Yellowstone County Democrats

09/06/2026

You can learn a trade in Montana, get paid the whole time you are learning it, and finish without a dollar of debt. Not enough people know that.

A registered apprenticeship pairs classroom instruction with paid work alongside somebody who already knows the job. Electricians, plumbers, linemen, operators, sheet metal workers. Your wage steps up as your skill does. The credential at the end is recognized across the country.

Montana Democrats support putting registered apprentices on public works projects, funding the programs that train them, and helping tribal colleges and high schools build accredited trade pathways tied to state apprenticeship standards. We support prevailing wage on projects taxpayers fund, because a job that trains the next generation of workers has to pay well enough to keep this one.

Four years of college is one path. It was never the only one. A state that builds things needs people who know how to build them.

09/05/2026

276 votes. That is what decided House District 46 in 2024.

Not 276 thousand. Two hundred seventy-six people in Billings. One district over, HD 47 came down to 198. HD 45 came down to 289.

Three seats in this county, all decided by fewer than 300 votes. All three on the ballot again November 3.

276 is one shift at a large employer. It is one church congregation. It is one apartment complex. Whatever group you already belong to is probably large enough to move a Montana legislative seat by itself.

Check your registration. Make a plan. Bring someone with you.

yellowstonedemocrats.org/voter-action-center

09/04/2026

Three things you can do at the campaign office that you cannot do from your couch.

Pick up a yard sign. Sign up for a shift and have somebody put the list, the map, and the walk cards in your hand while you are standing there. Ask a question about the jail measures and get an answer from a person who has actually read them.

Coffee is free. Nobody will put you to work unless you ask.

1501 14th St W, Suite 1521, Billings Monday through Friday, 10 to 1 Saturday and Sunday, 11 to 1

09/03/2026

Two registration deadlines matter this fall, and missing the first one does not end it.

Regular voter registration in Montana closes Monday, October 5. Register by then and your ballot comes to you in the mail.

After October 5, late registration opens and stays open. You register in person at the Yellowstone County Election Office and you can vote on the same trip. On Monday, November 2, late registration runs until noon. On Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, it runs until the polls close at 8 pm. If you are in line by 8, you vote.

Bring photo ID. Montana's ID rules changed for this election, so check what counts before you go.

Already registered? Confirm your address is current at the same place. A ballot mailed to an address you moved out of is a vote nobody counts.

app.mt.gov/voterinfo

09/02/2026

A Montana rancher sells into a market controlled by a handful of packers, buys inputs from a market controlled by a handful of suppliers, and then gets told the problem is efficiency.

Consolidation is the defining fact of modern agriculture, and Montana feels it harder than most. When cattle leave the state to be processed, the value leaves with them. When a few buyers set the price, the person who raised the animal takes what is offered.

Montana Democrats support building the alternative. More in-state processing, so producers are not dependent on out-of-state plants. Country-of-origin labeling, so Montana beef can compete as Montana beef. Real antitrust enforcement in agriculture. The right to repair your own equipment without a dealer's permission.

We also support the unglamorous infrastructure that decides whether rural Montana stays livable: high-speed internet, reliable cell service, and estate and finance law that lets a family hand down an operation instead of selling it to settle a tax bill.

Family agriculture is not nostalgia in this state. It is a working part of the economy, and it needs policy that treats it that way.

09/01/2026

Montana has roughly 30 million acres of federal public land and no plausible state budget to manage it. That is the whole argument in one sentence.

Every few years the proposals come back. Sell some parcels. Transfer management to the state. Or skip the vote entirely and underfund the agencies until roads wash out, trailheads close, and access disappears on its own.

The Montana Democratic Party platform does not hedge on this. We oppose any net loss of publicly owned land, any proposal to sell off federal public land, and any transfer of federal land to state or local control. We support Montana's Stream Access Law and the public's right to reach a river at a bridge or a public right of way. We support ending the treatment of corner crossing as trespassing.

Public land is why a Montanan who does not own a single acre can still hunt, fish, camp, and cut firewood. Losing it would be permanent, and it would be quiet.

08/31/2026

Billings was built by people who worked for a living.

The rail yard at Laurel has moved freight through this county for more than a century, run by engineers, conductors, and machinists working under union contracts. Three refineries operate here, Par Pacific and Phillips 66 in Billings and CHS in Laurel, and the United Steelworkers represent the people inside them.

Teachers in School District 2 bargain their contract through the Billings Education Association. Nurses at Billings Clinic bargain theirs through Montana Nurses Association Local Unit #2.

Zimmerman Trail was cut into the Rimrocks in 1939 by a crew of 100 to 150 workers on a public payroll. The job was budgeted for four months and took at least seven. That same stretch of years gave Billings its City Hall, the bridge out to Lockwood, the horse barns still standing at MetraPark, and the trails at Pictograph Cave.

Each of those places has a payroll behind it, and every name on it belonged to somebody's neighbor.

Labor Day is a week from Monday. We are spending the week on the people who built Yellowstone County and the ones keeping it running. Tell us who belongs in it. A grandfather in the yards. A shift at the refinery. A classroom, a hospital floor, a road crew, a kitchen.

08/30/2026

Genuine question, and we read every answer.

Volunteers start knocking doors across Yellowstone County next month. When they get to yours, what is the one thing you would want them to actually talk about? Property taxes, the jail measures, your power bill, healthcare, schools, something we are not thinking of.

Tell us in the comments. We would rather build the fall around what you are living with than what we assume.

08/30/2026

08/29/2026

We hope you'll join us for a home cooked meal and support democracy!

Steak off the grill. Potatoes, baked beans, deviled eggs, watermelon with basil and mint, garden salad, pasta salad, fresh rolls, dessert. Burgers for the kids. Vegan option available.

No caterer, no chafing dishes, no rubber chicken. Yellowstone County Democrats standing over a grill.

Sunday, September 13, ZooMontana. Food at 5:00, and your ticket gets you into the zoo all day!

https:// secure.actblue.com/donate/fallbbq2026