Whitefish voters send Democrats to Senate, House

After redistricting in 2023, Republicans will remain dominate across Flathead County and Montana during the 2025 legislative session.  

Rep. Dave Fern, D-Whitefish, however, will return to the Legislature, this time as a senator in District 2. He will be joined by Democrat Debo Powers who won the seat for House District 3. 

In last Tuesday’s election, Fern received 52% of the vote total, besting Republican challenger Doug Adams. Senate District 2 covers most of northern Flathead County, including parts of Whitefish, Olney, Columbia Falls, West Glacier, Essex and Polebridge.  

In House District 3, Powers won with 52% of the vote over Republican candidate Cathy Mitchell. Powers is a first-time politician, conservation advocate and retired schoolteacher who lives in Polebridge. House District 3 includes part of Whitefish (north of the viaduct and west of Baker Avenue), West Glacier, Olney, Polebridge and Essex. 

In House District 4, Republican Lyn Bennett edged out Democrat Lindsey Jordan with 52% of the ballot total. House District 4 covers most of Columbia Falls and part of Whitefish (south of the viaduct and east of Baker Avenue). Bennett, a former nurse and mother of three who lives in Whitefish, has experience serving as president of Glacier Country Pachyderm.  

All three of these races were competitive due in part to the new district maps. 

“There’s gerrymandering where you can see the Legislature not reflecting the overall composition of the people,” Fern commented.  

Conversely, Fern said redistricting “created competition that would, at best, yield proportionally to the composition, which is about a 60/40 split between Republicans and Democrats.” 

As for other local elections, five of six candidates for Whitefish’s local government study were selected: Saundra Alessi, Nathan Dugan, Kevin McDowell, Dakota Whitman and Scott Wurster.  

An amendment to the Whitefish city charter, granting compensation to City Council members through a combination of a salary, stipends and health insurance, passed with 53% for and 47% against.  

While CI-128 passed by a decisive 57% statewide to protect the right to abortion, Flathead County voters were split 50-50, with 30,662 voting yes, and 30,835 voting no. 

Across Flathead Valley, other elections saw Republicans come out on top, including the reelection of Sen. Carl Glimm of Kila to Senate District 3, and House Speaker Rep. Matt Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, elected to Senate District 5. 

Republicans, including Bennett, Ed Bryne, Tom Millett, Lukas Schubert, Steven Kelly, and Tracy Sharp will serve in the House for the first time. They will join reelected incumbents Braxton Mitchell, Amy Regier, Courtenay Sprunger and Terry Falk.  

Statewide, Democrats gained two seats in the Senate and nine seats in the House relative to 2023. Montana Republicans will retain 32 out of 50 Senate seats and 59 of 100 House seats when the 2025 Legislature convenes. 

THIS WAS the first election using newly drawn legislative maps, which will remain in place through 2032.  

Montana’s legislative district maps are redrawn every 10 years to account for population changes recorded by the decennial census. The new legislative maps are based on data from the April 2020 decennial census.  

The prior legislative maps, which were used from 2014 to 2023, generally produced election results that led to Republicans being slightly overrepresented.  

For example, in 2022, Republicans received 64% of the votes cast in Montana House races statewide, but won 68% of the body’s 100 seats, according to a Montana Free Press analysis. Democrats, in comparison, received 35% of votes cast but won 32% of seats.  

Fern said that his initial reaction to redistricting was that he liked having Whitefish as a whole, because it “makes sense. But I also understand that exporting Whitefish residents creates combinations that yield competitiveness.” 

As for Senate District 2, which includes Columbia Falls and Whitefish and the area in between, Fern said the new district lines has in some respects “returned to a healthy partnership between the communities,” Fern said, saying it reflects a district from 20 years ago.  

In reference to Bennett’s win in House District 4, “The fact that we had a newly drawn House district in Whitefish yield a Republican shows that the ‘creative’ lines are a good price to pay for a competitive Senate race,” Fern said.  

Notably, because redistricting is based off the 2020 census, population shifts occurring in Whitefish and across the state have affected the outcome of the election. 

“The pandemic caused a redistribution of people. Data shows that more Republican-leaning people have moved here,” Fern said.  

An analysis from the National Republican Senatorial Committee found that about 41% of new arrivals since 2018 were registered Republicans in their old states, while only about 25% were registered Democrats.  

A data service, L2, collected similar results: From October 2008 through May 2024, for every two Democrats moving to Montana, slightly more than three Republicans did the same, and a little less than three identifying as nonpartisan moved. 

“Covid was a social game-changer, for worse and better, certainly... and then, lots of inflation, and the rest is history. People are still hurting from it. That loss was shown in the votes,” Fern said.  

Fern said that even with the Republican majority in the statehouse there are mutual interests to be found.  

“There’s never a cookie-cutter approach that goes with party lines,” Fern said.  

“I was recently going around the state as a part of the Behavioral Health Commission, and I was having dinner with two Republican representatives. And someone came up and said, ‘you’re not supposed to like each other.’ And I said, ‘Well, we really do. And we’re focused on this mission of repairing this broken system.’”  

“People sometimes say they wish it was really like that, and I say, ‘but it is... I’ve gotten to know people for who they are, not their political label.”  

Full results are available at electionresults.mt.gov.

A map of districts is available at www.legmt.gov/districts.