Missoulians will have the opportunity next week to winnow down a crowded field of candidates for city council and the mayorship, to parse the talking points and decide who they think has the best vision for a city spasming with change.
Voters have until 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 9, to drop off their ballots for the municipal primary. The county has information on the drop-off locations here. Just remember: there is no in-person voting in the way you might be familiar with for a presidential election, and it’s too late to mail in your ballots in time for Tuesday’s election — so you will need to drop it off in person.
Candidates this year are wrestling with big issues — a citywide housing crunch, the closure of the Johnson Street shelter, an underwater municipal budget, funding cuts from Washington, D.C., climate change, infrastructure backlogs and more. But if you haven’t had the chance to pay attention to this campaign season, this won’t be your last chance to decide who has the best plan — this is just the primary, with the general election coming in November. And it’s a top-two primary at that, meaning that in some city council wards, there’s no real primary contest — the only two candidates on the ballot automatically advance to the general election.
In some races, though, there are meaningful choices to make. Three candidates are running for mayor, including incumbent Andrea Davis, who is seeking her first full term after replacing the late John Engen in a 2023 special election. In addition, three city council wards also have at least three candidates on the primary ballot: Wards 2, 3 and 6.
These elections are non-partisan. And, especially compared to Congress or even the Montana Legislature, most if not all council members vote together on most issues most of the time. For the most part, the things the council considers pertain to the day-to-day needs of city administration. Still, votes on major land deals and housing projects, high-price budget items, homelessness policies and other high-profile issues illuminate a certain degree of factionalism on the council.
Daniel Carlino, who is running for re-election in Ward 3, and Kristen Jordan, who is running for re-election in Ward 6, are both Democratic Socialists and make up the council’s more progressive block. Some might quibble that, well, most members of the council would probably think of themselves as progressives, and it’s really rhetorical combativeness that sets Carlino and Jordan apart from the body’s liberal majority. But on votes to, for example, ban camping in city parks or keep the Johnson Street shelter open, the two stake out a genuine position to the left of the council majority — more funding for services and shelters, less policing.
At the same time, this framing doesn’t always hold. For example, joining those two on the vote against banning park camping was Jennifer Savage, who is now running against Carlino and three others after moving from Ward 1 to Ward 3. Still, Savage’s list of endorsements — just about the entire rest of the council plus the mayor — shows there are some bright lines between the candidates.
On the other end of the spectrum, two conservatives, at least by Missoula standards: Bob Campbell and Sandra Vasecka (technically a libertarian), who are often the most vocal opponents to property tax increases and the spending they enable. Vasecka is in a three-way primary in Ward 6 against Sean Patrick McCoy and Valeda Jonessian.
These various tensions are also visible in the two wards without incumbents seeking re-election. In Ward 1, educator Betsy Craske told the Missoulian she’s generally supportive of the city’s housing efforts, while opponent Lucas Moody, a library employee, said he would vote to repeal the city’s urban camping law and opposed the Johnson Street closure.
(We keep bringing this up, in part, to mark the fact that the shelter completed its multi-stage shutdown this week, which has already and will continue to mean more people sleeping rough, housing advocates and shelter officials say.)
In the crowded Ward 2, five candidates are vying for votes on Tuesday. Those include candidates like Rebecca Dawson and Justin Ponton who want to limit property tax increases and constrain spending. Hayden Cook, a 23-year-old, says he wants the city to better represent the youth and its low-income residents, while former Marine Tim Garrison says he wants more public input on big housing and infrastructure projects. Michele Whitmire, who previously worked for Missoula 3:16 Rescue Mission, is running on her experience in homelessness services. (Hat-tip to the Missoulian for these candidate profiles).
At the mayoral level, Andrea Davis is seeking her first full term. In 2023, she beat out Mike Nugent in the race to fill the remainder of John Engen’s term. This time, Nugent is running for council re-election and has endorsed Davis, who was the executive director of housing non-profit Homeword prior to becoming mayor. Davis is facing a challenge from Brandi Atanasoff, who ran in 2023 but only got 1 percent of the vote in the primary, and Shawn Knopp, another multi-time candidate who is running on restraining tax increases.
In broad strokes, most candidates in these races have a lot in common. Few would suggest that Missoula doesn’t need to plan sustainably for future growth, and that means more affordable housing, better and more diverse transportation infrastructure. And city governments aren’t all-powerful — in the current system, at least, state and federal law (and funding, or a lack thereof) limit what a city council and mayor can do, regardless of what they believe. Still, we know from past votes that there are meaningful differences in approach between council members (and thus candidates). And it’s not as if rhetoric and identity don’t matter, even if the votes often look the same. Perhaps, if you are angry at the state of things, you want your representatives at the council to be angry, too. Or perhaps you don’t.
