HELENA — Two longtime state lawmakers are going to court to try to remain on the November ballot, after Montana’s attorney general issued a ruling that could leave them ineligible to run.
While there’s been no official word that Reps. Steve Fitzpatrick, R-Great Falls, and Llew Jones, R-Conrad, will be disqualified, they have already filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the state from enforcing Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s opinion. A hearing in the case has been scheduled for Tuesday afternoon in Helena.
(Watch the video for more on the lawmakers' suit.)
Fitzpatrick, the House majority leader, told MTN Monday he questioned Knudsen’s decision both on substance and on its release so close to the deadline for printing ballots.
“One of the basic principles of constitutional law is that you don't make radical changes in election law right before, or in the middle of an election,” he said.
The case centers on Montana’s term limit laws. An amendment to the Montana Constitution, passed by voters in 1992, says state lawmakers and executive officers can hold their positions for eight years in any 16-year period.
In 1997, then-Attorney General Joe Mazurek issued an opinion saying that calculation of time should be made at the end of the term an official is running for. However, in 2012, after the Legislature passed a bill that sought to define “current term” as used in the amendment, then-Attorney General and future Gov. Steve Bullock released an opinion saying the calculation should begin at the start of the term they’re running for. The effect was that a lawmaker has been able to serve eight years in the House, move over to the Senate for eight years, then immediately return to the House.
Knudsen’s opinion was released last week, in response to a July request from Senate President Sen. Matt Regier, R-Kalispell. Knudsen said the Legislature didn’t have the authority to define a term in the state constitution, so Bullock’s opinion was invalid. He said eight years away from an office would not be enough to make an official eligible again, and he directed Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen to implement his new opinion when certifying candidates for the November ballot.
Fitzpatrick said he saw the language in the constitution as being ambiguous and that the “commonsense” interpretation would be that voters intended officials serve eight years then spend eight years out of office – not require them to spend a longer period away. He accused Knudsen of playing politics with his opinion, and said the decision was disenfranchising Republican primary voters who cast ballots for him and Jones.
“It's clearly going against the will of the voter,” he said. “This is lawfare. This is an attempt to steal an election.”
Fitzpatrick, himself an attorney, said interpretation of the term-limit law is a legitimate question of law, but that if it’s going to be considered, it should happen well before an election – not a week before the deadline for confirming candidates.
“I think it deserves time to be litigated correctly, not in the throes of a five-day span,” he said.
Amanda Braynack, a spokesperson for Knudsen’s office, responded in a statement to MTN.
“The Attorney General is doing his job to interpret the law following a formal AGO request by the Senate President,” she said. “The opinion is based on facts and the law, not politics.”
Fitzpatrick is seeking another term in the House, where he served from 2011 to 2016 and again since 2025. Jones is running to return to the Senate, where he previously served from 2011 to 2018.
Over the weekend, the Montana Republican Party’s executive board announced it was supporting the attorney general’s decision, and it outlined plans for choosing new GOP candidates to replace Jones and Fitzpatrick.
On Monday evening, representatives from the Republican central committees for Lewis and Clark, Pondera, Teton and Toole Counties held an online meeting to choose a potential replacement for Jones in Senate District 9. They selected Ted Kronebusch – a Conrad businessman, the chair of the Pondera County central committee, and a plaintiff alongside Jones and Fitzpatrick in their lawsuit to stay on the ballot.
“I think the process was fair and the counties spoke,” Montana Republican Party chair Art Wittich told reporters after the meeting.
The Cascade County Republican Central Committee is set to meet Tuesday evening to choose a possible replacement candidate for Fitzpatrick in House District 24.
Wittich told reporters he wouldn’t take a position on whether this was the right time for Knudsen to make this ruling. He said the party would do what it had to to make sure voters in these two races had a Republican candidate to choose, and that they would submit Kronebusch’s name to the Secretary of State’s Office to be placed on the ballot.
