GOP Leader Calls Republican Defection ‘Truly His Saddest Day’

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - Don Kaltschmidt, also known as ‘Don K’, the retiring chairman of the Montana Republican Party, was on the KGVO Talk Back show on Tuesday.

I asked Kaltschmidt about his reaction as the leader of the Republican Party when nine state senators broke ranks and voted with Democrats, what he called ‘his saddest day’ as the GOP leader.

Don Kaltschmidt Reacted to the 'Republican Defection' in the Legislature

“Well, unfortunately, we had nine Republicans that broke ranks with the leadership,” began Kaltschmidt. “Basically, a lot of folks think it's because maybe they were moderate and, you know, the way they voted, it really didn’t have anything to do with that. It was basically breaking ranks and not working with the Senate president.”

Kaltschmidt said the nine Republicans obviously had a poor relationship with state GOP leadership.

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“I'm sure that most of those senators didn't vote for the senate president, Matt Regier, but he was elected, and once the election is done for the majority leader and Senate President, we expect Republicans to work together to come up with rules that we can all live with, and committees that we can all live with,” he said. “These Republicans decided they didn't want to work with the Republican Party, but they wanted to work with the Democrat Party, which gave them (the Democrats) more power.”

Kaltschmidt Called it His Saddest Experience as GOP Chairman

Kaltschmidt said the experience was his saddest in his tenure as the state GOP chairman.

“So that was not a good thing,” he said. “They ended up getting censured by our executive board, and it was a very, very sad day. It was probably the saddest day and the saddest thing that I've seen since I've been chair for six years.”

Kaltschmidt is hopeful that Republican voters will properly deal with the ‘defectors’ at the ballot box.

Kaltschmidt Hopes Voters Will 'Deal with Defectors' at the Ballot Box

“We, course felt that we had a very strong Republican majority in both the House and the Senate,” he said. “Of course, we have all the statewide races, so we have a Republican conservative pragmatic agenda that that voters voted for, so to move over and vote with the Democrats because of the power play is not good. I'm sure there will be a lot of work being done to unseat some of those Republicans. We’ll see.”

The Republican State Officers convention will be held June 27 and 28 in Helena.