Editor’s note: This is one of 12 profiles featuring a candidate in Montana’s Second Congressional House District primary race. The profiles are being published daily over 12 days and in alphabetical order. Each of the candidates were asked the same questions.
Elsie Arntzen, perhaps more than any other candidate in Montana’s Eastern U.S. House race, stakes her political future on being a Republican culture warrior.
She’s fighting “the war on woke,” which means opposing any accommodations for gender fluidity, particularly in grades K-12. Arntzen has been Montana’s superintendent of public instruction for eight years. She opposes liberalizing Title IX, the federal law defining sexual discrimination in public education for the last 50 years.
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And she opposes a more comprehensive teaching of how race has shaped the United States. Critical Race Theory, which has never been taught in Montana K-12, is nonetheless denounced by the superintendent.
More than a few arrows have been shot Arntzen’s way. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union this April sued Arntzen’s Office of Public Instruction over the state’s law requiring parental notification of any discussion concerning anything sexual or gender related in public schools. The lawsuit was not only about the intent of the law, but also what the ACLU said was a lack of guidance to schools from Arntzen about how to put the law into practice.
With voting less than a month away several Republican candidates for the Montana’s eastern U.S. House district have that BLE—or big loan energy.
There have been so many reported conflicts with superintendent that Arntzen began the interview for this article by simply crediting Lee Montana newspapers for spelling her name right.
Undeniably, there is a core group of voters who share Arntzen’s points of view. They have rallied at the state Capitol more than once in shows of support. Arntzen said she is confident there are enough voters supporting her to secure a win in the Eastern District House primary, which is an eight-candidate race most likely to be won in a plurality with as little was 20% to 30% of the vote.
Republicans in Congress have had little success legislating culture conformity, including in the House where more moderate members of the majority have dismissed bill amendments concerning the war on woke as being counter productive when reconciling differences with the Senate's Democratic majority.
In person primary voting starts May 6 and finishes June 4.
“Most definitely, the cultural war is very much a part of everybody's vernacular. It's not just an opportunity with a rural voter or rural constituent, or anyone that might live here in Yellowstone County. I firmly believe that it's threaded not just here in Montana, but when I talked to the Representative for Wyoming, Harriet Hageman, she's got the bill to remove the Department of Education,” Arntzen said. “She comes from a very rural state, by federal standards we’re frontier. The other aspect is, this is about freedoms and when we're talking about freedoms, you know, families are right there. The overreach of government hits everybody, whether it's at, I'll just say the kitchen table, when they're trying to impose their budget, inflation, or else you know, they get hit by any social media, that there's some sort of activity that is going to reduce their freedoms.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen has been in the news lately claiming to be a victim of “political persecution” at the hands of “schoolyard bullies in the legislature” who are throwing a “temper tantrum.” As the record shows, none of these assertions are remotely true.
“I was just sued by the ACLU in my official job because of parental notification on sexual instruction. I firmly believe that our children are being over sexualized, and this resonates. And what's important about Elsie is that this is something I'm passionate about. This isn't just something that I took a poll on, and I'm just going to go ahead and say the words, this is something that I have lived in my official world, as well as making sure that in my own family, my grandkids that are growing up in public school, and in our communities, that the barrage of everything that parents are getting hit with. I think the number-one thing that I do stand for, and it resonates, is that government does not own our children and they are our future. And I think voters appreciate that somebody is standing up for that next generation and we're the Treasurer State. So that means our treasures are our future. Those are our kids.”
This is Arntzen’s second campaign for U.S. House. She finished fourth in 2014, when Rep. Ryan Zinke won the primary and then the general election for Montana’s at-large district.
There was speculation in 2014 that Arntzen would use her personal wealth to boost her campaign. Elsie and her husband got in on the ground floor of the video gaming era in the 1980s and have done quite well. This election cycle Arntzen has loaned her campaign $700,000, making her one of the best financed candidates, Republican or Democrat.
In between congressional campaigns, Arntzen become the first Republican elected state superintendent of public instruction in 30 years, winning the office twice. Term limits prevent the Billings native from running for OPI a third time.
Q&A
Party: Republican
Age and place of birth: 67, Billings
Home: Billings
Occupation: Montana State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Family: Married to my high school sweetheart, with two children
Education: Bachelor’s degree in education from Montana State University Billings and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Montana.
Past employment: Teacher in Billings for 23 years.
Military: N/A
Political experience: Elected to four terms (eight years) as a State Representative, and one term (four years) as a State Senator. After 32 years of Democrat control, I was the first Republican elected to lead the Office of Public Instruction as State Superintendent for two terms.
Endorsements: Sen. John Fuller, Rep. Jerry Schillinger, and Rep. Lee Deming.
Ways voters can contact you:
a.) Email: info@elsiearntzen.com
b.) Address: PO Box 5203 Helena MT, 59604
c.) Phone number: 406-647-0815
d.) Web page: www.elsiearntzen.com
During the Education Interim Budget Committee meeting on March 12-13, the chair and some members of the committee tarnished the reputation of the entire Legislature with their lack of decorum.
Q. Identify two national priorities that are part of your platform, explain your position on each and tell voters how you intend to address both. If there’s an existing bill you support to advance your position, please identify it.
1. Border security: Our border is in crisis and our country is being invaded. I will partner with President Trump to finish the wall. Additionally, I want to enable border patrol to have all of the resources necessary to protect our country from the invasion. Border security is not enough. The number of illegal aliens that have unlawfully entered our country under Biden is six times Montana’s total population. We need to conduct the largest mass deportation effort in the history of our country.
2. Parental Rights: I will continue to protect children and women's sports. The Biden administration wants to redefine Title IX to include individuals that are transgender. I will oppose any measure which allows biological males to participate in female sports. There are only two sexes: male and female. The Biden administration has pushed critical race theory and other toxic, woke ideology to re-write American history and destiny. In Congress, I will fight for parental rights and defeat the woke agenda with the same intensity as I have as state Superintendent of Schools.
Q. Name two issues unique to the Eastern District that you will have to advance because no one else in the House will be familiar enough to do so. Explain how you’ll get the job done.
1. Education: The Department of Education is not given authority by our U.S. Constitution. It has become a bloated department that is overrun with bureaucrats that target the rights of our parents and does not reflect the values of Eastern Montana. I will return the power of the choice in education to parents and the individual states. America must go back to a culture of delivering a quality education to our children, as opposed to indoctrinating them. I will partner with other members to eliminate the federal Department of Education.
2. Land and property rights: As the longest-standing member of Montana’s Land Board, I have fiercely protected Montanan’s voice on personal property rights. I promise to reign in the overreaching rules and regulations of the Bureau of Land Management that inhibits access to recreation, grazing, and energy development. I do not want the federal government to turn Montana into nothing more than a national park. Montanans alone should decide how to use our land, water, and natural resources.
Q.A rare earth minerals miner in Montana recently suggested that to sustain a domestic supply of metals essential to all things tech—semiconductors, batteries, advanced military equipment — Congress would have to act. Otherwise, China, which supplies about 80% of the rare earth minerals imported by the U.S., will continue the dominate supply. Consider the traditional basket of trade options — tariffs, subsidies, government purchases, federal leasing, and environmental laws — and suggest a policy approach to this challenge.
Mined in America, Made in America:
America’s national security is at risk due to Biden’s crippling regulations on rare earth mineral mining. These minerals are vital to American innovation, research, and prosperity. Currently, our nation imports the majority of critical minerals from Communist China and Chinese-influenced countries. These countries are not only hostile to America, they also have no environmental standards and use child labor. America can do better if the federal government gets out of the way, reduces unnecessary regulations, increases private sector investment, and allows federal leases for mining.
Q. Explain how an import tariff consequential to sales of U.S. Corn and Soybeans to China affects the price of Montana’s top export ag commodity.
America First, China Last:
America must support Montana farmers and increase access to foreign markets other than China. Communist China has taken advantage of the American trade relationship for far too long. American companies are being robbed of their intellectual property and our farmers and ranchers are being unduly punished as a result. We must stand up to Chinese aggression while also ensuring our farmers can sell their products on the world stage.
A. President Joe Biden has suggested “codifying Roe,” in other words creating a national right to abortion. Explain your position on this issue.
Life is Precious: It’s very simple, without the right to life, all other rights are irrelevant. I am unequivocally pro-life and will oppose any measure that is a threat to life.
Q. What role would you assign yourself as a member of a slim House majority? Would you get behind policies or leaders that 90% of your party supports to advance the preferences of your caucus? Or would you use your dissent as leverage to advance positions most of your caucus didn’t support?
Montanans First: I am a Christian, conservative, Constitutionalist. As a 4th generation Montanan, my role will always be to fight for the Montanans I represent. I’ve served in the state legislature, and I know how to deliver real results for Montanans while standing up for our traditional way of life.
Q. Would you have certified the electors from all 50 states as a member of Congress in 2021? Explain your decision while identifying any state whose electors you would have rejected.
Confidence in our election process is critical for our republic. There were legitimate concerns with election integrity throughout the 2020 election process. Primarily, there were issues with the chain of custody for many mail-in ballots, which brought the security of election results into question. Therefore, I would not have certified electors in the 2020 election in several states including Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona because these states had the most egregious concerns.