Despite Gerrymandering, Montana GOP Did Well in Legislative Races

If you read the headlines from the liberal Montana news sources, you'd think the Democrats running for the Montana Legislature had a good day on Tuesday. Dan Stusek breaks down what really happened.

This was my read based off of what I have been hearing: the Republicans actually did better than expected, especially given the fact that Democrats gerrymandered the districts so badly in their favor.

Background: Why did Democrats control the redistricting process that designed the boundaries for these new legislative districts? Because the Left wing Montana Supreme Court got to pick the chair and tie breaking vote on the commission.

Dan Stusek was one of the Republican appointees on the redistricting commission. He looked at Tuesday's results and said Tuesday was a very good day for Legislative Republicans in light of the gerrymandered redistricting.

A couple of highlights for the GOP: Gayle Lammers won a state senate seat in the Hardin area and on the Crow Reservation against a well known Democrat in a very heavily Democrat district. Why? He's a popular, enthusiastic, and young candidate whose family business has been in the area for over 100 years. (It's also worth noting that Trump won Big Horn County) You also had Marty Malone pick up a state house seat that stretches into the Bozeman area. His ag background and deep roots in the area likely assisted with the pickup there.

Stusek points out that while the GOP will not have a supermajority in the legislature, they will still hold a clear majority.

Dan Stusek: "Seven or eight of those 11 seats that Republicans are likely to lose in the legislature were due simply to redistricting. The other three or four are due to population growth in urban areas like Bozeman. But if you look across the state, Republicans won by 50-60% in some of these rural seats, they were packed into these rural seats. But in areas like Gallatin County, Lewis and Clark County, where Democrats won- you see that they won by 3, 4, or 5 percentage points, and in many cases, just barely. So that happened across the state where Republicans won huge, but Republican seats were essentially eliminated in Missoula County and Gallatin County simply due to redistricting, and Republicans still almost won in particularly in Gallatin County. So I'd say that this hype that somehow Democratic legislative candidates had a great night and had the most they gained in 30 years, according to the stories, is a little overblown."

Full audio of our chat with Dan Stusek can be heard about 15 minutes in on the below 9a hour podcast: