Bennion Talks Advocacy and Justice

Fighting for Montana’s most vulnerable would just be another bullet in a series of political priorities for almost any other candidate, but for Attorney General Candidate John Bennion, the talking point hits a little closer to home. Bennion’s son, Jack, was born four-months premature and now lives with Cerebral Palsy and is a non-verbal fourth grader. Advocating for his son has been a priority for the MT DOJ Attorney that has made him a self-published author of a children’s book (The Adventures of Jack Pant—Amazon) to educate his son’s peers, teachers and other parents on Jack’s condition and what goes along with it. This fatherly love has made Bennion an outspoken advocate for the vulnerable on the campaign trail and, especially, the elderly and the disabled.

Among Bennion’s other priorities are to, “provide leadership on critical public safety issues; I want to fight back against government overreach; protect Montana’s economic interests; and fight for our most vulnerable and that fourth one there can mean a lot of different things.” The AG candidate said that in his own time he has focused on people with disability issues. In the AG office that means they have focused on scams geared towards the elderly in addition to those with disabilities.

“[Jack’s story has] shaped me as a person, obviously, the whole experience,” explained Bennion. “Becoming a dad under circumstances that nobody really wants to find themselves in, watching their son struggle to live and, from all that, seeing some very significant disabilities. But we knew that as he was going through all that, that he could be happy. That there were ways to pursue happiness no matter what your challenges are.”

For the last seven years, Bennion has worked as an appointee of current Attorney General Tim Fox and most recently as the Chief Deputy Attorney General as Fox’s chief lieutenant on the department. In that time, he says he has worked a series of cases including in the civil bureau, the legal shop administration and criminal cases. More than half of his legal career has been at the department of justice and Bennion has held no elected office in past.

Ticking off his priorities, Bennion discussed his leadership on critical public safety issues by saying that AG Fox and himself have been strong in taking on some of the biggest issues in Montana. Namely he cited the relationship between crime and addictions such as meth and other drugs as well as alcohol. “People like to forget that alcohol is still the number one abused substance, that is still the leading cause of traffic fatalities, [and] the leading cause of domestic violence.”

On the addiction front, the deputy AG pointed out that the AG’s role is primarily in enforcement and that—although he concedes they cannot jail their way out of the addiction crisis—enforcement still needs to be a part of the problem. Regardless, the AG’s office has looked at developing treatment and prevention programs that help in combatting the addiction crisis without leaving the purview of the department. “I see the prevention side as a place where I can provide a lot of leadership to help make some kind of statewide plan on prevention,” explained Bennion.

A key element and a priority for prevention, according to Bennion, is in supporting legislation to provide more state funding for treatment courts and increase access and capacity. In doing so, he thinks, the courts will be cheaper and more effective than prison for most participants and that promoting it and funding it are key to that effectiveness.

A second public safety issue for Bennion’s campaign is sexual assault, specifically, sexual assault kit testing and investigations. According to Bennion, when AG Fox took office, the idea of clearing out the state’s backlog of kits was not on the radar. After sending staff to national training, however, it became a question in the state to see how many untested kits existed statewide. After a census, the department found some 1,400 untested kits and they began strategizing to clear the backlog and initiate the investigations.

“We felt like that by going back and testing old kits, looking at the results [and] talking about the process, could we improve the state’s response to sex assault crimes—one of the most underreported crimes out there—and we felt like the answer was yes,” explained Bennion, who chaired the sexual assault kit initiative in the state that has helped change the definition of consent in Montana law to eliminate the need to show use of force by a perpetrator. The initiative also helped create a kit tracking system to help survivors track their kits through the courts.

The next point on Bennion’s priority list is fighting government overreach. In Bennion’s view that entails pushing back on federal regulations that have affected the coal industry such as the “Waters of the U.S.” act that put strict regulations on coal mining and coal-fired power plants.

When asked if he believes climate change is man-made, Bennion stated, “I have to believe what experts are saying.” But, he added, those scientists are not economists and the catastrophic impacts of halting coal production in Colstrip are very real and immediate and, he says, closing down those plants and mines will not have a significant impact on climate change.

In another way, Bennion pushed back on the idea that local cities can regulate individual rights in a way that is stricter than the state’s regulation of those rights. One example cited was in Missoula where the city council tried to enforce an ordinance that would limit the individual gun rights of Montana citizens. The AG’s office sued the city up to the Supreme Court to eliminate that gun ordinance.

In the arena of protecting Montana’s economic interests, Bennion discussed the AG’s efforts to push back on coal regulations, fighting in favor of Keystone XL pipeline and intervening in forest litigation. In the latter’s case, the state has filed amicus briefs in opposition to environmentalist efforts to prevent forest maintenance in favor of the Forest Services’ efforts to manage forests and mitigate fire risk. The candidate said he would look to continue those efforts into the future.

On the political side of his campaign, Bennion reiterated that he is dedicated to the Second Amendment, that he is pro-life and a fiscal conservative, but he pointed out that the department seeks to push legislation in a non-partisan way to promote the safety and justice of the state. He said proudly that the AG’s office in the last legislature put up 50 bills and passed 48 carried by both Democrats and Republicans.

Bennion is running against Roosevelt County Attorney and former Speaker of the Montana House, Austin Knudsen for the Republican nomination for attorney general. The primary will be held in June and the general election will be held in November.

Before wrapping up his interview with the Courier, Bennion responded to a question about his Republican opponent, Austin Knudsen. When asked how he responds to Knudsen’s accusation that the AG’s office has increased their budget every year Fox has been in office, Bennion stated, “When it comes to our approach to crime, when I hear his criticism, I watched him as the Speaker of the House and he did next to nothing to help us on law enforcement issues. He had an opportunity to tackle public safety issues and he chose not to do that. When it comes to budgets, he voted for many of the increases in our budget that relate to many of the things he is critical about.” Bennion went onto cite specifics in the budget but added that many MT DOJ increases were mostly to cover inflation.

Then he pushed back on Knudsen for being a political opportunist. “You know I look at him in his current position,” said Bennion, “In 2017, he was elected over the incumbent to become the county attorney for the county that has the highest violent crime rate in the state. Before he ever took office, in December of 2017, he was in a D.C. meeting with people about running for attorney general. To me that is not somebody who is ready to sink their teeth into a very, very important job. That is somebody that is trying to get to somewhere else and I don’t have a lot of respect for politicians that run for a job and immediately turn around and run for another job. Roosevelt County desperately needs a full-time county attorney but what they have is a part-time county attorney and a full-time campaigner.”