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Gianforte, Juras announce Montana re-election bids for 2024 – Daily Montanan [1]

['Blair Miller', 'More From Author', '- January']

Date: 2024-01-16  

Montana’s Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte and his lieutenant governor will seek re-election to a second term this November, Gianforte announced Tuesday.

The governor, first elected in 2020, formally filed to run for another term Tuesday, according to Montana campaign finance records, and his campaign released a re-election video later in the afternoon. Gianforte first told MTN News Tuesday of his re-election bid.

Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras, a Republican Great Falls attorney who served alongside Gianforte during his first term, will be on the ticket with Gianforte again this year, the governor’s campaign said.

“Over the last three years, we’ve accomplished a lot together to create good-paying Montana jobs, expand opportunities for Montanans, and protect our Montana way of life,” Gianforte said in a statement on his Facebook page that accompanied a video announcement. “There’s still work to do, as we build on what we’ve done. Serving as your governor has been the honor of my life, and today I humbly ask you for your support to serve another term.”

This year’s election will be the third time Gianforte has run for governor of Montana. He and Lt. Gov. Candidate Lesley Robinson lost to Democrats Steve Bullock and Mike Cooney in 2016 by 4 percentage points.

Gianforte then won the 2017 at-large Congressional seat and won re-election to the seat in 2018 by nearly 5 percentage points.

He ran for governor again in 2020, first defeating former Attorney General Tim Fox and former state Sen. Al Olszewski in the primary before handily beating Democrat Mike Cooney in the General Election, 54% to 42%.

In his announcement Tuesday, Gianforte said he had Juras have been working hard to bring accountability and get results for Montanans. His announcement touts the creation of more than 40,000 jobs so far during his three years in office, a record-low unemployment rate, and investments in law enforcement.

One of Gianforte’s earliest official acts after taking office in 2021 was to allow the state’s face-covering requirement for COVID-19 expire. His administration also rolled out the second and subsequent phases of vaccinations before he signed an executive order that April prohibiting the state and private businesses from requiring proof of vaccination from a person to enter the facility.

That June, he made Montana the first state to opt out of pandemic unemployment benefit programs and started offering return-to-work bonuses. On June 30, 2021, Gianforte declared an end to Montana’s state of emergency declaration for the pandemic.

Gianforte signed into law that year the first state law to make vaccine mandates illegal and also signed several bills regarding gender, including one that banned transgender women from playing K-12 sports, another limiting the type of gender-affirming care kids could receive, and another that would have required a court order to change gender designation on a birth certificate. Several of those laws were blocked by the courts.

His administration was also involved in a fight between the executive branch, the judicial, and the Legislature over subpoenaed records from the court administrator, which led to an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and a legislative inquiry into the judiciary.

Gianforte has lauded the numerous businesses that have come to Montana since he took office, as well as keeping the state’s unemployment rate low. The unemployment rate was 4% in Montana when he took office and has remained at or below 3% since October 2021.

His administration has also overseen the distribution of millions in federal pandemic stimulus dollars, some of which went toward property tax rebates this year and next, an income tax cut and rebates, and other tax cuts that received praise from Republicans.

Democrats and some independents and Republicans, however, have criticized Gianforte and his administration for not pushing the Legislature this year to reduce property tax assessment rates, which led to an increase across most of the state in property tax rates, as many homeowners’ valuations have skyrocketed during the past four years.

Earlier this month, Gianforte announced the members of a property tax task force who will be tasked with seeking solutions to the rising property assessments and taxes.

Opponents have also criticized Gianforte and the Republican supermajority in the Legislature in 2023 for passing a slew of bills focused on the LGBTQ+ community in Montana that opponents said were unconstitutional – including some that judges have already blocked.

Another major effort of Gianforte’s and Juras’ during the 2023 session was “red tape reduction,” an effort they praised to clean up state statute and cut down on regulations in Montana.

In his Tuesday announcement, Gianforte also lauded his administration’s budget surplus and tax relief.

Gianforte’s announcement he will seek re-election makes him by far the highest-profile candidate in the race. On the Democratic side, former firearms executive Ryan Busse is running and had about $171,800 in cash to start 2024. Gianforte does have a primary challenger, Rep. Tanner Smith, a Lakeside Republican, who starts the year with just $2,700 in cash in his campaign account.

In a statement Tuesday, Busse called Gianforte an “unrepentant liar and a threat to our democracy.”

The Mountain States Poll, conducted by Montana State University-Billings last October, found Gianforte had the strongest approval rating out of Montana politicians whom respondents were asked about. Forty-nine percent of people approved of Gianforte, compared with 22% who said they disapproved.

With a sharp focus nationally on Montana’s U.S. Senate race, as Republicans try to take the chamber back from Democrats, money is expected to pour into Montana’s 2024 elections both for that race and down ballot. In the last election, Gianforte spent millions of his own dollars along with the money he brought in from individual contributors and political action committees.

Gianforte, a former technology company CEO from Bozeman, spent more than $7.5 million of his own money on his campaign in 2020 and raised another $3.4 million, KTVH reported in 2020.

Gianforte joins two other top statewide elected officials in announcing their re-election for 2024. In November, Attorney General Austin Knudsen and Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen announced they would run for re-election. State Auditor Troy Downing and Office of Public Instruction Superintendent Elsie Arntzen are seeking the 2nd Congressional District nomination.

Gianforte’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for more information about Gianforte’s announcement Tuesday afternoon. But in his campaign video, he said he wants to build off his first term in office. Juras said the two were looking forward to four more years in office.

“There’s still more to be done,” he said. “Together, I know we can accomplish even greater things for our state, and I’m asking you to join me.”

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