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Senate Democrats help chip into Republican leadership power in last week of session • Daily Montanan [1]

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Date: 2025-04-30

The Montana Senate started and ended the 69th session with moves that stripped power away from Republican leadership.

This session, a working majority of all Democrats and nine Republicans drove an agenda in the Senate.

Although that coalition didn’t always hold together, its members worked together this week in committee to push a change to the way the Senate appoints select committees.

Previously, the president of the Senate had the power to appoint select committees during the interim, such as the previous, controversial Select Committee on Judicial Oversight and Reform.

However, Sen. Wendy McKamey, R-Great Falls, part of the working majority, proposed a change this week so that select committees be only formed with a majority vote of the Senate.

Republican leadership resisted the change in the Rules Committee on Tuesday — and with help from one Democrat — modified it so that those committees require three-fifths of the members in support instead of a simple majority.

That’s the change the full Senate approved 47-3 on Wednesday, but in committee, the proposal brought up ongoing political tensions in the Senate and the potential it could take several sessions to restore relationships.

“We are really going down a road of distrust in the Senate chambers,” said Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson. “We’re further perpetuating more distrust with something like this.”

In the Senate, Republicans have a 32-18 majority, but nine of them, “The Nine,” joined all Democrats off and on as a working majority through the session.

Responding to McKamey’s proposal in committee, Sen. Ellie Boldman, D-Missoula, repeatedly urged members of the committee to stick with the change McKamey presented, as members of the Republican majority made other proposals.

At one point, Sen. Carl Glimm, R-Kila, floated the idea to not have any select committees at all to alleviate suspicions from both sides.

“I think it gets everybody out of the ‘Where’s the boogeyman’ idea,” said Glimm, part of the Republican majority.

The committee turned that down.

However, Hertz, also part of the Republican majority, proposed the idea that finally won out, to require approval from three-fifths of the Senate to create and appoint a select committee.

Sen. Derek Harvey, D-Butte, bucked his party in committee and supported the change. Even after Boldman called for a reconsideration, he held his position.

After the committee meeting, Harvey said he was convinced it was a good idea to have a higher threshold to encourage the factions in the Senate to work together.

“I felt that’s a fair way to do it,” Harvey said.

It means 10 Senators can call for the full body to be polled about forming a select committee, and 30 are required to agree to it.

“I think that’s the spirit of working together and moving forward and getting past this session,” Harvey said.

On the floor Wednesday, Majority Leader Tom McGillvray of Billings presented the proposal out of the Rules Committee as bipartisan and fair, a way to avoid “frivolous” committees and push for agreement.

“It would have to have buy-in from all parties, and we just thought it was a good solution to the question that we had about select committees,” McGillvray said.

On the floor, though, McKamey again tried to push her original proposal, although it didn’t pass. She earlier said she thought the three-fifths bar was too high to create a select committee.

Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers, D-Belgrade, told the Daily Montanan he had’t planned the rule change, and he didn’t have any select committees in mind that he would want to call into action.

However, Flowers said he didn’t want to see a repeat of the most recent interim, with the judicial committee working on outcomes his caucus believed were predetermined and costly, and in which they did not participate.

“I do see the value of not giving the president the opportunity to kind of unilaterally create these select committees based on what we saw in the last session,” Flowers said.

Flowers previously worked with The Nine to gain additional power under the Senate’s permanent rules, by requiring the Senate president to receive approval from the minority leader on the composition of conference committees,

The approval in the Senate was one of the final votes before the chamber adjourned for the 2025 session.

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[1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2025/04/30/senate-democrats-help-chip-into-republican-leadership-power-in-last-week-of-session/

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