Two Issues Are Defining Montana’s Democratic Primary — And Neither One Is Going Away

As early voting opens ahead of the June 2 contest for Montana’s 1st Congressional District, voters across the state are measuring candidates against a pair of urgent realities: a cost-of-living crisis that has squeezed families for years, and a sudden, large-scale push to plant AI data centers across Montana’s open landscape. Frontrunner Ryan Busse is putting these issues at the center of his campaign.

The Affordability Crisis: A Near-Universal Concern

The numbers are striking in their breadth. An independent poll conducted last September found that 98% of Montanans believe families are struggling with everyday costs — a figure that transcends party lines, geography, and generation. More than 40% of Montanans say they are currently worried about childcare costs alone. In the past year, gas prices have risen 77 cents per gallon, putting an extra burden on commuters.

A Montana Free Press–Eagleton poll conducted in December 2025 and January 2026, surveying 801 registered voters statewide, put additional texture on the problem. More than half of all respondents — 52% — cited health care as an expense that poses at least some difficulty, with nearly one in four calling it “very difficult” to afford. Food costs ranked second, with 48% reporting trouble affording groceries. For Montanans under 36, housing is the sharpest edge of the crisis: a majority of young adults said rent or mortgage costs are at least somewhat difficult to manage, compared to only 9% of respondents 65 and older.

The housing picture tells its own story. A separate Montana Free Press–Eagleton poll found that nearly three in four Montanans are concerned about being able to afford housing in the state over the next five years, and that two in five Montana households spend more than 30% of their income on housing — the federal threshold that defines “cost-burdened.” According to state data, 46.6% of Montana renters currently meet that definition. A February 2026 survey found that only 37% of Montana residents describe their state as affordable, ranking it 21st least affordable in the country — worse than neighboring Idaho, Wyoming, and the Dakotas.

These numbers land with particular force in a state where wages have not kept pace with costs. To afford the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Montana at $1,078 per month, someone earning minimum wage would need to work 79 hours a week.

Frontrunner Ryan Busse, who leads the field by 15 points over Russell Cleveland in an independent poll, has made affordability the backbone of his campaign, with lowering healthcare and childcare costs as two central focuses. But the material reality driving those positions belongs to the whole electorate: both Republicans and Democrats rank the cost of living as their greatest source of dissatisfaction with how the state is being governed.

Health Care: A Rural Crisis Coming Into Focus

If affordability is a broad and chronic frustration, health care has become something sharper — and more urgent — in the months leading up to June 2.

Federal legislation signed last summer is expected to slash Medicaid spending by nearly $1 trillion over the next ten years. A 2025 report commissioned by the Montana Health Care Foundation estimated that Montana alone could lose between $4.8 and $6.1 billion in federal Medicaid funds over a decade. The state received $233 million in the first year of a $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Fund intended to offset the damage — but health advocates warn that the math doesn’t come close to covering the losses, and that the federal program’s design may actually push rural hospitals to cut services rather than protect them.

Montana is among at least ten states whose plans for the rural health funds could lead facilities to downsize inpatient care in order to financially survive. The consequences hit hardest in places like Big Sandy, a community of nearly 800 people in north-central Montana whose hospital is its only health lifeline — 80 miles from the nearest major city. Nationally, a Chartis analysis found that 41.2% of all rural hospitals are currently operating in the red, with 417 categorized as vulnerable to closure.

For Native communities and small towns across Montana’s vast geography, a rural hospital closure is not an inconvenience — it is an elimination of the only care available. Candidates across the Democratic field have been broadly critical of policy changes they say have driven up Affordable Care Act costs for tens of thousands of Montanans, and the Medicaid picture has sharpened those arguments considerably.

The Data Center Debate: A New and Specific Threat

If affordability is familiar campaign territory, the emergence of AI infrastructure as a defining primary issue reflects something newer — and far more specific to Montana’s current moment.

NorthWestern Energy, Montana’s largest regulated utility, currently supplies around 750 megawatts of power to all of its Montana customers. In the past 18 months, it has signed letters of intent with at least three data center developers — Quantica Infrastructure, Atlas Power, and Sabey Data Center Properties — whose combined projected energy demand could reach 2,100 megawatts or more, according to the Montana Environmental Information Center. Quantica alone is proposing a 5,000-acre campus near Broadview that would require up to 1,000 megawatts — roughly the entire generating capacity NorthWestern currently operates. As of February 2026, the utility was in active talks with at least 11 additional data center entities.

The scale is almost without precedent for a state Montana’s size. A CNBC analysis last year ranked Montana the third most attractive state in the country for powering data centers, citing its grid reliability and below-average electricity prices. That attractiveness is precisely what worries many Montanans: companies are coming here, critics argue, because they see cheap power, available land, and limited regulation as an opportunity to move fast — and to extract value before communities or regulators can respond.

The concerns about energy costs are real. To power the incoming demand, NorthWestern may need to invest heavily in new generation and transmission infrastructure. Nine nonprofit and advocacy organizations have petitioned the Montana Public Service Commission to impose stricter oversight, arguing that NorthWestern’s 413,000-plus residential customers could end up footing the bill for infrastructure built to serve outside investors. In 2025 alone, ratepayers were already charged more than $240 million for an unapproved methane plant in Laurel, according to the Northern Plains Resource Council.

Water is also a flashpoint. Data centers require enormous quantities of water for cooling, but details about planned facilities’ water usage remain largely shielded from public review. Environmental watchdogs have warned that without transparency and guardrails, Montana communities could become, in their words, “sacrifice zones” for the data-processing needs of some of the world’s largest corporations.

Then there is the question of jobs. Proponents of data centers frequently tout their economic benefits, but the employment record nationally tells a more complicated story. A January 2026 study by Food and Water Watch found that as few as 23,000 people worked in the data center industry across the entire United States in 2024 — an average of roughly six employees per facility. A Business Insider analysis found that even the largest data centers employ fewer than 150 permanent workers. Meanwhile, between May 2024 and June 2025, local opposition across the country blocked or delayed an estimated $162 billion in data center projects, a sign that communities nationwide are asking the same questions Montana is wrestling with now.

Busse has been the most vocal critic in the Democratic field, arguing at a forum in Butte that companies are rushing to Montana precisely because of cheap power, available land, and limited regulation. He has warned that the facilities are likely to create few permanent jobs while accelerating technologies that could displace Montana workers. But the skepticism extends well beyond his campaign. Rural communities across the political spectrum — regardless of which candidate they support — are asking hard questions about whether this wave of development serves Montana’s long-term interests or primarily those of outside investors.

What This Means for the Primary

The affordability crisis is not new. What is new is the convergence of that crisis with a fast-moving wave of outside investment that Montanans never voted for and may end up paying for — in energy bills, in strained water supplies, and in a transformation of the state’s landscape that moves far faster than its politics. That convergence is what the full Democratic field — Busse, Russell Cleveland, Samuel Forstag, and Matt Rains — is being measured against.

Montana is looking for a leader who will act in the people’s best interest. On June 2, voters will decide who that is.