Blog Break 4: Capitol Watch: Governor Greg Gianforte Brings Religious Values to the Political Arena

Shortly after Governor Gianforte was elected, The Montana Review posted online a series written by MacKenzie Dexter in 2021 and updated in December 2022. Just Facts MT is taking a spring break and sharing the Capitol Watch series with updated financials in future blogs. 

Here is a direct link to the final column, Part 4.

In this ongoing series, Montana Press will continue to present a biographical profile of Montana’s new governor, exploring his history and following his leadership of state government. For the first three installments of the series, please see Part 1: Early Years; Part 2: Building Businesses; and Part 3: Funding Petra Academy.

While Christians make up 70% of the US population, and a majority of this country’s governors, senators and congressmen are practicing Christians, Montana’s newly-elected governor is perhaps the first to have come out of the Fundamentalist tradition, with deep convictions about the place Christian values play in every-day life.

Governor Greg Gianforte is unique in one other way: he’s also the first governor in Montana history to have an impressive digital-tech background, one that earned him hundreds of millions of dollars through the sale of two companies he built, Brightwork Development ($10 million) and RightNow Technologies ($1.5 billion), funds that he now uses to donate to charitable organizations, through the Gianforte Family Foundation. As devout a conservative as he is a Christian, he almost certainly is the richest man to occupy the Governor’s Residence in Helena since it was built in 1959.

For nearly two decades now, The Gianforte Family Foundation (GFF) has allowed the new governor an opportunity to donate to a wide variety of non-profit organizations, many of which support his family’s religious beliefs. Many of these non-profits, however, have political agendas that match the Governor’s own political views. Organizations such as Focus on the Family, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council and the Montana Family Foundation, all of whom are recipients of GFF funds, hold similar, if not identical, political opinions to Governor Gianforte’s. … Continue reading here.

Source: Capitol Watch: Governor Greg Gianforte Brings Religious Values to the Political Arena