Motions to expel, censure Sen. Ellsworth fail

by Micah Drew, Daily Montanan

March 24, 2025

A majority of Montana Senators on Monday voted to expel Sen. Jason Ellsworth, the Hamilton Republican who has been under ethical and criminal investigations related to a contract he procured late last year, but the motion failed to reach the two-thirds majority required to punish or expel a lawmaker.

The result disappointed the majority of Republicans who sought to expel Ellsworth and left the body in limbo about how to proceed after substitute motions for a censure failed along the same 27-23 margins.

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“We are here under the Constitution. It’s our duty. We are here to judge this,” said Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, who urged the body to vote for expulsion. “To me, this is the most important decision I have ever made in my entire legislative career. End of discussion. It far exceeds any other bill that we are going to address here this session.”

Four Democrats joined in the vote to expel, including Sen. Emma Kerr-Carpenter, D-Billings. Kerr-Carpenter said Ellsworth, by virtue of his position of power, “very nearly stole tens of thousands of dollars from Montana taxpayers.”

The move to expel Ellsworth has been building since the first weeks of the session when the news that Ellsworth had negotiated a $170,000 contract with a business partner and close friend was first reported. Monday’s vote took place after the Senate Ethics committee released a report of factual findings about the contract. A Legislative Audit investigation also found Ellsworth had abused his power and state resources.

Ellsworth, who voted against expulsion but for his own censure, declined to comment on the motions or on a recent call by the state Republican Party for his resignation. Ellsworth has been working from home, citing health issues, and did not say whether he would return to the Senate in person.

In a speech on the floor, Ellsworth apologized for the “appearance” of impropriety and said he would accept punishment from the Senate, but he denied wrongdoing.

“Let me be very clear, I did not violate any of our Senate rules or state laws or state regulations or procedures,” Ellsworth said. “I did not attempt to use my position for personal or private gain, and I received no personal or private gain.

“I regret that I brought the appearance of impropriety into this body, and it may have undermined the public trust.”

During the course of 90 minutes on Monday afternoon, the Senate voted three times, twice on a motion to expel Ellsworth — brought by Sen. Forest Mandeville, who led the Senate Ethics Committee, and by majority leader Tom McGillvray — and once on a substitute motion to censure Ellsworth — removing his committee assignments and stripping his floor privileges until April 12.

Ethics Committee Chairperson Forrest Mandeville, R-Columbus, made a motion to expel Ellsworth from the Senate. Mandeville oversaw the committee that conducted the investigation into alleged ethics improprieties of Ellsworth. A separate criminal investigation also is underway at the Department of Justice. (Keila Szpaller/The Daily Montanan)

While Mandeville used the ethics report as the basis for his motion, he expanded the scope to include additional information related to Ellsworth’s contract including the Legislative Auditor’s findings of waste and abuse.

“This motion is broader than just that piece that the Ethics Committee looked at. The ethics report is one piece of many that establishes good cause,” to expel Ellsworth, Mandeville said. “Anything and everything showing good cause is open for debate on this motion.”

The other senators who urged their colleagues toward expulsion added on a litany of other considerations from Ellsworth’s past, stretching back years.

Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, who refused to refer to Ellsworth as a senator, said he didn’t believe anything the “person in Seat 31” said.

“He’s one of the best salesmen I’ve ever met in my life,” Hertz said. “He could sell us just about anything.”

Hertz called the floor debate a “historic moment” and laid out a timeline of events to illustrate a “consistent lack of ethics and integrity in the treatment of others and the public.”

Hertz cited a Federal Trade Commission investigation that fined Ellsworth $600,000 for failure to disclose facts about his magazine subscription companies payment and cancellation policies; two times Ellsworth was pulled over for speeding and used connections to the Attorney General and governor, trying to evade consequences; and other instances, including once when the Montana Democrat Party called for his resignation.

“I noted nine abuses by an elected official. There are many more I could have identified. That is more than enough for good cause for expulsion,” Hertz said. “… History does repeat itself, as we have seen with Jason Ellsworth. We should have done something to this senator sessions ago. That’s our fault.”

The two sides of the debate quickly became clear with each laying out its own narrative of Ellsworth’s actions.

Senate rules allow for punishment up to expulsion, but Sen. Chris Pope, D-Bozeman, instead asking the body to consider a lesser punishment he felt more fitting for Ellsworth’s behavior — censure.

Pope, who served on the ethics committee, said the role of that group was to investigate “relatively narrow ethical issues of conflict of interest,” and that the Senate should just consider the facts before them.

A concurrent criminal investigation by the Department of Justice has not yielded any conclusions about Ellsworth’s actions, and Pope, Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers, D-Belgrade, and others urged their colleagues to have a laser-sharp focus on the contents of the ethics report.

Pope said a loss of privileges for Ellsworth, and a censure, would be an apt consequence.

“Censure is an indelible black mark forever on an elected official’s record,” he said. “It is not a reprimand. Censure is forever.”

Sen. Emma Kerr-Carpenter, D-Billings, was among four Democrats who voted for the expulsion of Sen. Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton. Kerr-Carpenter said Ellsworth, by virtue of his position of power, “very nearly stole tens of thousands of dollars from Montana taxpayers.” (Keila Szpaller/The Daily Montanan)

But Democrat Kerr-Carpenter said it was a simple matter of holding a person in power accountable for their actions.

Ellsworth “held a position of great power, and with that power comes very high expectations, expectations of a commitment to uphold not just the bare minimum of the letter of our ethics rules, but a higher responsibility,” Kerr-Carpenter said. “A responsibility to use his power, not for his own gain, not for the personal benefit of his closest friends, but for that of his constituents and for all Montanans.

She said she was teaching her young son it’s important to make amends for wrongdoing, and Ellsworth fell short.

“The senator in Seat 31 has only just now — as his back is against the wall — tried to make amends,” Kerr-Carpenter said. “The senator in Seat 31 has failed in his responsibility to this body and to Montanans and to himself, and I think it is the right thing to draw a clear line that says beyond this, we will not go.”

The vote on the motion to expel was 27-23, with four Democrats — Sens. Kerr-Carpenter, Dave Fern, of Whitefish, Derek Harvey, of Butte, and Denise Hayman, of Bozeman — joining with a majority of Republicans. Ellsworth and eight Republicans — who have formed a working coalition with Democrats this session — opposed expulsion.

Most Democrats push [fullwidth][/fullwidth]censure

Sen. Josh Kassmier, R-Fort Benton, said the desire to expel Ellsworth was politically motivated and made the substitute motion to censure Ellsworth, which would remove him from the powerful Senate Finance and Claims Committee, the Executive Review Committee which he leads, and prevent him from serving on any interim committees. The censure would have also stripped Ellsworth’s floor privileges until April 12.

Last Friday, the Senate removed other responsibilities from Ellsworth related to his role on the Executive Review committee, which carries approvals for gubernatorial appointments to the Senate floor.

Kassmier said Ellsworth is a “flawed person” who made “a lot of mistakes,” but while he did not approve of Ellsworth’s actions, he said that “proper punishment is essential.”

“If we’re going to kick out a member for failing to disclose conflicts, we probably need to kick out a lot of people in here,” Kassmier said. “…Expulsion is not an appropriate remedy for failure to disclose a conflict of interest… The proper punishment is a censure.”

Bozeman Democrat Cora Neumann agreed expulsion should be reserved for extreme cases, but said that the body was in agreement that some form of punishment needed to occur.

“I don’t think any of us are disagreeing on the need for this body to act with integrity,” she said. “And in fact, over the last few weeks and since this issue started to rise to the surface here in this body, I’ve heard many more separately to disclose conflicts of interest.”

Neumann said the Senate should look at reviewing its own rules to make consequences in future instances more clear, and minority leader Flowers said he was bringing an interim study bill that would look at making the ethics process more straightforward.

Senator Pat Flowers, D-Belgrade, speaks during the Wednesday, February 12, 2025 session of the Montana Senate.

The motion for censure failed along the same blocs, with 23 supporting censure and 27 opposing it.

A final vote on expulsion saw the same result.

Fern, one of the Democrats who voted for expulsion, said the Senate wasn’t going to come to any decisions that afternoon.

“I do think we will eventually get to a censure. I don’t believe this body is ready to do that yet,” Fern said, adding that they would need to take the time to craft an appropriate compromise

“Perhaps we just don’t have the votes to do expulsion. Quite frankly, that’s my preference. With all due consideration to great testimony I’ve heard for and against, I’m comfortable with that,” Fern continued. “We can expel and send the shame to wherever the good senator goes to. But for a while, the shame will stay right here in this body.”

“Soon I will be over it. I will provide forgiveness, and we will all move on, hopefully with a fair and equitable censure.”

Senate President Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, said that he would be willing to listen to potential censure language crafted by Flowers and the senators in favor of that option. But he remained steadfast in the motion for expulsion, saying there were bipartisan voices saying Ellsworth’s conduct was “expulsion level, and there’s a big sentiment of not moving on from that.”

“I ask that we reserve expulsion, the greatest punishment that this body can deliver — and it has not delivered for decades, generations — and we reserve that for more exceptional, egregious and harmful conflict against our government and the people of Montana,” Pope said.

The Montana Republican Party, which called for Ellsworth to resign on Sunday, released a statement through a spokesperson saying the party “wants all members to be accountable and not above the law — even in our own party. The Democrat party has shown today that they care more about political power than they do the interests of all Montanans.”

Reporters Keila Szpaller and Jordan Hansen contributed to this reporting.

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