Tranel announces bid for Montana Legislature, will face Democratic primary

Former Democratic congressional candidate and Missoula attorney Monica Tranel this week announced her campaign for the state Legislature.

Tranel is coming off two unsuccessful contests for the western congressional district against Republican Congressman Ryan Zinke in 2024 and 2022. In 2020, she lost a Public Service Commission election against Jennifer Fielder, another Republican.

On Monday, Tranel's campaign announcement on Substack struck a hopeful tone.

"Over the last two election cycles, you walked with me on the campaign to take Montana's voice to Washington," Tranel wrote. "… Your stories about our shared Montana home are still with me. You invested in me. I'm running for HD 92 so I can return that, and invest in us, together."

Tranel did not return phone calls from the Montana State News Bureau seeking comment for this story.

She's running for House District 92, where Rep. Connie Keough, D-Missoula, is termed out. The district covers East Missoula and spreads east over the Blackfoot River corridor before turning north up Highway 83 to Condon. The large majority of the Seeley Lake community is carved out of the district and lies in House District 76, which includes Deer Lodge, Philipsburg and Drummond.

Tranel faces a primary opponent in Reggie Spaulding, an environmental chemist and chair of the justice, equity, diversity and inclusion advisory board with the city and county in Missoula.

Spaulding said in a phone interview on Thursday that she was prompted to run for the Legislature because of the persistent failures by politicians to solve the high cost of housing and health care, and to push back against diminishing clean air and water regulations.

She acknowledged her deficit in the name recognition category against Tranel.

"Monica is very well known and she has been good at primaries, but she hasn't been able to deliver beyond that," Spaulding said. "I think she and I probably have similar platforms, but what I bring to this is that I don't give up easily, I understand the hard problems are not solved in a day."

As of Thursday afternoon, no Republican had filed to run for the district.

Tranel brings clear name recognition from past races, as well as fodder picked up along the last two laps on the campaign trail, where she spoke frequently about affordable housing. She also worked to stake out some middle ground with a campaign ad in 2024 in which she shot down a would-be Chinese spy drone. The bit was strikingly similar to a campaign video in 2014 from then-congressional candidate Matt Rosendale, a Republican.

After her last campaign for the western congressional district, Tranel gained some additional prominence for her appearance in the 2024 book "The Crazies" as the attorney for an eastern Montana rancher who was fighting to put wind turbines up on his land. Her client, Rick Jarrett, did not prevail, but Tranel was depicted as a dogged advocate.

She also moved from private practice to the public defender's Missoula office as a supervisor. The Missoulian reported last year on Tranel sparring with a local district court judge over how to operate the regional public defenders office with staffing vacancies. The newspaper also wrote Thursday about a motion from Tranel that did not disclose its use of artificial intelligence which appeared to include inaccurate information; the Missoula prosecutor's office objected to that motion over local court rules regarding AI use and Tranel ultimately withdrew it.