Montana’s incumbent Republican Governor Greg Gianforte revealed earnings exceeding $23 million over the past four years up to 2022, drawn predominantly from investments, as per tax documents disclosed by his campaign. Gianforte, a former tech executive vying for a second term, previously spent over $6 million of his personal funds on an unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in 2016. Following a successful bid for Congress in a special election in 2017, Gianforte triumphed in the governor’s race four years ago by investing more than $7.5 million to defeat Democrat Mike Cooney by a significant margin, based on campaign finance filings.
Challenging Gianforte in the upcoming election is Democrat Ryan Busse, a former executive in the firearms industry. Gianforte has already contributed approximately $47,000 to his own campaign during the current election cycle, the records indicate. The governor’s tax returns reveal that a substantial portion of his income since 2019 has been generated from investment returns, in addition to his annual governor’s salary of about $120,000.
In a statement, Gianforte’s spokesperson Anna Marian Block mentioned that the decision to disclose the tax returns was rooted in a “commitment to transparency” with the people of Montana. Glimpses from previous disclosures indicate that since 2005, Gianforte has amassed over $265 million in income, with a significant portion of this sum resulting from the sale of his Bozeman-based company, RightNow Technologies, to Oracle Corp. for $1.8 billion.
Despite attempts in 2020 by both Democrats and Republican primary contenders to paint Gianforte’s substantial wealth as a drawback, their efforts proved fruitless. On the other hand, Busse’s campaign has chosen not to release his tax returns for public scrutiny.
