State Senate candidate speaks at local Pachyderms meeting

Steve Chvilicek of Havre, running in this year's Republican Primary for Montana Senate District 14, spoke at a meeting of North Central Pachyderms Friday and touted his merits as a candidate.

Chvilicek talked about his life growing up on a family farm north of Hingham, learning the value of competition and hard work which he described as one of the greatest gifts his parents bestowed on him.

He said he started mowing lawns in sixth grade, a business which would be the precursor to his eventual landscaping business he started after finishing his education and going on to teach and coach sports at St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic School.

"That was about the time I started to feel the need to be self-employed," he said.

He said eventually he got a call asking if he would be interested in doing landscaping for a new restaurant going up across from Independence Bank, and after getting the bid he quit teaching and opened Frontier Lawn and Landscaping with some business partners.

Chvilicek said he's grateful for the experience he gained running that business which brought with it great successes, but also some failures, including someone embezzling more than $147,000 dollars from him.

He said he and his partner split up in 2017 and he left the business, but are still on great terms.

He said he still owns a cattle operation and does some landscaping jobs and that brings him to the present and his campaign.

Chvilicek said, despite worries, his campaign has been going well so far.

"When I make a bad decision, or something bad happens to me, I get a canker sore, and guess what, I haven't had a canker sore yet," he said.

He said part of the reason he's running is because it's only 90 days every other year so he won't need to make a complete career change like a county commissioner would.

He also said at 56 years old he wants to keep pushing himself and he wants to help and protect the district that he thinks is the best in the state.

Chvilicek said he hasn't been to the capitol since an eighth grade field trip and he's excited to go back if he's elected.

He said he feels he has a good nucleus of knowledge for the job as well as a network of intelligent friends to help him make good decisions.

He said he's willing to listen to everyone, including lobbyists, but he's not always going to agree with them.

As for his political positions, Chvilicek said, he is vehemently pro-life and pro-death penalty, positions he said he sees no contradiction in because those sentenced the the dealth penalty made the choices that got them in that situation.

"I believe that life begins at conception. I'm a diehard on that. Nobody is going to change my view on that," he said. " ... All ages, from the beginning to the end, I want to protect everybody. Kinda falls a little bit different on the death penalty."

He said he loves guns and as long as people are brought up among good parents and God there is no reason to change the way things are when it comes to firearms.

Chvilicek said he had no particular issues with Russ Tempel and said there isn't a whole lot that separates them, though one attendee said he hopes Chvilicek is more conservative than Tempel, to which Chvilicek said yes.

Chvilicek also said he is concerned about the state of the local economy amid the current drought and the inflation happening on the national level.

He said he thinks the world is going down the wrong path and is a frightening place right now and he doesn't know how much control they have over it.

Chvilicek's mother Loy Chvilicek answered that question by saying the only control they have is on the local level with the county commissioners and their election administrators.

Loy Chvilicek then spent some time talking about voter integrity, including the implication that Hill County has a problem with voter fraud, a contention that has been repeatedly refuted by local election officials.

Despite many conservative activists and operatives, as well as some Republican politicians, raising suspicions about the integrity of Montana's elections in the wake of the 2020 election, no evidence of wide-spread voter fraud has been found in the state or the U.S.

Loy Chvilicek encouraged people to ask the county what is inside voting machines.

Havre City Council member Andrew Brekke also talked about voter integrity, and criticized election officials for their handling of questions surrounding the integrity of voting in the county.

"Nobody is saying that anything specifically was done wrong, we don't know. They just say, 'Trust us and don't ask questions,'" Brekke said. "Well, that's not responsible."

Hill County election officials including Hill County Clerk and Recorder Sue Armstrong have repeatedly stated over the past two years that there is no evidence of voter fraud in Hill County, and they are happy to answer questions people have and walk them through the process of what happens during voting.

During the meeting Brekke also said Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen will visit the group at some point next month and Montana State Auditor Troy Downing might be coming in June as well.

In July, he said, they will have a speaker there to talk about ideas for the remediation of Colstrip, and in August the Montana Election Integrity Project will be presenting.