HELENA, Montana — There was a high wind advisory, and smoke from a nearby wildfire had dimmed the sun as gubernatorial candidate Ryan Busse stepped up to deliver remarks along Last Chance Gulch, the spot where gold was struck in this state in 1864.
“There’s a lot on the line,” said Busse, a pugnacious former gun industry executive turned firearms critic who is challenging Republican Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte. On this particular day in early October, he accused the incumbent of taking away environmental rights enshrined in the state’s Constitution.
“It’s a sacred document,” the Democrat told a small crowd of supporters and curious onlookers. “It gives us rights in this state that people across the world are envious of: the right to privacy, the right to an equal public education, the right to a clean and healthful environment.
“These are extraordinary rights,” he said, “and this governor is doing everything he can to rip the basic fabric of what makes Montana special.”
Busse didn’t tell this group, but the Montana Constitution’s guarantee of a clean and healthful environment — a highly unusual state protection — is the provision his two sons and 14 other young climate activists used in 2023 to win a landmark climate change lawsuit against the state he is seeking to govern.
Held v. Montana — the first successful U.S. youth climate lawsuit — is under appeal from Gianforte’s administration at the Montana Supreme Court. The case hasn’t gotten much traction on the campaign trail: Busse didn’t mention it on a recent campaign swing, instead focusing on abortion rights, property taxes and protections for the state’s waterways and public lands.
But Busse has pledged that his first step as governor would be to honor the environmental provision that was enshrined in Montana law during the state’s 1972 Constitutional Convention. And he’s promised that his administration would “never dismiss the climate crisis as a hoax.”
The Held lawsuit — one of several youth climate cases brought by the Oregon-based law firm Our Children’s Trust — targeted a Montana law that Gianforte signed to prevent state regulators from considering the effects of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide when evaluating new energy projects. Gianforte did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
In an interview after his appearance in Helena, Busse said he’s fielded questions about the Held lawsuit from voters who want climate action. He’s also heard concerns from those who fear that climate litigation could threaten jobs or upend the way of life in coal and gas-rich Montana.
Busse tells them it’s not practical to ignore reality.
“The idea that we stick our heads in the sand and don’t consider carbon dioxide as a pollutant is foolhardy and anti-science,” Busse said. “I think Gianforte is an anti-science governor and doesn’t want to address the reality of where we are.”
Busse noted that climate impacts are already mounting. There are more 90-plus degree days in Montana, and the wildfire season has grown longer, leading to more days with unsafe air quality.
“These things are anomalies, but climate science tells us it’s increasingly going to happen,” Busse said. “Leaders have to look that science in the eye and address it. We have to look responsible policy in the face and adopt it.”
Gianforte in 2021 withdrew Montana from a coalition of states fighting climate change, but Busse argued that the economics of fossil fuels are changing as alternative energy becomes cheaper.
“It would be like pretending gravity doesn’t exist,” he said. “These economic forces are pulling down on all of us.”
Busse pointed to the debate over the future of Montana’s mammoth Colstrip power plant, a major source of greenhouse gases, whose owners are challenging new emissions regulations from the Biden administration. Montana lawmakers have looked at the possibility of replacing the coal-fired boilers at the plant with small nuclear reactors.
“I’d like to be a governor who helps facilitate what’s next, not tries to foolhardily hold on to what was,” Busse said.
Busse has tapped as his running mate Raph Graybill, an attorney with a direct connection to the 1972 convention that led Montana to elevate environmental safeguards in the state’s Constitution.
His grandfather, Leo, chaired the 1972 Constitutional Convention, and Graybill displays his gavel and a transcript of the proceedings at his law office in Helena.
“The fact that Montana’s constitutional protections play a huge role in our campaign, makes a constitutional nerd like me very happy,” he said.
Although Busse’s sons were involved in the historic Held case — and Graybill has successfully sued Montana 19 times — both candidates have downplayed their courtroom fights against the state they hope to lead.
At one campaign stop earlier this month, Graybill said lawsuits aren’t enough: “Political power, elections, that’s what really counts.”
‘Our kids stood up. We had to as well’
Busse, who attended every day of the two-week trial in Held, is not the only parent in the case to run for office.
Steve Held, an Eastern Montana rancher whose daughter, Rikki, was the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, said seeing young people take the stand convinced him to launch a bid for U.S. Congress.
Held, who in June lost the Democratic primary to replace outgoing Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale, said Busse told him during the Held trial that he was also thinking of running for office.
“We both knew we had to do something,” Held said in an interview before a Democratic lasagna dinner at the Elks Lodge in Livingston earlier this month. “Our kids stood up. We had to as well. If we weren’t brave enough to stand up, how the hell could we let our kids go out there and put themselves in front of everyone?”
Busse, too, was motivated by the young activists.
“There’s an impatience, an urgency in today’s youth that is admirable,” he said. “I look at my own trajectory, and I think I have been too patient. I have not been urgent enough.”
His boys — who appeared with their parents shooting clay targets in his campaign kickoff video — have played limited roles on the trail, given they’re in school. “They’d like to do more, they’re all in,” Busse said.
His younger son, Badge, 16, has joined his dad for a few bird hunting trips, squeezed in between campaign stops. And Lander, a 19-year-old college sophomore, has insisted on participating remotely in Busse’s debate prep. He’s even given his dad some advice on “breaking the fourth wall,” or speaking directly to an audience.
Busse and Gianforte will debate for the first and only time on Wednesday.
Held said voters are likely to applaud Busse’s involvement in a lawsuit against the state.
“Most people want to take it to government,” Held said. “They want to go after government. We’re a very independent-minded bunch of people in Montana and we’re very proud of that.”
Ranchers and farmers, he added, are increasingly seeing the effects of global warming, including worsening droughts and a scarcity of hay for livestock.
And Held noted that the youth lawsuit didn’t target a particular party. It was filed in 2020 when Steve Bullock, a Democrat, was the sitting governor.
“We’re equal opportunity litigants,” Held said.
Winning over young voters
At 18, Julian Staggs worries about climate change — and he’ll be voting for the first time next month.
So when he spotted Busse at a recent voter registration event on the Montana State University campus — at over 6 feet tall and sporting a yam-colored vest, Busse is hard to miss — Staggs stopped short, quizzing the candidate on why more politicians don’t call for an end to fossil fuels.
“There have been people in the past who haven’t had enough courage to do the right thing, but I think the economics of energy is going to do that for us,” Busse told the philosophy major.
Busse stopped short of calling for a cessation of fossil fuel use, and Staggs left the encounter a little disappointed — though he said he plans to vote for Busse “certainly over the other guy.”
Busse says he understands the frustration.
“They want us to do and say more, but I think we should be careful to be realists,” he said of the encounter. “To advocate for a world where [fossil fuels] just go away, it’s not a political reality, and it’s not a policy reality.”
Sierra Knoll — a 21-year-old psychology major who also attends Montana State University — thanked Busse for supporting abortion rights. She said she was impressed that Busse and his wife, Sara, had agreed to allow Badge and Lander to join the Held lawsuit. The boys were 12 and 15 at the time the lawsuit was filed.
“Given that there might have been negative pressure, that’s a supportive father to all ends,” said Knoll. “Standing up for what’s right, going against the system — it’s so important if anything is going to get done.”
Montana politics
Busse and Graybill insist they have a good chance of winning against Gianforte, who has faced criticism — even among Republicans — for allowing property taxes to increase.
Still, the few publicly available polls show that they face a steep climb in a Trump-friendly state where Republicans have supermajorities in the House and Senate.
Montana is also home to one of the most expensive U.S. Senate races in the country. The contest between Democratic incumbent Jon Tester and Republican Tim Sheehy could determine the balance of power in the Senate, and observers say it’s sucked most of the air out of the room.
“Busse’s running the good fight, but he’s up against a guy with unlimited resources and fighting for visibility against a Senate race that’s poised to spend more money per voter than any other race in the history of the U.S.,” said Democratic former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer.
State Senate Majority Leader Steve Fitzpatrick, a Republican, said Busse is unlikely to topple Gianforte, given that he’s not up on television with ads. And he said it’s not surprising that climate isn’t playing a significant role in the race.
“There’s not much of a market in the Montana electorate for climate change activism,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s a topic for rich white liberals, and that’s not the Montana electorate. It’s not a topic that the regular working guy or woman has on the top of their agenda.”
Indeed, threading the needle on climate change in Montana can be a balancing act.
At a rally this month focused on protecting access to streams and rivers, Graybill introduced Busse as a different kind of conservationist. He touted Busse as a former board chair of a hunting and fishing group, as well as “the guy who helped build Kimber Arms from nothing and sold 3 million guns. Not your typical Democrat — but the man for this moment.”
Jim Klug, an organizer of the rally and founder and CEO of Bozeman-based Yellow Dog Flyfishing, said he viewed the Held lawsuit as a “bit of a publicity play.” But said it’s valuable to open a conversation on climate change, which he says poses a major threat to Montana’s outdoor recreation industry.
“Half of the politicians in this country won’t even acknowledge it’s a legitimate threat. They don’t believe it’s real,” said Klug, a Republican who is supporting Busse. “Ryan’s not afraid to talk about it. He’s got an uphill battle in what is a fairly deep red state, but he’s out there spreading his message, and he’s won over a lot of people like me who aren’t Democrats.”
Protecting public lands
Busse’s passion for preserving Montana’s public lands is evident in the name of one of his sons.
Badge was named after Badger-Two Medicine, a roadless wilderness area in Montana south of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation that the elder Busse credits with putting him on the path to switching political parties and working to conserve wild areas.
In 2004, Busse — then a gun industry executive — flew to Washington, and criticized the George W. Bush administration for supporting an effort to open the area to oil and gas exploration.
“I used to think of myself as a Republican,” Busse wrote in his 2021 book, “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America,” adding that he couldn’t vote “for a president who thought it was acceptable to trample over our last wild places to punch oil wells.”
A major focus of Busse’s campaign has been protecting access to public lands that make up nearly one-third of Montana. Democrats and conservationists warn of a coordinated effort by wealthy newcomers who want to turn the property over to the state and, eventually, to private interests.
Speaking at the Bozeman rally in support of the state’s vaunted Stream Access Law, which provides public access to waterways, Graybill pledged that the ticket would fight efforts to weaken such laws.
He recounted how he helped draft a lawsuit as an attorney in former Gov. Bullock’s office after then-President Donald Trump nominated William Perry Pendley — a staunch opponent of federal lands — as director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management.
Bullock won the case, arguing that it was illegal for Pendley to lead the federal agency because he had never been confirmed by the Senate. Pendley, who 20 years earlier had unsuccessfully sued to challenge Montana’s stream access law, was ousted from office in 2020.
“We got his ass bounced out of office,” Graybill said to cheers at the rally. “That’s the kind of leadership we need again in the governor’s office.”
By contrast, he said, the Republican party adopted a platform in June that calls for “relinquishing” federal public lands to the states.
Eroding public access, Busse warned in Livingston earlier this month, would change the “egalitarian nature” of the state.
“When we step into a public river, we’re all equal,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a kid with $12 Chuck Taylors and a $39 fly rod — or somebody in a $10,000 drift boat with a $900 fly rod.”
“In most places, you have to have money, a pedigree, a trust fund, an inheritance,” he continued. “That is not what Montana is about.”
