A Tale of Two Scumbags. Maine Won’t Drop Theirs. Montana Can’t Force Theirs Out.
Issue No. 16 | June 2026
Yesterday’s issue of this report was about Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine. The leader of the Senate Democrats endorsed him. Bernie Sanders held his hand at a rally. Elizabeth Warren stayed with him. Ruben Gallego defended him on national television. Chris Murphy told Face the Nation he had not really followed the story. All of this happened after the Nazi tattoo, the six-woman sexting paper trail, and the antisemitic tweet that is still up.
Today’s issue is about a different Democrat in a different state. His name is Jonathan Windy Boy. He has been a member of the Montana Legislature for 23 years. He is 67 years old. He represents Box Elder, on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation. In Maine, the Democratic Party closed ranks around its accused candidate and pulled him across the finish line. In Montana, the Democratic Party publicly demanded that its accused senator resign, the Republican Senate President joined the call, the Senate Minority Leader joined the call, the legislature’s American Indian Caucus joined the call, and on May 27, 2026, 39 of the 50 sitting Montana state senators, from both parties, signed a public letter telling him to leave (Montana Free Press, KTVH).
That is 78 percent of the chamber. Republican and Democrat. Eight days ago.
Windy Boy has not responded to the letter. He has not resigned. He says the allegations are “a coordinated political smear.” He is still a state senator. He is still drawing his salary. He is still entitled to his vote. The four senators on the Senate Ethics Committee recused themselves from signing the letter so that they could investigate him later. Everyone else just signed.
A 39-senator bipartisan supermajority asked one man to leave the building. The man said no. That is where Montana is in June 2026, and that is the rare American political story where the institution did its job and the man inside the institution refuses to let the job finish.
What the Centercratic Party Stands For
The Centercratic Party rests on nine governing principles. Three of them describe exactly what is happening in Helena.
The first reads: “Safeguard Our Democratic System. Govern through compromise, not domination. Reject extreme tactics by special interests and defend the Constitution for everyone.” When 78 percent of your colleagues, from both parties, ask you to leave, the dominant act is not standing on due process. The dominant act is the one man overriding 39 elected representatives by simply refusing to go. The Constitution gives Windy Boy due process in a court of law. It does not entitle him to a Senate seat against the unified judgment of the chamber.
The second reads: “Limit Terms for Accountability. Impose term limits on public office to prevent entrenchment and ensure representatives remain accountable to voters.” Windy Boy has been in the Montana Legislature, in some seat, since 2003. Twenty-three years. He has cycled between the House and Senate so many times that his Wikipedia-style summary is just a list of chamber dates. The reason he believes he can outlast a 39-senator letter is the same reason he believes he can outlast every allegation since 2002: he has been in that building longer than most of the people writing the letter. Entrenchment is what lets a man treat a near-unanimous resignation demand as background noise. If Montana had real term limits on legislative service, this story might have ended in 2017, when the harassment was first substantiated.
The fifth reads: “Debate with Facts and Dignity. Conduct fact-based debates with respect. Acknowledge disagreements. Prohibit personal attacks and bad-faith tactics.” Calling a substantiated 2018 ethics complaint, an on-the-record accuser, and an underage abuse allegation “dirty politics” and “slanderous allegations” is bad-faith deflection. Jen Gross is a real former state senator with a real complaint that a real outside investigator substantiated in 2018. Brenda Russell is a real Pennsylvania woman whose underage daughter and niece are real. Calling those women political smears is not debate. It is the playbook.
Three principles, one senator, and one chair he will not vacate.
What the Record Actually Shows
Here is what is on the public record, all from named reporters at named outlets, none of it speculation.
In April 2026, Helena attorney Brian Miller, a Democrat running in the same congressional primary as Windy Boy, surfaced allegations by Brenda Russell, a Pennsylvania woman, that in July 2002 Windy Boy sent sexually explicit messages and nude webcam photos to her then-15-year-old daughter and her 15-year-old niece. Russell says the contact began on a family computer, that she warned Windy Boy in a phone call to leave the girls alone, and that he continued to send naked images afterward. She says the original encounter happened around a powwow at Fort Totten, North Dakota, where Windy Boy was the event emcee, and that he tried to get the teenagers to come to his hotel room at the Spirit Lake Lodge and Casino. Russell has been posting about it on her Facebook page since February 2026. Miller now represents her (Montana Free Press, April 16, Yellowstone Public Radio).
On May 8, 2026, former Montana state Sen. Jen Gross, a Billings Democrat who was the youngest member of the Montana Senate during her term, publicly attached her name to a 2018 sexual misconduct complaint she had filed anonymously against Windy Boy. The original complaint was investigated by Great Falls attorney Jean Faure. Faure’s March 2018 report substantiated the harassment, recommended discipline, and concluded, in language that has not aged a day, that “the offensive conduct is subtle but apparent. A pattern of these behaviors seems to be established.” Gross’s complaint covered texts Windy Boy sent her between August and October 2017, calling her “gorgeous” and “A wonderful sight for My Sore Eyes.” When she pushed back about boundaries, he replied, in writing, “Just, between you and me. You can step all over me and there are no boundaries.” The same Faure report also documented earlier inappropriate texts Windy Boy sent to a legislative staff member (Montana Free Press, May 8, Associated Press / MTPR 2019).
Windy Boy resigned his chairmanship of the State-Tribal Relations Committee in spring 2018 before the Republican House Speaker, Austin Knudsen, could remove him. Knudsen identified Windy Boy by name to the AP in 2019. No criminal charges were ever filed.
In May 2026, a former legislative staffer told reporters that Windy Boy had once shown her an explicit photo of himself (KTVH).
On May 13, 2026, Senate President Matt Regier (R-Kalispell) and Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers (D-Belgrade) issued a joint statement stripping Windy Boy of all interim committee assignments, including his seat on the School Funding Interim Commission. “Sen. Windy Boy still needs to do the right thing and completely resign from public office,” they wrote, citing “credible allegations dating back over two decades, including sexually explicit and harassing communication to minors and to legislative staff” (KLTZ).
On May 27, 2026, the bipartisan letter went out. Thirty-nine state senators, Republican and Democrat. “We recognize that you have a right to due process and the presumption of innocence,” the letter reads. “However, allegations of this nature, involving minors and abuse of position, carry serious implications for the credibility and functioning of the Legislature.” Four senators on the Ethics Committee did not sign so they could rule on him later. “This issue is not going to go away,” the letter continues, “and will undoubtedly continue to escalate the longer you choose to remain in office” (KTVH).
Windy Boy’s response, in a statement on May 6 when he reactivated his congressional campaign: “My enemies are making a lot of noise but just as before there have been no charges, no adjudication, this is all dirty politics, based upon rumors and slanderous allegations to influence election outcomes just weeks before voting begins.” He added that he has not “been afforded my constitutional rights to due process,” and that he is “innocent until proven guilty” (KTVH May 6).
That is the defense. There has been no court case, therefore there has been no wrongdoing. State Democratic Party Chair Shannon O’Brien answered it in plain English: “The credible allegations against Senator Jonathan Windy Boy are serious, longstanding, and disqualifying for public service.” Disqualifying does not require a courtroom. It requires a chamber and a conscience.
The chamber has spoken. The conscience is still missing.
Once Again
Here is what makes the Montana story so remarkable next to the Maine story.
In Maine, the Democratic Party leadership had every tool available to walk away from Graham Platner. They had the leader of their Senate caucus, the most famous progressive senators in the country, and the bully pulpit of the entire national party. They could have pulled the endorsement on the day the Nazi tattoo story broke. They could have pulled it on the day his wife’s report of the sexting trail was published. They could have pulled it after the Netanyahu tweet. They did not. The party stayed with the man because the seat was worth the man.
In Montana, the Democratic Party did the opposite. The state party chair called for resignation the day she learned of the allegations. The Senate Minority Leader called for resignation. The American Indian Caucus called for resignation. Thirty-nine of fifty senators called for resignation. The party did everything it is supposed to do. And it has not been enough, because the man in the seat does not have to listen.
That is the second failure of our two-party system, and almost nobody talks about it. The first failure, the Maine failure, is the one where the party protects the unfit candidate because the math says it should. The second failure, the Montana failure, is the one where the party tries to remove the unfit officeholder and cannot, because the rules of the chamber do not actually force a resignation when 78 percent of the chamber requests one. The senator goes home, ignores the letter, and shows up for the next floor vote.
Both failures end at the same place. The unfit man holds the seat. The voters who pay his salary watch it happen. The chamber writes a letter and the cameras move on.
The Republicans have spent ten years swallowing every disgrace that wore a red jersey. The Democrats spent yesterday and the day before that and the day before that defending a candidate with a Nazi unit tattoo. Today, the Democrats in Montana are doing the rare and honorable thing, demanding accountability from one of their own. Tomorrow, Windy Boy will still be a state senator, because nothing in the Montana Constitution allows 39 of his colleagues to force him out.
Once again, our parties have failed us. One party has lost the ability to say “this candidate is not qualified” out loud. The other party can say it, can vote it, can sign it, can publish it, and still cannot remove the man from the seat. The first failure makes you angry. The second failure makes you tired, because it tells you that even when the system gets the diagnosis right, the system cannot reliably finish the treatment.
We have to save our democracy before it is too late, because the alternative is what we have right now. A Maine Democrat with a Nazi tattoo on track to be his party’s nominee for the United States Senate. A Montana Democrat with two decades of substantiated and credible misconduct allegations refusing to leave the state Senate seat 39 of his colleagues asked him to vacate.
One of them is asking for your vote. The other is daring you to take his seat away. Both of them are still in the game, and the voters are now the only people left with the power to end either story.
That is the wave.
The CenterWave is published by CenterVoter, the home of the Centercratic Party. Visit centercratic.party | centervoter.com