Abortion, elections top issues for Republicans following convention

The Montana Republican Party recently took steps to bolster its stance on hot-button issues like abortion and election integrity that will be focal points of upcoming elections and the 2023 state legislative session.

A few weeks ago, Republican party delegates gathered in Billings to hash out how the party wants to approach various issues facing the state. The updated Republican Party Platform, which will guide the party until it meets again after the 2023 legislative session, is the result, a sprawling document that contains the party’s declarations on 15 planks.

“This platform sets forth the Montana Republican Party’s positions on major issues facing the citizens of the Treasure State. It is meant to communicate what the party stands for; to instruct local, state, and federal GOP officeholders; and to serve as a basis for crafting strategies for both legislative and civic action,” the document reads.

Republicans are well situated in Montana, having won all statewide elections in 2020, and they are two seats away from gaining a supermajority in both the state senate and house. The party also has a shot at winning both of Montana’s congressional seats.

At the recent convention, nearly 200 delegates debated both local and national issues over the weekend. Along with abortion and election security, the party took a stance on the Jan. 6 riot and immigration. The GOP also approved tracking measures to ensure that its members vote in line with its stated goals.

‘Election integrity’

Despite record wins in 2020, no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state and in-party divisions, convention delegates and party leaders called for hand-counting ballots and to complete investigations into the 2020 election.

 “There was a roll call vote, and the roll call vote clearly show … that it is definitely on the minds of the people that make up the party, and it is a priority,” Sen. Theresa Manzella, R-Hamilton, told the Daily Montanan.

Before the convention, Republican committees in Ravalli and Lewis and Clark counties passed resolutions rejecting the results of the 2020 presidential election, saying President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected by the majority of the people of the United States.

“We ask and encourage the members of the Montana state Legislature to do everything in their power to put the responsibility of election integrity and accountability back in the hands of We the People, and that the members of the Montana Legislature do everything in their power to complete any ongoing investigations into the 2020 election, and mandate and fund a conversion to a manual or mechanical vote count,” the platform says.

Manzella has been at the forefront of “election integrity” issues in Montana and already has more than a dozen bill proposals for the 2023 legislative session concerning Montana’s elections.

“We want to make the process transparent. For one thing, that’s probably the most important thing is that the process be transparent and totally accessible to the people and to the legislators who are constitutionally responsible for safeguarding the process,” Manzella said.

But GOP concerns over Montana’s elections are not new. During the last legislative session, the party pushed through a handful of election-related bills including ones that would end same-day voter registration and restrict ballot collection efforts; both laws will go on trial later this month.

Jeremy Johnson, an associate political science professor at Carroll College in Helena, said election security is an issue that has been percolating on a national scale and has been seeping its way into Montana following the 2020 election.

“Former President Trump has made all sorts of allegations about the 2020 selection, and even though there is all sorts of evidence that he lost the election, he still plays a huge role in the Republican party, and even after Jan. 6 he continues to double down on it,” he said. “This is one of those issues that Trump has really emphasized, and it’s there to energize the party.”

Abortion

With the reversal of Roe v. Wade, there is renewed energy both in Montana and nationally to update the party’s approach to abortion. In the case of Montana Republicans, the outcome was a more hardline stance. At the convention, delegates approved a complete ban on elective abortions and thwarted efforts from within the party to include an abortion exemption for rape and incest or the mother’s life.

The platform’s “sanctity of life” plank now states the party will “support ‘all life is sacred’ policies from conception to natural end of life with the exception of the death penalty.”

The party’s stance on abortion was by no measure soft before the updated platform. During the last legislative session, Republicans adopted bills that ban abortion after 20 weeks gestation, require doctors to offer ultrasounds to patients seeking an abortion, and ban prescribing medication for abortions by mail while also making it more challenging to get the medication prescribed in person. All three bills are currently under injunction and are being heard before the Montana Supreme Court.

In the case before the high court, both Republican Montana Attorney  General Austin Knudsen and Gov. Greg Gianforte have asked for the reversal of the precedent set by the landmark 1999 Armstrong decision, which extended Montana’s heightened constitutional right to privacy to encompass medical care, including abortion.

Johnson said the reversal of Roe v. Wade is getting voter attention and has changed the political landscape surrounding abortion.

“Obviously, this has taken on a whole new sort of vantage point with the appeal of Roe v. Wade, and so now there are real policy implications … which has made abortion a real salient issue compared to before (the reversal),” he said.

Party discipline

To ensure party discipline on the topics above and more, delegates at the convention passed a measure proposed by Rep. Derek Skees, R-Kalispell, that will track how GOP legislators vote on bills concerning the party’s platform. 

“The Republican Party of Montana also recognizes the primary goal of this Platform and Planks is the expectation that our elected officials will use it as a directing guide when making decisions,” the platform states. “We also recognize that any outside group can twist the session results of any voting guide they develop to deceive the members of the GOP as to whom is actually voting the way the members expect.”

The party will label some bills as “platform bills,” and the party will generate a report on the voting results of those bills for each GOP legislator.

“We are in desperate need of an official voting guide developed by, and for us. In order to assure this, we require a measuring standard be adopted with key pieces of legislation each session that those standards are entirely derived from the specific goals or planks of the platform,” the platform says.

Given the difference in opinions within the party, Johnson said trying to enforce party discipline could lead to complications.

“There could be backlash … there’s really a range of opinions among Republican legislators in Montana, and we have seen factions of the Republican party vote with Democrats on certain things like Medicare expansion,” he said.

The wall, Jan. 6, school safety

On broader national issues, the party called for completing the southern border wall and due process for all those detained for their role in the Jan.6 riots.

“We further affirm that we oppose the Patriot Act and all of its versions or others instruments that erode our individual liberties. And we demand that those being unlawfully held in indefinite detention in Washington DC for their actions on Jan. 6, 2021, be immediately granted just due process and released on their own recognizance pending further legal proceedings,” the platform asserts about the Jan. 6 riot.

And while the platform recognizes that America “was founded by immigrants from many countries,” it says, “Montana Republicans believe a nation only exists and survives when it defines and protects its borders.”

More than 100 school shootings have taken place in the U.S. since 2018, and Republicans nationally have largely been focused on improving brick and mortar school safety measures rather than gun control measures to address the issue—a message that was echoed in the state’s GOP platform.