Hinkle brothers shrug off tensions with Jennifer Carlson over vaccine bills as Caleb eyes Senate

Bad blood from battling vaccine bills?

Brothers and Reps. Caleb Hinkle, HD 68, and Jedediah Hinkle, HD 67, have a different perspective than Jennifer Carlson, a fellow Republican who is running for Caleb's House seat.

Once facing a fight against incumbent Caleb Hinkle, Carlson faces a new primary challenger in Randy Chamberlin, who swapped races with Caleb. After initially filing for Senate District 34 about a month ago, Chamberlin switched to the race against Carlson one minute before the filing deadline at 4:59 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Montana Secretary of State website.

Caleb Hinkle withdrew his HD 68 re-election filing before Wednesday's deadline. He is instead running against incumbent Shelley Vance for Senate District 34.

No longer facing a primary against Caleb, both Hinkle brothers said there was no long-standing feud between them related to two COVID-era vaccine bills: House Bill 702 from 2021 and Senate Bill 450 from 2023, the latter of which never passed the House.

The backstory: Carlson and Jedediah Hinkle collaborated on HB 702, which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees based on vaccination status. Two years later, Hinkle supported an amendment to SB 450, which focused on expanding religious and conscience exemptions for vaccinations, prohibiting vaccination discrimination, and loosening school immunization rules.

Carlson claimed it overturned years of work she put into HB 702. Jedediah said the two bills complemented each other.

"(HB) 702 is a bill that is good for both sides of the issue," Jedediah said. "It prohibits discrimination of a person regardless of if they are vaccinated or not. The bill would not have existed had I not created it."

The brothers say the election contest between Caleb and Carlson made them a convenient enemy necessitating a contrast based in policy.

Passed by the 2021 Montana Legislature and published as part of the Montana Human Rights Act, HB 702 is Carlson's favorite policy she wrote as a representative. The law was drafted under Jedediah's bill title, according to Montana Legislative Services. Both supported each other's campaigns before the rivalry emerged.

One of Caleb's campaign attacks, Carlson said, described her as “not caring about medical freedom” despite her collaborating on the same vaccine legislation with Jedediah. Other than challenging for Caleb's seat, she said her feud with the brothers is rooted in her objecting to SB 450.

“The government doesn’t get to decide what religion is,” said Carlson, a self-described Christian. “If ‘you’ define (an exemption) in the state law it is limited. What that bill did is it overturned years of my work. The problem with the bill was it was giving a right in law (for) employers to require vaccines."

Carlson’s main objections were from her belief that laws providing religious exemptions are arbitrarily limited in scope and subject to misinterpretation, and that the policy overrides her HB 702, which already blanket bans inquiring about an employee’s vaccination status. She voted against the amendment supported by Jedediah Hinkle to add a definition of religion to SB 450.

HB 702 covered all workers until the Biden administration announced an emergency regulation requiring COVID-19 vaccination for health-care workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs in 2021. While the policy was considered a "vaccinate or termination" job mandate, the federal rule did allow exemptions for staff with recognized medical conditions or sincerely held religious beliefs, practices or observances, per the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"Now you had a conflict between the federal rule and the state of Montana's law that went into effect that would protect these people from discrimination," Jedediah said. "What I was told by the governor's office at the time was how these hospitals in Montana were creating boards to review these religious exemptions. All these people that didn't want to vaccinate, all of them then filed for religious exemption. These boards would determine whether they thought it was a credible claim or not, could they prove in their religion that (it) said they shouldn't vaccinate."

Until the rule was repealed by the Biden administration in 2025, the federal policy nullified HB 702, necessitating legislative action, per Jedediah.

"What (SB) 450 did is filling in that gap, it was to come alongside (HB) 702 and fill in where (HB) 702 was overruled," Jedediah said. "I wasn't going to vote in favor of a bill that would have overturned (HB) 702. Because it was to complement (HB) 702 and fill in (where) it had gaps, of course I was going to vote for a bill that would coincide.

"If that rule ever was put in place again, then SB 450 would have kicked in and provided protection for those hospital employees and medical workers that for whatever reason didn't feel like they wanted to be forced to vaccinate."

When asked why Carlson opposed SB 450 in the first place, Caleb said: "Jennifer got stardom over House Bill 702." He also refutes accusations from Carlson that she was directly attacked by the Montana Freedom Caucus over property taxes.

The Freedom Caucus is a right-wing to far-right legislative caucus in the Montana Legislature, established in January 2023 to advance ultra-conservative policies, limited government, and a traditional social agenda. Comprised entirely of Republican members from both the state House and Senate, the group drives conservative legislation and challenges Republican leadership and representatives deemed insufficiently conservative.

"She was either lying or just plain forgot what organization pointed out her unfortunate statement she made about property taxes not being the Legislature's business," Caleb said. The Freedom Caucus did send out mailer ads in favor of his candidacy. "An endorsement (for someone else) is not an attack."

"In order to get people on your side you have to identify an enemy," Jedediah said, referencing "Rules for Radicals", a 1971 book by American community activist and writer Saul Alinsky on enabling change. "That is why they attack the Freedom Caucus, they make us the enemy."