In a relatively quiet primary season for Montana’s new western U.S. House district, accusations of shady campaign finance dealings are flying as the campaigns hit the final stretch before Election Day.
After an outside spending group recently began attacking Democratic candidate Cora Neumann as being more Californian than Montanan, her campaign has responded by painting her primary opponent, Monica Tranel, as too closely tied to the political action committee’s activities.
A disclosure report filed with the Federal Elections Commission last week showed that Tranel’s husband, physician Gregor Lind, contributed $5,000 to Montanans for a Better Congress, which spent $109,000 in May on a political ad supporting Tranel and attacking Neumann and GOP candidate Ryan Zinke. As a super PAC, the group can raise and spend unlimited money but must disclose its donors.
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Tranel’s campaign manager, Sam Sterling, was quick to point out that nothing in the FEC rules forbids a candidate’s husband from contributing to an independent PAC. Campaign finance laws forbid campaigns from coordinating with outside PACs on political activities. But that legal threshold is based on the FEC’s “three-pronged test,” which would require proof of interactions between the two entities.
“Monica had no awareness of Greg’s involvement, and Greg has no involvement in the activities of the super PAC,” Sterling said. He added that Tranel’s husband is a long-time donor to Democratic groups and campaigns, and has not been involved in the day-to-day operations of his wife’s campaign.
After the Neumann campaign recently began airing ads referring to the outside group as “Monica Tranel’s Super PAC,” Tranel recently responded with a letter to local television stations asking them to pull the ad, which she called “libelous” for suggesting illegal coordination.
That hasn’t stopped Neumann’s campaign from continuing to hammer on the super PAC issue, though.
“Monica Tranel is benefitting from a super PAC running TV ads filled with lies about Cora,” her campaign manager, Emma Harris, said in an emailed statement Thursday. “This super PAC … has been funded by her husband and donors with the express purpose of helping her win this seat.”
Tranel has also turned to campaign finance reports for primary ammunition.
“I’m in a race right now where over 80% of my campaign money comes from Montana, and I’m really proud of that,” Tranel told the Montana State News Bureau in an April 6 interview. “I’m going to Congress from Montana and Montanans are sending me there. And my opponents, both in the primary and the general, are raising almost the inverse proportion from out of state. So whose interest do you serve?”
Those percentages are difficult to pin down exactly, with both Neumann and Tranel reporting a sizable amount of their individual contributions as non-itemized, meaning the donors did not reach the $200 threshold requiring them to be listed on disclosure reports.
For Neumann, that means 20% of her total amount raised from individuals aren’t accompanied by the donors’ states of residency, as of the most recent FEC reports due last week.
For those that are itemized, 25% of her total fundraising dollars have come from Montana donors, with 26% coming from contributors in California. But the campaign says that most of the non-itemized remainder is coming from in-state.
“The No. 1 source of our total dollars and the number of contributions is Montana, and that’s driven by small-dollar, grassroots contributions from Montanans,” Harris said Thursday.
Neumann also holds a substantial fundraising lead over Tranel, which her campaign has argued will make her better-positioned to compete against the massive war chest that Zinke has been accumulating, should he be the Republican nominee.
Tranel has gotten 82% of her itemized contributions, dollar-wise, from Montanans. Those account for about two-thirds of her contributions.
Tom Winter, a former state lawmaker from Missoula, remains a distant third in the Democratic money race, having raised just under $100,000.
The Republican primary has also generated suggestions of fishy financial activities by the campaigns. Al Olszewski’s campaign manager, Drew Zinecker, pointed reporters on Tuesday to a recent article published in the newspaper Roll Call, which detailed the spending patterns of SEAL PAC, a political committee run by GOP candidate Ryan Zinke.
The PAC is dedicated to “electing conservative veterans to lead our nation,” according to its website. The article, published Tuesday, details the PAC’s spending to support GOP candidates, about a quarter of which are nonveterans, according to Roll Call. The article also found that many of the incumbent candidates it supported voted against a measure in Congress to extend health care benefits to veterans sickened by exposure to toxins during their service.
Zinke campaign spokeswoman Heather Swift didn’t dispute the facts of the article in an email, but wrote that the former congressman and Navy SEAL “absolutely disagrees with the characterization of the article” and noted the PAC also supports nonveterans who “are strong advocates for veterans and America First defense policies.”
Swift also provided a statement from Zinke noting that his campaign is not associated with the spending group.
“The SEAL PAC acronym stands for Supporting and Electing American Leaders and we are very clear that we support conservative veterans and other conservatives who support veterans,” he stated. “Being a veteran is honorable and I’m grateful for all who served. However it is not the only criteria used to determine an endorsement. In many cases veterans are running against veterans, or a veteran decides to run but has absolutely no path to victory or legitimacy.”
Olszewski’s campaign manager also shared research that showed Zinke benefitting from PACs that had gotten contributions from SEAL PAC in the last two years. FEC records show Zinke’s campaign received more than $29,000 in total contributions from PACs that had gotten a similar combined total from SEAL PAC since 2021. The campaign has also received $10,000 directly from SEAL PAC, according to disclosure reports.
“It’s no surprise that other like-minded conservative and veteran-aligned PACs support Zinke,” Swift wrote in response. “The campaign is not associated with the PAC and has nothing to do with PAC giving.”
The other Republican candidate to report significant fundraising, Mary Todd, loaned her campaign over $250,000, according to the most recent finance reports.
Two other Republican candidates who have filed for the western congressional seat have not reported any fundraising so far: Mitch Heuer of Whitefish and Matt Jette of Missoula.
While the western district primaries have seen few fireworks so far, Carroll College political science professor Jeremy Johnson said sparring over campaign finance issues isn’t too unusual for a high-profile Montana race.
“Campaign finance has been an issue of importance to Montanans for years now,” Johnson said. He singled out the high-profile controversies surrounding Western Tradition Partnership, which years ago helped fuel a bipartisan backlash against so-called “dark money” groups operating in the state.
“Montana’s really been at the front of a lot of campaign finance issues for over a decade now, so it doesn’t surprise me that those issues would come to the surface,” he said.
But whether the last-minute mud-slinging will matter to voters is an open question, Johnson added. As of Thursday, 24% of registered voters had already cast their ballots. Montana’s overall turnout for midterm primaries has typically been between 30% and 40% in recent years.
