Montana elects five Public Service Commissioners.
They approve the electric and gas rates printed on your bill.
Eastern Montana votes for District 1 on November 3.
I am Angeline Cheek, and I am running because the people paying the bills should not be the last ones to hear how those bills get set.
Montana power rates have risen more than 25 percent recently.
Metered electric and gas customers under PSC rates, about 60 percent of the market. They cannot shop for another provider.
Announced data center load, against a Montana system that runs about 750 average megawatts today.
Announced data center commitments in Montana total roughly double the load of the entire system that serves us now. I am not against new industry. I am against building it on the backs of people who already pay these bills.
No more approvals until Montana has rules. A separate customer class for very large loads, cost responsibility that stays with the customer causing the cost, and financial guarantees for what happens when an operator walks away.
Rates have climbed more than 25 percent and the people paying cannot take their business elsewhere. I will hold rate requests to hard proof of need and protect the households least able to absorb another increase.
Right now utility contracts with very large customers can stay private while the rate impact is public. Deliberations belong in the open, on the record, and free of corporate influence.
District 1 covers most of eastern Montana, 20 state house districts, and four tribal nations. Energy and telecommunications decisions get made in Helena and felt on gravel roads. I will bring those hearings out here.
Angeline Cheek is from the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana. She has spent eighteen years in Indigenous advocacy and community organizing, the kind of work that means knowing which families lose power first when a bill comes due and which roads flood before a county meeting gets cancelled.
She holds a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, is pursuing a master's in psychology, and is near completion of a second bachelor's in elementary education. She won the Democratic primary unopposed on June 2, 2026 with 12,294 votes.
District 1 is the largest Public Service Commission district in Montana by geography. Gas money and yard signs are most of the budget. Anything you can give goes straight into reaching voters who have never been asked about their power bill.
Tell us where you are and what you can do. Signs travel with volunteers, so a name in a small town is worth as much to us as an hour of phone calls.
Or reach the campaign directly: angelinecheek4psc1@gmail.com · 406-514-1786
The Public Service Commission race sits far enough down the ballot that people miss it. Check your registration, find your polling place, and know where to look on the page.
