Montana Speaker faces GOP primary challenge from former congressional candidate

Well below the intrigue of this year's top-ticket races, a Republican legislative primary brewing in eastern Montana has pitted the state Speaker of the House Brandon Ler against former congressional GOP candidate Ric Holden.

The two are running for House District 33, which covers Dawson County and the southern tier of Richland County. It’s a hardened Republican stronghold, where Ler has not faced a Democratic opponent in the last three election cycles.

A fence builder from Savage, Ler rose to leadership on a relatively quick track. As a freshman legislator in 2021, he was vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee, where some of the most contentious policy proposals are debated in long, occasionally bruising hearings. By 2023 the caucus elected him whip, and in 2025 he won the party's vote for speaker.

Ler said in an interview this week his speakership likely won't play a large role in his campaign, though he said it gives a bigger voice to rural Montana at the Legislature considering more than a dozen state representatives come from Billings alone.

“Get east of Billings and we’ve got close to half the land mass in the state and only 10 representatives,” Ler said.

Holden, a farmer who lives 20 miles south of Glendive, was first elected to the state senate in the 1990s and served two terms. He re-emerged in 2024 as a candidate for the eastern congressional district, which featured an eight-way primary to replace then-U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale, who briefly pursued one of Montana’s seats in the U.S. Senate.

Holden finished sixth in that field, but won Dawson County, which carries the majority of the voters in HD 33.

He said in a phone interview this week his campaign is focused on state-level issues, rather than the federal fodder of a congressional contest.

“It’s a different race,” Holden said. “I’m focusing on the state issues that matter to this district.”

Taxes and a Trump visit 

Like many Republicans this cycle, Holden is focused on the property tax reform package passed into law in 2025 after years of unforgiving tax hikes. It’s a shrewd fight to pick in the primary elections: Republican factions in the Legislature, long dominated by the GOP, were deeply divided over property taxes and the state’s finances.

“Really, it was Rep. Ler that teamed up with ‘RINO’ (Republican in Name Only) Republicans to get that bill passed,” Holden said. “… Our representative, we did not realize, was teaming up with very liberal Republicans."

Ler decidedly does not fall into the camp of moderates who propelled those property tax bills, but he did vote in favor of them. And he stood by those votes, saying they’ve done well for eastern Montana. In Richland County, where the median home value is around $199,000, property tax bills fell by about 35.5%.

"If affected us a great degree in eastern Montana," he said. "That's why I voted for them."

And while the Legislature sets tax rates across different categories, Ler said this week that his constituents know that taxes collections are being driven locally.

“If we want to cut our property taxes, we got to go to the schools, to the county commissioners and cut their spending,” he said. “We always talk about local control because we want to keep the power closest to the people and I agree with that.”

Whether these party divisions and complex policy disputes break the surface for voters remains to be seen.

Ler's talking points to voters this year are more traditional, high-level issues: private property rights, less government spending, fewer regulations and school choice.

His position at the Legislature has also earned him enough cachet to get an invite to the White House last week as President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing military bases to sign long-term power leases with coal-fired facilities.

Asked whether Holden’s recent run for congress changes his calculation for the campaign trail, Ler said he’ll stick to the same strategy as years past.

“I’m not going to do anything different than I’ve done in the past,” he said. “And let the chips fall where they may.”