Get an insider’s look into what’s happening in and around the halls of power with expert reporting, analysis and insight from the editors and reporters of Montana Free Press. Sign up to get the free Capitolized newsletter delivered to your inbox every Thursday. Sign up June 04, 2026 With each successive announcement of winners in Montana’s June 2 congressional primaries, one thing became clearer: The state’s 30-year run of sending baby boomers to the U.S. House and Senate — which began with Republican Rick Hill’s first election as Montana’s at-large House representative in 1996 — is over. Republicans advanced three Gen X males to the general election. Incumbent Eastern U.S. House District Rep. Troy Downing and U.S. Senate candidate Kurt Alme are both 59, among the oldest of the Gen Xers. Western District House candidate Aaron Flint, 46, is on Gen X’s younger end. Democrats elected only their second-ever female U.S. Senate nominee (after Bozeman legislator Dorothy Eck in 1980), and at 43, Alani Bankhead is also her party’s first millennial nominee to the Senate. Western District U.S. House nominee Sam Forstag, 31, is a millennial, while Eastern District House nominee Brian Miller, at 54, is Gen X. Sam Forstag talks about his housing affordaibilty in Montana during his campaign rally at the Wilma Theater, May 28, 2026, in Missoula. Credit: Lauren Miller, Montana Free Press, CatchLight Local/Report for America The generational shift took just two election cycles. Through 2024, every member of Montana’s congressional delegation was a baby boomer. Then Sen. Tim Sheehy, now 40, and Downing took office in 2025. “On the Democrat side, the older generation of Democrats, the statewide offices, they all lost,”  said Jeremy Johnson, head of the political science department at Carroll College in Helena. “Once that happens, you know, that sort of eliminates that older generation of Democrats from office. So now we have candidates who are much younger running, and so far getting nominated.” Republicans, on the other hand, broke with their tradition of long political tenures in 2026, Johnson said. Steve Daines served just two terms in the Senate before retiring — the shortest tenure of any senator from Montana since Democrat John Melcher, who served two terms before being voted out in favor of Republican Conrad Burns in 1988.  Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alani Bankhead Credit: Tom Lutey / MTFP The change matters because post-boomer voters tend to prioritize different things, like childcare availability and affordable homeownership, according to a 2025 Harvard Youth Poll, which also found low support for tariffs, DOGE and abolishing the Department of Education. Younger voters also disapproved of long military conflicts. Only 15% told pollsters the country was headed in the right direction. Many were distrustful of the federal government. Such cultural breaks with boomer forebears may show up less in the new Montana politicians who were hand-selected by boomer incumbents. Daines is credited with recruiting Sheehy, who strongly endorsed President Trump’s war on Iran, calling it “righteous,” for instance.  Republican Montana Senate candidate Tim Sheehy speaks during an election night watch party, Nov. 6, 2024, in Bozeman. Daines also handed the reins to Alme, assuring him a glide path to the general election by scarecrowing the seat until withdrawing mere minutes before the candidate-filing deadline. Alme, like Daines, presents as a man of Christian faith who has been willing to fill government roles reliably when called upon, from revenue director for former Gov. Judy Martz to state budget director for Gov. Greg Gianforte to Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Montana. Bankhead, Downing and Flint each have served in the military, as did Zinke and Sheehy, either in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Millennials and the youngest Gen Xers have no personal memory of the Vietnam War, or the military draft, or most of the Cold War. On the campaign trail, Flint talks about affordable homeownership, like millennials Forstag and Bankhead, but with a conservative approach. The key to affording a home, Flint said on the campaign trail, is getting a better-paying job. The Democrats propose government intervention. Downing’s experience with cryptocurrency is next-generational. He’s parlayed his involvement with cryptocurrency issues as state securities commissioner into a seat on the House Financial Services Committee. He’s voted for every major piece of pro-crypto legislation, while suggesting regulation. And he talks about the expansion of cryptocurrency as an inevitability.  Bankhead, more than anyone in Montana’s current delegation, speaks with authority about digital-age threats to children, specifically child pornography and human trafficking, which she dealt with as a special agent in the Air Force. The Pew Center notes the generational change that’s currently occurring in Congress, particularly in the House, where the median age has dropped to 57.5 years. In the Senate, the median age is 64.7. Two congresses earlier, Baby Boomers were in the majority across both chambers. As of 2025, they no longer are.  —Tom Lutey TESTER DECLINES THE CALL After releasing its autopsy of the 2024 presidential election on May 21, the Democratic National Committee started looking for new leadership. According to Politico, some members suggested former U.S. Sen. Jon Tester of Montana for the job. Tester, in the May 26 installment of his “Grounded” podcast with Maritsa Georgiou, recounted ignoring a call from Politico about the matter. Given his sour relationship with the state Democratic Party, he thought it was a joke. “I actually am supporting an independent candidate, a guy by the name of Seth Bodnar. That’s pissed off a lot of Democrats,” Tester said. “I couldn’t even be elected chair of the Montana Democratic Party.” Tester reportedly called the national Democratic Party brand “poison” to his recent Montana campaigns. “I’m honored, but that is maybe the worst job in America,” Tester said. “I’ll go out and pick rock or idiot cubes or whatever before I would do that.” —Tom Lutey WITTICH GETS WINNOWED  Loyal readers of Capitolized will remember our March report about the leadership coup within the Flathead County Republican Central Committee, which was set in motion on candidate filing day, March 4. More than six dozen Republicans registered candidacies for the committee’s multiple vacant precinct positions. Organizers of the mass filings were frustrated by what they regarded as the central committee’s tardiness in supporting Kisa Davison, the Republican candidate for mayor of Kalispell, in November 2025. The central committee got behind Davison’s campaign late after Flathead Republicans protested. Prior to the objections, members of the central committee had entertained the idea of endorsing Sid Daoud, a Libertarian who served on the Kalispell City Council Montana GOP Chairman Art Wittich speaks during a filing press conference at the Montana Republican Legislative Campaign Committee on Feb. 6, 2026, in Great Falls. Credit: Lauren Miller, Montana Free Press, CatchLight Local/Report for America The Flathead Valley is home to both Montana Senate President Matt Regier and Montana GOP Chair Art Wittich, who was elected to lead the party less than a year ago on a promise to make Montana “more red.” Flathead Republicans told Capitolized the state GOP’s legislative candidate-vetting “conservative governance committee” created by Wittich with the help of political patriarch Keith Regier, the Senate president’s father, is no different than the vetting committee the Flathead County Republican Central Committee has been using for years. Party endorsements are often out of step with Republican voters. For instance, in the 2026 primary for Flathead County sheriff, the committee endorsed a retired law enforcement officer from out of state, Evie Cahalen, rather than the incumbent Republican Sheriff Brian Heino.  One Kalispell Republican told Capitolized the public loves Heino “almost as much as pickup trucks and Jesus.” On Tuesday, he was reelected with 89% of the vote. Meanwhile, way down the ballot, the coup to take over the central committee was playing out. Most of the candidates were running uncontested, but one precinct committee race in particular was being closely watched. Wittich was being challenged for a precinct committee seat by a Republican member of the Whitefish City Council, Giuseppe “GMan” Caltabiano, who is no stranger to the pressures of being branded a turncoat by the Republican purity set for collaboration with the City Council’s Democrats. Caltabiano, who speaks with a Sicilian accent, told Capitolized in March that he ran for the Whitefish City Council because there were potholes in the city streets that needed fixing. He said it made more sense to run for office than to just complain. Caltabiano said he filed to be Precinct 5 committeeman because there were potholes to be filled within the Flathead GOP. That meant challenging Wittich for the spot. Tuesday night, Caltabiano won without fanfare.  —Tom Lutey The post Montana enters its first post-boomer congressional era appeared first on Montana Free Press. ...read more read less