Things are rough out there. Believe me, I know. 2/3rds of my take home pay goes toward housing and the rest of my paycheck is being stretched through increasing costs of food, energy, and consumables. How is the regular Montanan supposed to make ends meet when prices continue to rise, but we are quite literally a few missed paychecks away from homelessness? 

The answer to this question is not simple. However, the more leaders we elect who experience and understand the problems faced by every-day Montanans, the better off the average citizen will become. We should be advocating for a quality public education for all, accessible and affordable childcare, affordable housing, quality healthcare, and good-paying jobs - not fanning the flames of partisanship. If elected, my main priority will be to get in there and support policies that make our economy better for you as a working-class Montanan. 

Without accessible and affordable childcare, some Montana families opt to delay or forgo becoming parents when they would otherwise like to raise children. Some aspiring parents may even leave the state to start a family where childcare is affordable and accessible. This drains Montana’s younger workforce and hurts Montana’s future by ensuring that we will have fewer working people around to support our aging population. I feel that the childcare affordability crisis has come to a point where the state government should intervene to support future families. I will support income tax credits that encourage the establishment of childcare facilities and tax credits that recruit and retain childcare workers. 

Montana’s accessible open lands and wild spaces are an integral part of our state’s identity. The public lands we enjoy today are only available to us due to the hard work of many conservationists that came before us. Nothing guarantees that these privileges will remain in the future unless we elect decision makers that continue to fight for their preservation. I am committed to fighting for the preservation of accessible public lands for us and for those who are yet to come. 

I support:

• Accessible Public Lands

• Clean Air and Water

• Stream Access

• Responsible Development of Clean Energy

• Abundance of Accessible Game and Nongame Wildlife Species

I believe judicial elections should remain non-partisan. Introducing partisan labels into judicial races encourages partisan office seekers to use the bench as a stepping stone for higher office. It also creates political pressure for justices to follow the platform of a political party instead of interpreting the law at face value. Let's keep the judiciary non-partisan so they can continue to work for Montanans and not party bosses.

With 5 years experience as a leader in Helena’s local government, I know that locally-elected leaders understand the needs of their specific community better than the Montana Legislature. I am a collaborator by nature and already have working relationships with many of our municipal leaders. I plan to collaborate with the city and county commissioners in our area to identify places where the state could help and where the state could take a step back. The goal is to help them deliver for you in their role as best as I can. I will push back on any blanket local reform pushed by the legislature that may not work for Helena and Lewis and Clark County. Those decisions should be left to those who you elected to make them.

Most of us can agree that a quality public education is a net positive to society. It is also no secret that we are struggling to provide a quality education to our students and offer a competitive wage to our educators. I believe we must look at ways to adequately fund Montana’s education system. In order to address this issue, the funding formula needs to be evaluated and we need to listen to teachers and support staff who understand and experience the issues first hand. 

The government should have no business in making the reproductive decisions of its citizens. I will fight to ensure that women have access to reproductive care and push back on any restrictions on birth control. That is your choice, not mine.

Montana is for everyone regardless of race, religion, creed, sexual preference, or gender identity. It boggles my mind how we can be living through such incredible economic hardships, yet many of our leaders want to focus on dividing us through sexual preference and gender identity. In reality, Montanans just want to exist in peace without government overreach. Let's focus on the real issues. Everyone should be able to live their lives as they would like as long as they are not harming others. People in the LGBTQ community are not harming others by existing and should be afforded the same dignity and respect as everyone else. Simple as that.

Montana has a rich history of union activism and regular people standing up to the rich and powerful. Now, we have out-of-state special interest groups trying to influence our state in order to erode confidence in organized labor and diminish union participation. This weakens the average Montanan and hurts the working class. If we want an affordable Montana, we need to leverage our numbers by organizing around unions so we can effect the change we want to see. We do not want Montana to become a playground for the rich, and no one is going stop that but ourselves. I will support unions and your right to organize in your workplace.