Kathleen Williams

Kathleen Williams (born February 16, 1961) is an American politician from Montana.

A member of the Democratic Party, she served in the nonpartisan Environmental Quality Council of the Montana Legislature and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Williams was born February 16, 1961, in a United States Army hospital in California.

Her father was a U.S. Army soldier who served in World War II; much of her childhood was spent as a "military brat".

When Williams was 11 years old, her 49-year-old mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Williams assisted her father in caring for her mother, who died when Williams was in her teens.

Williams enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley.

Taking her father's advice, she intended to earn a degree in business administration.

After taking a class in forestry, she realized she was far more interested in natural resource policy.

She switched majors, and graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Science in natural resource economics.

After holding a series of jobs, Williams enrolled at Colorado State University where she received a master's degree in recreation resources.

Her graduate thesis analyzed how much water was needed to support recreation on a wild and scenic river.

Williams worked for a time for the United States Forest Service as well as several private conservation and recreation organizations in the west.

She moved to Montana in 1995 to take a position as nonpartisan lead staffer at the Environmental Quality Council (EQC), a bipartisan committee of the Montana Legislature.

She focused on mining policy, recreation policy, and water quality issues for the committee.

As an EQC staffer, she also served as a member of the staff of the Montana House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources, where she took the lead on water policy issues.

Williams left the Environmental Quality Council after four years and took a job in 1999 as a Water Program Manager with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Her work focused on improving water flows and water quality in streams with low water flows.

Williams served as the department's representative on the Governor's Drought Advisory Committee in 2003.

She left the department in 2004 to become executive director of the Instream Flow Council, a nonprofit association of provincial, state, and territorial fish and wildlife agencies in the United States and Canada.

Williams also founded and managed Jetway Geographer, which published natural history guides and distributed them on airplanes.

In 2007, the Montana state legislature adjourned without passing a state budget, deadlocked over how to spend a $1.4 billion surplus.

A budget was passed only after a three-day special session.

Angered by the legislature's inaction, Williams decided to run for office.

In 2010, she was elected to the Montana House of Representatives and served three two-year terms before retiring.

Williams was first elected to the Montana Legislature in 2010.

She ran in House district 65, a heavily Democratic district which covered the southeast part of the city of Bozeman, Montana and which included Montana State University (MSU).

Williams considered running for office as an independent, but chose to run as a Democrat.

Three-term incumbent Brady Wiseman (D) was retiring from office, and Williams faced Bethan Letiecq in the Democratic primary election.

Letiecq emphasized her experience lobbying the state legislature on grandparental rights and immigration, as well as her work for the General Accountability Office, a federal agency.

She proposed a windfall profits tax on oil companies to fund improvements in education.

Williams emphasized her work for the state legislature and state agencies, arguing she was better qualified to achieve compromise when contentious issues arose.

She said she was not a single-issue candidate, pointing to her work with the Montana League of Women Voters on education and healthcare.

She said her work in the legislature would focus on improving Montana's economy by promoting sustainable industries and on developing a state energy policy.

Williams won the primary election by a vote of 255 to 164 (60.8 to 39.2 percent).

Williams faced Republican Nick Mahan in the general election.

Mahan, who worked servicing magnetic resonance imaging equipment, proposed a 3-to-5 percent across-the-board cut to the state budget, elimination of the business equipment tax, and a limit on the number bills that could be introduced in each 90-day legislative session.

He portrayed Williams as in favor of more bureaucracy and higher taxes.

Williams was endorsed by Wiseman, and focused her campaign on the economy, education, and the environment.

In 2018 and 2020, Williams ran, unsuccessfully, as the Democratic nominee for Montana's at-large seat in the United States House of Representatives.