It’s just under one year out from the next general election in Montana, and efforts are already underway by the state Republican Party to elbow out candidates it deems not conservative enough and make space for hardliners.

At the center of that work is a new group assembled by the recently elected leadership of the Montana Republican Party called the Conservative Governance Committee. And while the new stewards of the state's majority party contended in emails and interviews in recent weeks that the committee's work is little more than common political practice, its members and procedures have to date been largely kept from the public and Republican candidates themselves.

The Montana State News Bureau confirmed five members of the clandestine committee and spoke with a dozen Republicans

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