Winning, losing, interning, returning: Jennifer Carlson back in the running for House seat

Montana House District 68 candidate Jennifer Carlson is mounting a return campaign against incumbent Caleb Hinkle.

Carlson is a Republican who served House District 69 from 2021-25, including a turn as House Human Services Committee chairperson. She lost the 2024 Republican primary against Hinkle and then interned in Helena during the 2025 legislative session to stay involved.

Carlson is a 25-year resident of Churchill, where she raised five children, was a stay-at-home mom, a piano teacher, and a potato farm worker.

Carlson blames a third primary contender, Scott Sales, for splitting voters, and Caleb Hinkle’s brother, Republican HD 67 representative Jedediah Hinkle, for her 2024 loss.

“My problem is I had to run against the whole extended (Hinkle) family, not just my opponent,” she said.

Carlson’s HD 69 encompassed northwest Bozeman and Belgrade to Madison County. A 2023 redistricting altered the seat’s jurisdiction. Now much of HD 69 covers Madison County.

Before the change, Caleb Hinkle represented HD 68 from southern Belgrade to near the Bozeman Costco store. Some constituents represented by either Caleb Hinkle or Carlson’s districts merged into the current HD 68.

“It’s not a good representation of the politics of Gallatin County,” Carlson said of HD 68, which leans heavily Republican.

Democrat Alexander Colafrancesco, Caleb Hinkle’s 2024 challenger, only received 25.9% of the vote.

As an intern, Carlson worked on child welfare, mental health, criminal justice and medical policy for Republican state Sen. Dennis Lenz from Billings before running her current race.

“I went up there for the session and worked as a very low-paid policy intern,” Carlson said. “I really wanted to go because I was still working on a lot of legislation. It’s really important for me that the person representing me in Helena is going to work just as hard.”

Battling bills

Carlson cites House Bill 702, passed by the 2021 Montana Legislature, as the favorite policy she wrote as a representative. The law, published as part of the Montana Human Rights Act, prohibits employers from discriminating against employees based on vaccination status.

She claims other states such as Iowa, Florida and Virginia copied her bill, which was unsuccessfully challenged via litigation in state and federal courts for three years until 2024.

One of the Caleb Hinkle campaign’s attacks, Carlson said, describe her as “not caring about medical freedom”. She said she believes other than challenging for Caleb Hinkle’s seat, her feud with the family is rooted in her objecting to Senate Bill 450 in 2023.

The bill, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Daniel Emrich, focused on expanding religious and conscience exemptions for vaccinations, prohibiting vaccination discrimination, and loosening school immunization rules. An initial requirement that religious exemptions be provided upon receipt of a notarized affidavit was removed from the legislation, instead allowing a signed letter or mere statement.

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 an amendment from Jedediah Hinkle to add a definition of religion 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 campaigned for Jedediah Hinkle before the rivalry emerged.

Caucus chaos

The Freedom Caucus, which endorses Caleb Hinkle, is against House Bill 231, which changed tax rates for residential, commercial and agricultural property, resulting in deductions for 80% of Montana homeowners, according to the state.

Founded in 2015, the Freedom Caucus is an influential group of staunchly conservative Republican lawmakers known for pushing leadership rightward, advocating for limited government, wielding significant influence via a small, often secret roster. The group prioritizes fiscal conservatism, spending cuts and challenging GOP establishment leadership.

In mailers the caucus cites short-term benefits, tax increases for second home owners and burden-shifting to commercial properties as reasons to oppose the reform from 2025.

“They got the Freedom Caucus to blast me,” Carlson said of targeted political attacks against her stating she doesn’t care about property taxes. “That’s what they call me, a Republican In Name Only. I really don’t care about property taxes for anyone other than my constituents. I live here and it’s hard for me to pay my (own property) taxes.”

Carlson received calls from the Montana GOP asking if she was a member of the Montana Solutions Caucus. The Solutions Caucus, or Conservative Solutions Caucus, is a loose, informal coalition of moderate Republican state legislators who occasionally collaborated with Democrats to pass legislation.

The group often opposes party hardliners.

“I want my representative to care more about what’s going on in my district than on their (party) ‘scorecard’,” Carlson said.