Zack Wirth, a Republican state representative in Montana, arrived at the State Capitol in 2023. By 2025, he was ready to quit. Too often, he said, fellow Republicans were teaming up with Democrats to scuttle the kind of conservative bills that he had come to Helena to pass.
“I threw my books, bags and boxes into the back of the car, and said, ‘I’ll never come back to this ridiculous building again,’” Mr. Wirth, 74, said.
Then he learned that one of those aisle-crossing Republicans was running for State Senate this year, in Mr. Wirth’s district. The Senate president, Matt Regier, was a kindred spirit and asked if Mr. Wirth wanted to jump to his chamber.
“I said, ‘No way in hell, but I will for this purpose,’” said Mr. Wirth, now one of nearly two dozen hard-right Montana Republicans running in bitterly contested primaries on June 2.
Montana has long been something of an outlier in the nation’s Republican midsection. Abortion remains legal until fetal viability. The state expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Its last Democratic governor left office in 2021, its last Democratic U.S. senator in 2025.
And on high-profile issues such as access to maternal health care and a property tax cut to counteract skyrocketing home values, center-right Republicans defied party leaders, collaborated with the Democratic minority and secured passage. They also stymied party leaders’ priorities to make judicial elections more partisan and weaken labor unions.
That is why the primary looms large. The outcome will shape the state — and the soul of a Montana Republican Party that once prided itself on its independence from the larger currents of national politics.
“We’ve always been this bloc that tries to keep the bus on the road,” said State Representative Llew Jones, Mr. Wirth’s opponent for the open Senate seat in the Ninth District, which stretches 177 miles from Helena to the Canadian border. “As Republicans, we want to be on the right-hand side of the road, but I’m not interested in being in the right ditch.”
Montana may be unique, but the rift in the G.O.P. is not. At North Dakota’s Republican convention in March, conservatives stripped the party label from moderate incumbents. In Wyoming, legislators aligned with the Freedom Caucus, a hard-right group of House Republicans in Washington, ousted incumbents deemed insufficiently conservative to seize the State House in 2024.
Still, this is a turbulent time in Montana politics, compounded by the unexpected decisions by Senator Steve Daines and Representative Ryan Zinke, both Republicans, to not seek re-election.
Montana is not immune from the headwinds facing Republicans as President Trump’s approval ratings slump while gas and diesel prices have soared. Democrats are aiming to flip Mr. Zinke’s House seat, and Seth Bodnar, a former president of the University of Montana running as an independent, has his eyes on Mr. Daines’s Senate seat.
Democrats are also hoping to flip at least two statehouse seats in November. The Montana Republican Party, meantime, keeps displaying its fissures. Early campaign spending in the Republican primary has been robust, and some of the donors have been Democrats, drawn to the side of moderation. On the other side, the Montana chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political action committee, has hammered more moderate Republicans for months with Facebook ads, mailers and robocalls.
“If you self-declare as a Republican and you’re in effect coordinating and passing Democrat ideas, you’re a Democrat,” said Art Wittich, who is the state party chairman and a former legislator. “The Bible says you can’t serve two masters.”
The Wirth-Jones matchup might be the marquee race. Mr. Jones, 63, who was elected in 2004 and is the state’s longest-serving legislator, chairs the House Appropriations Committee. With a background in sheep farming and business, he leads the Solutions Caucus, whose agenda sometimes aligns with that of Montana’s conservative governor, Greg Gianforte — but sometimes not. The caucus, for instance, opposed the governor’s failed push to reshape the judiciary.
As he toured Conrad, Mont., where he was a decorated wrestling coach, he detailed his proudest accomplishments in 2025, including the creation of an infrastructure trust to repair bridges and upgrade water systems. Mr. Jones also earned a score of 93 out of 100 from the Montana Family Foundation, a socially conservative advocacy group.
Still, he received a middling 58 score out of 100 — barely edging some Democrats — in 2025 from A.F.P. Montana, which is focused more on small government and low taxation, and he has long been targeted by conservative dark money interests for being disloyal.
A robocall last July asserted, “Llew Jones voted with Democrats to protect liberal judges that support gender transition for minors and abortions without parental notifications or consent.” (Mr. Jones voted to ban gender-affirming care in a bill that has been blocked by the Montana Supreme Court.)
Mr. Wirth runs the Rocking Z dude ranch an hour south of Great Falls. It’s a tough business; in the mid-2000s, he worked as a mall Santa in New Jersey and on Long Island to make ranch payments and support his wife and six children without government help.
He ran unsuccessfully for the State House of Representatives in 2016, frustrated that Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, had vetoed several anti-abortion bills. Republicans appointed him in 2023 to fill a vacancy, and he won a two-year term in 2024.
He is a strong proponent of the rights of parents to be involved in their children’s educations and health care, vouchers to cover private-school tuition and a flat income-tax rate.
Also on the Republican right flank’s radar are several races in Great Falls and Cascade County, in central Montana.
Cascade mirrors Montana’s income, racial and education demographics. Home to Malmstrom Air Force Base and a strong union presence, the county often been a political bellwether. After supporting Democratic governors through 2016, Cascade shifted right.
“We went from blue to red-leaning and now we’re seeing what flavor of red it’s going it be,” said State Representative George Nikolakakos, who is running for the open 12th Senate district seat in the center-right lane.
Mr. Nikolakakos grew up in the Bronx in a close-knit family that owned Greek diners. He joined the military after the Sept. 11 attacks and served for 20 years in the Air Force and National Guard as an intelligence analyst.
Now a real estate investor, Mr. Nikolakakos, 46, is campaigning as a tax-cutting “solutions-driven conservative” with a strong rating from the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
Mr. Nikolakakos recently lent his campaign $95,000 — a jaw-dropping figure in a Montana statehouse race.
“I think this is an incredibly important election cycle,” he said. “I have out-of-state billionaire dark money groups coming after me in a big way, and I’m willing to fight for this with my own money.”
Mr. Nikolakakos’s opponent, Randy Pinocci, is a brash, ultraconservative member of the Montana Public Service Commission and a former legislator, holding office from 2015 to 2017.
An avid collector of political memorabilia, muscle cars and guns (including a Vietnam-era grenade launcher), Mr. Pinocci, 61, has built a political brand as a self-described RINO Hunter (Republicans in name only). He is campaigning to “oppose radical environmental efforts to destroy our existing energy sector” and protect children from “radical woke transgender ideology.”
A vocal Christian, he noted that Mr. Nikolakakos received a 67 score from the Montana Family Foundation — second lowest among Republicans. Tied for last was his wife, State Representative Melissa Nikolakakos. (Montana’s loose residency rules allow her to represent an adjacent — and much purpler — district.)
“When the doors of hell open,” Mr. Pinocci said of the couple, “he’ll open the door for his wife, and he’ll walk in right behind her.”
Mr. Nikolakakos replied that his opponent’s prediction for the afterlife “speaks more about his character than anything I can say in response.”
David W. Chen is a Times reporter focused on state legislatures, state level policymaking and the political forces behind them.
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