HELENA — We may be less than two weeks away from Election Day in Montana, but we’re also just over two months away from the start of the Montana Legislature’s 2025 session.
Voters are going to have a big role in what that session looks like.
Republicans have held a majority in both chambers of the Legislature since 2011, but the 2023 session was the first time in that period that they had a two-thirds supermajority – 102 seats out of 150 between the House and Senate.
Members of both parties say they think Democrats have a chance to pick up enough seats to break that supermajority this year.
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“It is highly unlikely that we will maintain that supermajority,” Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, told MTN.
“We believe we’ll pick up a few seats in both the House and the Senate,” said Senate Minority Leader Sen. Pat Flowers, D-Belgrade, during an event at the State Capitol last week.
Republicans currently hold 34 seats in the Senate, to Democrats’ 16. Half of each party’s seats – 17 for Republicans and 8 for Democrats – are up for election this year. All 100 members of the House will also be chosen this year; Republicans currently have 68 seats, and Democrats have 32.
Hertz has chaired the Montana Republican Legislative Campaign Committee for three election cycles. The GOP made gains in both chambers in 2020 and in 2022, and he believes Montana voters are still behind what Republicans have done in the Legislature.
“Our majorities of people in Montana strongly support Republican policies, and they're showing that at the ballot box,” he said.
But while Hertz says he expects Republicans to have a good night in statewide elections, he believes they’re likely to lose seats in the Legislature – perhaps five to 10 – because of the state’s new legislative district map.
Every ten years, after the U.S. Census provides an updated picture of Montana’s population, a state commission redraws the districts.
Hertz and other Republicans criticized the new map, calling it “gerrymandered,” but Democrats said it was going to bring the parties’ share of seats closer to the statewide share of votes they receive.
Democrats would need to pick up three seats between the House and the Senate to break the Republican supermajority. Even if they pick up 10, though, there’s still likely to be a GOP majority in both chambers.
In some ways, the difference might be limited. The most notable powers of a supermajority are that it can override a governor’s veto and put amendments to the Montana Constitution on the ballot without any support from the other party. In 2023, neither of those situations ended up happening.
Still, Flowers said even a small swing toward Democrats would make a big difference for his caucus’s priorities.
“If you pick up two more seats in the Senate or three more seats in the Senate, on some of these key issues on which we may be divided with Republicans, it makes it that much easier to get those passed,” he said.
While Republicans and Democrats have a lot of differences, Hertz and Flowers identified some of the same issues they think will be major topics during the 2025 session. At the top of the list is property tax reform.
Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte put together a task force on property taxes. One of their main recommendations is creating a “homestead exemption” – lowering tax rates on primary residences, long-term rentals and small commercial properties.
Earlier this year, Democrats unveiled their own proposals for tackling property taxes. That included their own version of a “homestead exemption,” which would exempt some of the value of a home or small business from tax. Flowers said they’re confident in what they’ve put forward, but they’re open to seeing if there’s a way to get the two plans in line with each other.
“The bottom line is it doesn't really matter to us whose proposal it is, as long as it serves Montanans and puts Montanans first – ensures that lower-income and middle-income Montanans are going to be able to stay in their homes and afford to buy homes,” he said.
The Legislature will also have to decide whether to extend Montana’s Medicaid expansion program, currently set to expire next year. It’s an issue that’s divided Republican lawmakers during previous sessions.
“I don't think there's any new split to the Republican caucus when it comes to Medicaid expansion,” Hertz said. “It's always a close issue. I think we just have to analyze and see how it's been working for the last six years and see if we can make some improvements going forward.”
