His political profile first rose in Montana after he attended the annual teacher’s union conference, hosted by the Montana Federation of Public Employees, which endorsed Bradford this fall. Warden recorded some sessions and eventually released clips that he pointed to as examples of “ideological indoctrination.” The recordings created a firestorm, and legislative leadership promised action in 2027 to “end woke teachers’ conferences” last fall. 

By Warden’s account, it was Reksten’s perceived failure to adhere to true GOP principles that caused him to run. It’s his first campaign, though he points to experiences as an advocate at the Capitol and an internship with Gov. Greg Gianforte as evidence he understands how the Legislature functions.  

The Montana GOP affirmed Warden’s conservative credentials this spring by naming him to an honor roll of candidates over Reksten. He’s also secured the backing of Attorney General Austin Knudsen, State Auditor James Brown and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Susie Hedalen.  

“I was really grateful to earn the support of the voters during the primary … but what I’ve learned from voters, how I became the Republican nominee, is I knocked on every single door in my district multiple times over,” Warden said. “And that was an incredibly important experience because I got to hear directly from voters what they want to see from me, and I demonstrated to voters that as their representative, I’m always going to listen to them and always bring their needs forward.”    

In the spring, Warden hit Reksten over her support of a pair of bills that rewrote Montana’s property tax rates and implemented a homestead exemption. The legislation brought costs down for around 80% of Montanans who pay property taxes. But in some corners of the state where second home ownership runs more rampant, like Flathead County and Lake County, some have been hit particularly hard by the legislation.  

Both Warden and Bradford named property taxes as a major topic of concern in HD 13, and both said the Legislature should make changes.  

Bradford said the Department of Revenue, which employs him though his comments don’t represent the department’s views, could do a better job communicating with residents about ways to keep their tax bills down.  

Warden pointed to a popular alternative among conservatives as his top priority: Senate Bill 90 from last session, which aimed to redirect state lodging and rental car tax revenue to primary-residence property tax relief through rebates to taxpayers. The bill drew criticism in 2025 for the cuts it would have made to tourism-related programs, and the initial proposal was whittled down over the course of the session as amendments were made.  

Still, Warden sees it as a critical solution, particularly as people in his county are being hard-hit by property taxes.  

“We have, here in Polson, here in Lake County, I mean, people are using our roads, people are using our resources, and we see great economic benefit from it, but they’re not necessarily paying back into our community,” Warden said. “So, we need to make sure that the taxes that we are collecting from them as a state are being redirected back into the communities that are being faced with use from tourism. So, I think as we’ve moved into being more of a tourist economy, which has its up sides and down sides, but it’s a fact that it’s happening — we need to adapt to that. We need to make sure tourists are paying their fair share.” 

Property taxes remain high on Bradford’s list of priorities, but if elected he also said he would champion legislation to raise the 3% inflation cap on education spending, a reform some education advocates have also called for, as many agree that the state’s school funding formula is out-of-date and needs to be revamped. He is also concerned about the plights facing agricultural producers. He didn’t point to a specific policy, but said he’d work with agricultural experts at the state and federal levels to find ways to ease the pressure on producers.  

Voters will have a chance to weigh in on who will represent HD 13 for the next two years on Nov. 3. Ballots were mailed to absentee voters Oct. 9. Voters can check their registration status and the status of their ballot here: https://voterportal.mt.gov/WhereToVote.aspx. To register to vote, voters can either bring their completed voter registration application to their county election office or visit their county elections office to fill out a voter registration application and receive a ballot there.  

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