Meet Matt

Citizen Legislator

I believe in the average citizen’s ability to best represent the people, not more lawyers and bankers. My parents owned a weekly newspaper, where I got my first job as a kid taking pictures for the press.

Small Business Entrepreneur

After working at the family newspaper, my first job out of high school was as a regional seafood salesman, driving a truck of fresh fish across a three state region from restaurant to restaurant. I worked there for about three years until I knew that I had accomplished as much as I could as a 21 year old selling fish. So, I did what any sensible kid with a stable job would do, I quit and moved to Houston, Texas. I worked as a cook, until I convinced a local oil and gas valve fitting company to hire me. I stuck around in Houston through the oil boom and bust, until 1983 when I packed up to join an industrial sales company.

I worked with my family as we built a local real estate brokerage and development company. And that is where I worked for the next decade, building the business into a top performing real estate development firm.

I was bogged down in real estate and the hustle and bustle that comes with life, when, in the early 90’s, I came to eastern Montana on a hunting trip at the urging of a friend who felt it was God’s country and the best place in the world to clear your head. So, I hopped in my truck and drove across the country.

Montana Farming and Ranching

When I first entered the state of Montana something truly profound happened to me. Crossing the North Dakota-Montana border I saw a speed limit sign that read, "Trucks 65 Miles Per Hour, all others reasonable and prudent." I’m sure you all remember that by gone era here in Montana.

For someone who grew up fighting the inherent liberal socialism of the east coast, such an individualistic attitude toward society was the biggest breath of fresh air I had ever seen. I was never the same, and after that trip I knew that though I had been born in Maryland, Montana was where I truly belonged. So I worked on handing over my business to my younger brother and purchased a ranch right here in Glendive. I uprooted my family to move out here with my wonderful wife Jean and our three sons.

When we moved out here, I worked the land, waking up at dawn to work as a farm hand and as a ranch hand. To this day, when I am not serving the people of Senate District 19, I am digging fence post holes and working the allies.

A Passion Defending Liberty

Now, I have lived here and called Montana my home for a long time. This is the place my family and I chose to live because the best of Montana represented the best of what we as a family believe in: God, liberty, and an individual’s right to rule himself without the pressing hand of an intrusive government.

Those basic and fundamental beliefs are what pushed me to run for the State House in Glendive years ago and what drove me to run for the State Senate two years back.

I have stayed involved because I fear for our future and believe we must do something to stem the tide of the oncoming storm. There is the war going on for the heart and soul of our country. A war between the belief that government is best which governs most or the government espoused by President Reagan who taught that government is best which governs least.