Dan Nelsen runs for House District 27

Dan Nelsen, a retired school administrator from Fort Benton, filed Thursday with the Montana Secretary of State’s office to run for the Montana House of Representatives in House District 27.

House District 27 stretches from the Canadian border down to Great Falls, and includes the communities of Kremlin, Gildford, Rudyard, Hingham, Joplin, Inverness, Big Sandy and Fort Benton.

Republicans Darrold Hutchinson, a farmer from north of Hingham, and Joshua Kassmier, a crop adjustor and former Fort Benton mayoral candidate, will face off in the June 5 Republican primary.

The winner will go up against Nelsen in the November general election.

State Rep. Jim O’Hara, R-Fort Benton, decided not to run for re-election and instead has filed to challenge Chouteau County Commissioner Robert Pasha in the Republican primary, for commissioner.

Although he filed as a Democrat, Nelsen said he considers himself an independent at heart.

“I really have no party line even though I happen to be signed up on the Democratic side,” he said.

Nelsen describes himself as a fiscal conservative, but said he has progressive and libertarian stands on some issues.

He said that he has decided to run for the seat because he wants to reduce partisanship in Helena.

In the 1990s and 2000s, state lawmakers reached across the partisan divide to pass effective legislation, Nelsen said, and he wants to bring that bipartisan spirit back.

Partisanship, he said, led state lawmakers in the 2017 legislative session to pass a budget that made deep cuts to spending, but did not balance.

Lawmakers, he said, then had to come back for a special legislative session and make additional cuts to craft a budget where that spending did not exceed the amount of revenue coming into the state.

“They had to make all these cuts in the special session, and now the citizens of Montana have suffered because of that type of legislation.” he said.

In other fillings, Hill County Superintendent of Schools Maureen Odegard filed Thursday to run for a full-term.

Odegard was appointed in January 2017 to finish out the term of Diane McLean, a Republican, who resigned after being elected to the Hill County Commission in 2016.

Conor Burns of Havre filed Thursday as Libertarian for the House District 28 seat held by state Rep. Jacob Bachmeier, D-Havre, the candidate filing list on the Montana Secretary of State’s website says.