By Micah Drew DAILY MONTANAN
Bozeman Democratic Rep. Ed Stafman resigned from the Legislature on Nov. 1, effective immediately.
The 71-year-old former trial attorney and Rabbi Emeritus was first elected in 2020 and served his third Legislative session in Helena this year, representing House District 59.
In his resignation letter to the Montana Secretary of State on Nov. 1, Stafman said serving in the Legislature was “one of the greatest honors of my life.
“This decision was not made lightly,” he wrote. “Public service is a calling, but it also requires sacrifice. And at this point in my life, I feel a strong pull toward my family — especially welcoming and spending time with my new grandchild. I believe this is where I am most needed now.”
Stafman told the Daily Montanan on Thursday that opting to step down during the interim came after he made the main decision not to run for a fourth full term.
“My interim work is relatively speaking, minimal,” said Stafman, who was appointed to the Law and Justice Interim Committee. “It’s not something I need to be in there for the big fight or something like that. I think it’s mostly sensible stuff that’s going to have mostly bipartisan support. I kind of felt I’d served 98% of my term.”
He added by allowing a new representative to be appointed in the upcoming weeks, they would be able to start their work in an interim committee and then he have a leg up going into the 2027 session, assuming they ran and won the seat.
Stafman won his seat during the 2024 election with 63% of the vote.
The Gallatin County Commissioners will pick select Stafman’s replacement from a shortlist provided by the Gallatin County Democratic Central Committee
“As an attorney with a history of standing up for civil rights, we could always rely on Ed to fight for constitutionality and the rule of law,” House Minority Leader Katie Sullivan, D-Missoula, said in a text. “He also brought his experience as a rabbi, and a sharp sense of humor, to his floor speeches and committee debates. We will miss his expertise and his willingness to ruffle feathers in the MT legislature.“
Stafman said he thought of himself as a moral compass in the Legislature, and he told the Daily Montanan since his resignation over the weekend, he had been “inundated with emails and texts from Republican legislators saying they’ll miss that aspect of me being there.”
Serving in the minority while Republicans held a supermajority, and then near-supermajority, Stafman said much of his work in the Capital was playing defense, away from the debates on the House floor.
“A lot of the work is behind the scenes so that the public and even the press doesn’t know quite how a bill was defeated,” he said. “I played quite a role behind the scenes in marshaling the resources and people to defeat some really bad legislation.”
While few of his ideas garnered support from his peers – just one of his 17 introduced bills in 2025 made it to Gov. Greg Gianforte’s desk, and was subsequently vetoed — Stafman said there’s a long game that needs to be played. Bills have to be introduced in multiple sessions to move them through the process — first they might die in committee, then they might die on the floor, and eventually they’ll make it to the other chamber.
“Success doesn’t necessarily mean completing the task, but moving it forward,” Stafman said. “We moved a lot of things forward, and I hope others will pick up the ball and keep it rolling.”
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated with comments from Rep. Sullivan.
