State senator calls for investigation of political group

Two days after he called for an investigation of the conservative political group American Tradition Partnership, West Valley farmer Bruce Tutvedt was defeated in his bid for the Montana Senate Majority Leader position.

Tutvedt was challenged by two conservative candidates in the Republican primary race for Senate District 3 this year, called the most expensive legislative race in Montana. The Senate’s president pro tem survived the primary race despite harsh attacks by several conservative political groups.

Mailers and advertisements attacking Tutvedt were paid for by the Montana Family Foundation, Taxpayers For Liberty and American Tradition Partnership, formerly Western Tradition Partnership, a group that has fought state regulators over campaign finance limits and public disclosure for several years.

Tutvedt himself donated $35 to ATP in February 2010. Documents obtained by PBS Frontline and ordered released to the public by Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock on Nov. 2 include copies of checks made out to ATP from March 2008 to December 2010.

A check made out to ATP for $10,000 came from prominent Flathead businessman Ray Thompson, who started Semitool in 1979 and sold it to Applied Materials in December 2009 for $364 million. Semitool employed 550 local workers at the time. Thompson is currently building a high-tech manufacturing plant north of Kalispell that could employ 100 people.

Thompson has long been involved in local and state politics. According to his March filing with the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices, his one-man political action committee, Excellence In Voting, had $56,814 in the bank.

Excellence In Voting shares the same Columbia Falls post office box as Woodtech Trading Co., a high-end door manufacturer owned by Dennis Konopatzke, a Whitefish businessman who bought Great Northern Brewery and founded Quality Whitefish, another PAC.

In November 2006, Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Dennis Unsworth ruled against Thompson in a complaint filed by former Sen. Jim Elliott, D-Trout Creek. Elliott claimed an ad produced by Excellence In Voting misrepresented his votes in the 2003 legislature.

After selling Semitool, Thompson purchased the Sykes restaurant and grocery store in Kalispell and began to renovate the historic building. Jayson Peters had been the general manager at Sykes for several years when he ran against Tutvedt in the 2012 Republican primary. Peters told the Hungry Horse News in April that he had worked for Semitool about 10 years and then Applied Materials before Thompson offered him the job at Sykes.

Peters, who at 28 was the youngest person to serve on the Kalispell City Council, said he had served as campaign advisers for various city council, commissioner and sheriff races. He also said he’d “known Bruce and his family a long time, but he’s not conservative enough.”

Peters claimed Tutvedt carried a bill in the 2010 legislative session that raised property taxes and voted against a bill that would have required schools to notify parents about plans to teach sex education. Peters, however, dropped out before the June election. The third candidate, Rollan Roberts II, who was defeated by Tutvedt in the Republican primary, relied mostly on $25,000 of his own money for his campaign.

The ATP mailers in the primary race noted that Tutvedt accepted federal subsidies for his West Valley farm and claimed Tutvedt had an “anti-job voting record” and supported energy utilities over private landowners in an eminent-domain bill. Taxpayers For Liberty claimed Tutvedt supported government-run health care.

Tutvedt defended himself against the attacks, calling the claims untrue and arguing that political attack groups should be held accountable for their claims. He said his record was very clear that he opposed Obamacare. He also noted that he had a 100 percent rating with the Montana Chamber of Commerce and had been voted legislator of the year by the Montana Building Industry Association.

With the release of ATP documents from the PBS Frontline investigation, Tutvedt called for an investigation of the nonprofit organization to see if any illegal political activity took place.

“From anecdotal evidence, it looks like there was coordination,” he said. “To have unlimited money hidden behind a cloak of secrecy with no requirement to tell the truth leads to a very poor process for the politics of Montana.”