Election math: Two PSC districts have five Republican candidates

Five Republican candidates are running for two Public Service Commissioner seats.

The primary Tuesday will determine which candidates compete against the one Democrat who has filed to run in each open district.

The PSC regulates monopoly utilities in Montana, meaning it has a hand in how high Montanans’ power bills go.

The board is made up of five commissioners elected by district, all currently Republican.

In District No. 1, a wide swath of eastern Montana, former legislator Jeff Pattison and current state Sen. Jeremy Trebas are vying for the Republican nomination.

Pattison, who served in the Montana House in 2001 and 2003, is a farmer and community leader based in Glasgow.

In his career, he’s served on numerous boards and in other leadership positions, including the Milk River Watershed Alliance, of which he is a founder, and the board of the Montana Stockgrowers Association.

Pattison believes data centers must “pay the full cost of the infrastructure they require.” He notes concerns about their water use in particular, anywhere from 1 million to 5 million gallons a day.

“In a state defined by agriculture, rivers, and drought-sensitive watersheds, that level of daily industrial water demand must be taken seriously,” Pattison says on his campaign page.

NorthWestern Energy, the state’s largest utility company, has blacked out a lot of information in its letters of intent with data center developers, and Pattison said he opposes “secret letters.”

“Montanans deserve to know how every major project affects their utility bills,” he says on his campaign page.

Pattison also said he supports “smart planning” for future use of small modular reactors, or advanced nuclear reactors.

He told the Daily Montanan his faith is an important part of who he is, and he’s good at working with different personalities.

Trebas, of Great Falls, is an accountant who served in the House in 2017 and 2021 and Senate in 2023 and 2025.

He told the Daily Montanan he is seeking the Public Service Commissioner job because he is leaving the Legislature, but still wants to be involved in government.

Trebas said he’s the right fit because he brings together policymaking as a legislator and the ability to analyze financial statements as an accountant.

He said the PSC has grown even more interesting in the past year, given a proposed merger between NorthWestern, a monopoly utility, and South Dakota-based Black Hills Corp, along with the many data centers being discussed.

On the campaign trail, Trebas said Montanans are talking about how data centers might affect their pocketbooks and water in the Treasure State.

“There’s a lot of angst because of the potential water usage and energy use that might cause everybody to pay more in electricity rates,” Trebas said.

But he said he doesn’t want to engage in fear-mongering; rather, he wants to examine the issue.

“What’s the truth? Are they really going to use a lot of water? Are they really going to raise the rates?” Trebas said.

The winner will compete against Democrat Angeline Cheek in the general election.

In District No. 5, a chunk of northwest Montana, incumbent Republican Annie Bukacek is trying to hang onto the role she was elected to in 2022.

Two other Republicans are campaigning for it too, former Lewis and Clark County GOP Chairman Joe Dooling and David Sanders, who served as an administrator at the PSC.

Bukacek, also a medical doctor in Kalispell, has defended NorthWestern Energy on numerous occasions, and she has spoken about the importance of maintaining the financial health of the power company, the largest in Montana.

Bukacek did not respond to an emailed request to discuss a time she voted against a rate increase for NorthWestern — an opponent said it’s never happened. She hung up when reached by phone.

She has previously said commissioners should not rubber stamp agreements with utilities nor should they pander to public pressure.

On her campaign page, Bukacek points to one of her campaign slogans from 2022, “Let’s Keep the Lights On,” as an important value for her work as a commissioner.

Bukacek said utilities have been threatened in other places in the U.S., and she has an interest in avoiding such crises in Montana.

She earlier defended a rate increase as a means to ensure the power stays on.

“Sometimes it’s necessary to increase rates in order to fulfill our goal to keep the lights on, the furnaces warm and the air conditioners doing their job,” Bukacek said.

In 2024, the PSC president said NorthWestern wasn’t providing enough information to the public about its energy plan, but Bukacek argued more details would confuse the public and strain the monopoly.

“Requiring unnecessary information raises the price of doing business,” Bukacek said.

Sanders, executive director at the PSC in 2024, is seeking an elected role as a commissioner there, arguing the agency needs to get back on track.

In 2025, Sanders left the PSC to serve as chief of staff for State Auditor James Brown, who was earlier elected as PSC president and helped hire Sanders at the regulatory agency.

When Sanders announced his campaign, he told the Daily Montanan the Public Service Commission needs to do a better job of scrutinizing rate increases requested by NorthWestern Energy.

Sanders, who moved to Montana in 2022, pledges on his campaign page to push for affordability for Montanans, citing steep increases in power rates.

He also promises to be accessible, pointing to a recent incident where the PSC initially turned away five senior citizens who drove from Missoula to Helena to give public comment.

“David Sanders will always stand up for Montanans’ right to be heard,” his website says.

Sanders describes himself as a “proven executive leader” on his campaign site, and he notes senior executive experience in Washington, D.C.

When he was hired at the PSC, Sanders did not respond to a request for his resume, nor did he initially respond to a more recent request. He asserted his privacy right when the Daily Montanan filed a records request for the document with the PSC, and the request is pending.

The Daily Montanan also filed a records request with the Auditor’s Office, which said it did not have his resume on file because Sanders’s role is an appointment. Brown said Sanders should release his PSC resume.

In a resume Sanders provided directly to the Daily Montanan following his privacy assertion with the PSC, Sanders notes experience in Virginia as a principal in a government relations and strategic communications firm, and earlier as a managing partner for a strategic consulting firm.

In the 1990s, he served as an acting administrator for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, in addition to other roles for the corporation, according to his campaign site and resume.

Dooling ran against Bukacek in 2022, and he came in third in the four-way primary.

He said he’s committed to seeking a post with the PSC because in his ranching operation, electricity has been a driver of cost increases.

But he said it’s almost as essential to human life as water or oxygen.

“My No. 1 increase over the last five, six years has been electricity,” Dooling said. “It’s not fertilizer, not fuel, not all the stuff that you hear them talking about. It’s been my power bill.

“It’s been making it so this way of life we have is unaffordable.”

He told the Daily Montanan members of the Public Service Commission spend all of their time infighting while NorthWestern Energy “is walking circles around them.”

“We need to have somebody who is going to be a budget hawk,” Dooling said.

He pointed to the proposed merger between NorthWestern and Black Hills as an important issue, especially because it would mean Montanans account for a smaller part of the portfolio of a merged utility.

Dooling said the agency could do more to counter some of the smart consultants the utilities hire to testify by bringing in its own experts who understand electricity.

“Quite honestly, we the ratepayers are paying the price of not having the ability to push back,” Dooling said.

Dooling previously was appointed by President Donald Trump to the Farm Service Agency Committee, according to his campaign site.

The winner of the primary in this district will face off against Democrat Kevin Hamm.