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Democrat · Montana House, district 59

Serving since Dec 22, 2025MT 2025–26 session

Portrait of Katie Fire Thunder, rendered as a two-tone print
Official portrait
79%
of itemized money from Montana donors, in the bottom quarter of State House Democrats

79% of the itemized money from individuals in the 2026 cycle came from donors with an address in Montana. Ranks 1547th of 1,983, where 1st is the highest share. 47 itemized donors.

Only donors who give more than $200 are reported with an address, so this is the share of that itemized money from donors living in Montana, ranked among State House Democrats. Small gifts are not counted either way. Candidates running statewide or for federal office often draw more money from out of state.

At a glance

3 measures against State House Democrats. Thunder reported $10.9K in the 2026 cycle, in the bottom quarter of State House Democrats (median $40.4K). Thunder sits at −0.72 on the CSIP scale, more liberal than 65% of State House Democrats.

The measures on which Thunder sits furthest from the middle of State House Democrats, each against the same group, with the CSIP score when there is one. Every number is explained in its own section below.

From Montana, 2026

79%

Of itemized individual dollars · ranks 1547th of 1,983 State House Democrats

Itemized, 2026

$10.9K

State House Democrats’ median $40.4K · ranks 1586th of 2,082

CSIP ideology

−0.72

More liberal than 65% of State House Democrats · ± 0.18

Statements

No statements in this window

In office since

2025

Peer group: State House Democrats. Rank 1 is the highest value in the group; the thick bar is Thunder, the thin grey bar the peer average. The headline is the measure on which Thunder is most unusual among peers (Methods, §08).

Back to topNext: What politicians say

What Thunder says

No statements for the MT 2025–26 session.No classified statements (posts, press releases, newsletters, floor speeches) in this time window.

Back to topNext: Policy

Policy

No policy statements for the MT 2025–26 session.No classified statements (posts, press releases, newsletters, floor speeches) in this time window.

Back to topNext: Ideology

Ideology

Thunder sits at −0.72 on the CSIP scale, left of 0, more liberal than 65% of State House Democrats. Approximate range −0.90 to −0.54, which understates the uncertainty; from 47 donors and no roll calls.

CSIP, the lab’s Common-Space Ideal Point, places every official, federal and state, on one left–right scale, estimated from roll-call votes, who gives money to whom, and the text of statements. Negative is left of 0, positive right of it; 0 is the centre of the scale, not a definition of “moderate”.

−0.72

CSIP ideal point

Approximate range −0.90 to −0.54. From 47 donors and no roll calls. Run 2026-10-25T215945. Blue is left of 0, red right of 0.

← More liberalMore conservative →0Thunder −0.7State House Democrats −0.6Montana House +0.1All State House +0.1

The outlined dot is Thunder, coloured by its side of 0 (blue left, red right, deeper further out); the bar through it is the approximate range (±1.96 standard errors), which understates the uncertainty; the grey ticks below are the medians of Thunder’s groups. 0 is the centre of the scale, not “moderate” by definition.

What this means, and what it doesn’t

The score summarises how an official votes, who funds them and how they talk, relative to everyone else. It does not grade positions as good or bad, and two officials with the same score can differ on any single issue. The ± range is 1.96 standard errors, which understates the uncertainty: scores whose ranges overlap may not differ at all, and even scores whose ranges do not overlap may not differ.

Where Thunder sits

Every official in each group, on the CSIP scale

−2.0−1.00.0+1.0+2.0← More liberalMore conservative →State House Democratsmedian −0.6Thunder −0.7Montana Housemedian +0.1All State Housemedian +0.1
Show the data
Thunder's CSIP score of −0.72 placed against State House Democrats, Montana House, All State House.
GroupOfficialsMedianShare left of Thunder
State House Democrats2392−0.635%
Montana House100+0.16%
All State House5324+0.116%
How to read the strips

Every small dot is one official on the same scale, coloured by its own score (blue left of 0, red right of 0, grey at 0, deeper further out) and spread up and down only to keep dots apart; where a group is crowded the dots overlap, and darker patches mean more officials. The large outlined dot is Thunder in every row; the rule is each group’s median. The table under the figure gives the share of each group to the left of Thunder.

Back to topNext: Money

Money

Thunder reported $10.9K in the 2026 cycle, 27% of the State House Democrats’ median of $40.4K. State filings report no small-donation total. 79% of itemized individual money came from Montana.

Campaign money from state campaign-finance filings, as aggregates only; the lab never shows an individual donor. Campaigns must report by name every person who gives them more than $200 in a cycle (“itemized”); smaller gifts are reported only as one total (“unitemized”), so donor counts, donor states, employers and occupations describe itemized donors only. State filings report no small-gift total, so these figures add up itemized contributions only.

$10.9K

itemized in the 2026 cycle

From 47 itemized donors. State House Democrats’ median $40.4K.

Where the money came from

Each square is one percent of itemized contributions in the 2026 cycle.

Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)Individuals (itemized): $9,967 (91.3%)PACs and other committees: $700 (6.4%)PACs and other committees: $700 (6.4%)PACs and other committees: $700 (6.4%)PACs and other committees: $700 (6.4%)PACs and other committees: $700 (6.4%)PACs and other committees: $700 (6.4%)PACs and other committees: $700 (6.4%)Party committees: $250 (2.3%)Party committees: $250 (2.3%)
  • Individuals (itemized)91 squares$9,967
  • PACs and other committees7 squares$700
  • Party committees2 squares$250
Show the data
Sources of Thunder's money, 2026 cycle, one square per percent
SourceAmountShare
Individuals (itemized)$9,96791.3%
PACs and other committees$7006.4%
Party committees$2502.3%
What this means, and what it doesn’t

Totals say how much a campaign took in, not how it was spent, and they rise sharply when a seat is up for election; compare cycles with that in mind.

Receipts by cycle

Itemized contributions, 2026 to 2026. The grey line is the State House Democrats’ median for 2026.

2026 cycle: $10.9K$10.9K2026State House Democrats median $40.4K
Show the data
Thunder's receipts by cycle against the 2026 State House Democrats median.
ItemValue
2026 cycle$10.9K

Top donor states, 2026

Itemized contributions by donor state. 79% came from Montana.

  1. Montana$7,827
  2. Washington$750
  3. California$520
  4. Texas$470
  5. South Carolina$200

Small donations

State filings report no total for small gifts.

Not reported in state filings.

Where itemized donors live

Individuals who gave more than $200, by donor state

Alaska: no dataAKMaine: no dataMEVermont: no dataVTNew Hampshire: no dataNHWashington: $750WAIdaho: no dataIDMontana: $7,827MTNorth Dakota: no dataNDMinnesota: no dataMNIllinois: no dataILWisconsin: no dataWIMichigan: no dataMINew York: $100NYRhode Island: no dataRIMassachusetts: no dataMAOregon: $100ORNevada: no dataNVWyoming: no dataWYSouth Dakota: no dataSDIowa: no dataIAIndiana: no dataINOhio: no dataOHPennsylvania: no dataPANew Jersey: no dataNJConnecticut: no dataCTCalifornia: $520CAUtah: no dataUTColorado: no dataCONebraska: no dataNEMissouri: no dataMOKentucky: no dataKYWest Virginia: no dataWVVirginia: no dataVAMaryland: no dataMDDelaware: no dataDEArizona: no dataAZNew Mexico: no dataNMKansas: no dataKSArkansas: no dataARTennessee: no dataTNNorth Carolina: no dataNCSouth Carolina: $200SCDistrict of Columbia: no dataDCOklahoma: no dataOKLouisiana: no dataLAMississippi: no dataMSAlabama: no dataALGeorgia: no dataGAHawaii: no dataHITexas: $470TXFlorida: no dataFL
Show the data
Thunder's itemized individual contributions by donor state, 2026 cycle
StateValue
Montana$7,827
Washington$750
California$520
Texas$470
South Carolina$200
New York$100
Oregon$100
AlaskaNo data
MaineNo data
VermontNo data
New HampshireNo data
IdahoNo data
North DakotaNo data
MinnesotaNo data
IllinoisNo data
WisconsinNo data
MichiganNo data
Rhode IslandNo data
MassachusettsNo data
NevadaNo data
WyomingNo data
South DakotaNo data
IowaNo data
IndianaNo data
OhioNo data
PennsylvaniaNo data
New JerseyNo data
ConnecticutNo data
UtahNo data
ColoradoNo data
NebraskaNo data
MissouriNo data
KentuckyNo data
West VirginiaNo data
VirginiaNo data
MarylandNo data
DelawareNo data
ArizonaNo data
New MexicoNo data
KansasNo data
ArkansasNo data
TennesseeNo data
North CarolinaNo data
District of ColumbiaNo data
OklahomaNo data
LouisianaNo data
MississippiNo data
AlabamaNo data
GeorgiaNo data
HawaiiNo data
FloridaNo data
47

itemized donors

People who gave more than $200

79%

from Montana

Of itemized individual dollars

How to read the map

Every state the same size. Darker states gave more itemized money; hatched states had no itemized donors; the outlined state is Montana. Gifts of $200 or less carry no address and are left out.

Top donor occupations

Itemized, 2026 cycle.

  1. RETIRED$5,220 17 donors

Top committees

PAC and committee contributions, 2026 cycle.

  1. MHAPAC (MONTANA HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION)$450
  2. CAROLS LIST$250
  3. GALLATIN COUNTY DEMOCRATS$250

Top employers

Itemized, 2026 cycle.

  1. WILLIAMSWORKS$300 3 donors

Aggregates only. Individual donors are never named.

Back to topNext: Votes

Votes

No roll-call votes for the MT 2025–26 session.No roll-call votes are recorded for this official in this time window.

Back to topNext: Legislation

Legislation

No bills for the MT 2025–26 session.No sponsored or cosponsored bills are recorded for this official in this time window.

Back to topNext: Online

Online

The lab crawls Thunder’s official and campaign websites (weekly for Congress, monthly for the states) and keeps every page’s text, so changes can be read later; it also records social accounts and describes the images Thunder posts with a vision model.

Websites

No websites are tracked for this official.

How to read the counts

“Pages crawled” is the size of the site at the last crawl; “changes in 90 days” counts pages whose text differed from the previous crawl. Sites change for many routine reasons, such as new press releases, so a high count is not by itself notable.

Social accounts

No social accounts on file.

Images Thunder posted

No images from Thunder’s posts have been described.

About the descriptions

Written by a vision model and may be wrong. Open the post to see the original. Five are shown; the toggle shows the rest.

State floor speeches

No transcribed state floor speeches are matched to this legislator yet.

Floor speeches

Transcribed from chamber video or captions by the lab. They are not classified for kinds of statement.

Back to topNext: Methods and sources

Methods and sources

How this page was made. Profile built Oct 28, 2026; site last built Oct 28, 2026. Every number on the page is computed from the sources listed here, by the same rules for every official; nothing is written by hand.

The headline

The headline is the measure on which Thunder is most unusual among State House Democrats, chosen by one rule for every official of every party. The candidates are the rate of each kind of statement and of extreme labels, party unity, attendance, the small-donor share, the in-state share and total receipts of the latest cycle, the share of sponsored bills that got out of committee, talk-to-bills agreement, and the CSIP score’s place within the party group.

The builder ranks every measure within the same peer group the page compares it with, and writes each official’s percentile: the share of the group below the value, ties counting half, so 0.5 is the median and a value shared by many never ranks first. A measure’s score is how far that percentile sits from the median (0 in the middle, 0.5 at either end), and the highest score leads if it is above 0.25, outside the middle half of the group. Scores within 0.03 of each other are a tie, broken in this order: votes against the party majority, kinds of statement, ideology, roll calls missed, small donations, in-state money, legislation, agreement, extreme labels, receipts.

A measure counts only with at least 200 statements, 100 roll calls or 5 sponsored bills behind it and a peer group of at least 10. Two things never lead: high party unity or attendance, where most members sit, and a high rate of a kind of statement backed by fewer than 10 statements. When nothing qualifies, the headline is a neutral fact instead: statements classified, or years in office. The wording always names the direction (“in the bottom 5% of …”, “votes against the majority of …”).

Identifiers

Profile id
dabda7b3-b4b9-485d-aabd-9ceab215232b
Open States
ocd-person/dabda7b3-b4b9-485d-aabd-9ceab215232b

Bulk files with the same data for every official:

Freshness of this profile’s data

  • What politicians sayOct 27, 20261 days agoMembers of Congress: tweets since 2017; press releases, newsletters and floor speeches since 2022. State legislators: tweets since May 2024. Governors: tweets since January 2025. Labels from an LLM classifier.
  • Roll calls (state)Oct 21, 20267 days agoOpen States floor roll calls, 2019 on (none for AK and MO).
  • Bills (state)Oct 28, 2026todayOpen States bills and sponsors, 2019 on; stages from roll calls.
  • Campaign money (state)no dateState campaign-finance agencies, 2019 on; aggregates only.
  • Ideology (CSIP)Oct 25, 20263 days agoCommon-Space Ideal Points (CSIP), current validated run.
  • WebsitesOct 25, 20263 days agoWeekly crawls of federal sites since April 2026; monthly state crawls since June 2026.
  • State floor speechesOct 21, 20267 days agoState floor speech turns (published transcripts and captions), 2020 on; not LLM-classified.

How the measures work

What politicians say
Every post, press release, newsletter and congressional floor speech is read by a language model and marked for personal attacks, policy criticism, policy discussion, bipartisanship and credit claiming. A statement can be in several. Rates are shares of statements in the window. The methods paper.
Extreme labels
A statement has an extreme label when it calls a politician, party or policy “far left”, “far right”, “MAGA”, “extreme”, “radical”, “woke”, “fascist” or “communist”. The target is who the label is aimed at.
Policy areas and agreement
Statements and bills share 25 Congressional Research Service policy areas (state bills are assigned by a language model). Agreement is 1 − Jensen–Shannon distance between the two distributions, shown with at least 20 policy statements and 5 bills.
Ideology (CSIP)
Common-Space Ideal Points place federal and state officials on one left–right scale, estimated jointly from roll calls, campaign contributions and the text of statements, with standard errors. Only a validated run is shown. The methods paper.
Campaign money
Campaigns report by name only donors who give more than $200 in a cycle; smaller gifts are reported as one total. Federal totals and the small-donor share come from the FEC’s financial summaries of each campaign committee. Donor counts, donor states, employers and occupations cover itemized donors only. State filings report no small-gift totals, so state figures are itemized only. The lab never publishes donor names.
Votes and key votes
Attendance, party unity and the count of votes against the majority of an official’s own party come from roll calls (Voteview for Congress, chamber records for the states). Key votes are final-passage or override votes that became law, were decided by under 10%, saw at least 10% of a party vote against its majority, or concerned one of the 25 bills most mentioned in officials’ statements.
Peers and ranks
Comparisons are with the same party, chamber and level (for example House Democrats); state legislators are compared within their state and chamber for votes. Every comparison names its group. Rank 1 is the highest value in the group; tied values share the average of their ranks, and the percentile is the share of the group below the value, ties counting half.

America’s Political Pulse · Polarization Research Lab

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