Ellie Boldman, Lucifer, and the Breaking of the Liberal Mind

When I attended a recent neighborhood meet and greet in Missoula, I allowed my contact information to be used for follow up, which came shortly thereafter as an invitation to participate in a training put on by an innocuous sounding organization named Common Good Missoula (CGM). Here’s a screenshot:

“Should I go?” I asked myself. After some digging and once I saw the name of Missoula’s notorious state legislator—Ellie Boldman—attached to Common Good Missoula’s inaugural event held at the Missoula County Fairgrounds in the Spring of 2022, I knew the answer. What follows is some of the most disturbing evidence yet that Missoula’s once-rising Montana Democratic Party star is currently going supernova, and—so far—I’m the only local journalist taking the risk to report on it.

“Are you going to the Common Good Missoula training?” I asked the biracial couple standing near the Thai food truck parked outside First United Methodist Church, host of the CGM training event.

“Yes, are you?” The white man asked me.

“I’m thinking about it,” I replied. “I’m writing about an out-of-control State Senator connected to this organization, but I don’t think I can handle going through a whole training.” I walked away before the silence got awkward.

Inside the church I asked one of the organizers if Ellie would be participating.

“I don’t think so,” the well-meaning woman said.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” I said. “Since she doesn’t have that director job at the Senior Center anymore, I figured she would have the time.” The woman, to her credit, kept her smile firmly in place as she gave me a closer look to see what kind of problem I might be. You see, Ellie Boldman unceremoniously resigned from the Senior Center last month and it went largely unreported in local media.

“Yes, I don’t think the Senior Center was a good fit for her,” the woman said.

“Any job where there are vulnerable populations being served isn’t a good fit, and I say that having worked for her at the Poverello Center, and now I’m trying to expose her,” I replied.

“Oh,” said the woman as I scanned the material on the table and grabbed a few pieces of community organizing propaganda.

My favorite piece of propaganda, titled “How We Work,” describes the five steps of community change I was teased in the email, starting with “Listen and build relational power”, then “Discern and Plan”, followed by “Research and Power Analysis”, “Act”, and—finally—”Celebrate and Evaluate.” Yeah, I said to myself, this sounds too tedious to attend without risking an impolite outburst.

Common Good Missoula sprouted from the Missoula Interfaith Collaborative, and CGM’s 2022 coming out party featured Ellie Boldman, a Montana State Legislator who started her Montana political career while working as the director of the Poverello Center, Western Montana’s largest homeless shelter and soup kitchen.

I was quite familiar with the Missoula Interfaith Collaborative (MIC) since Casey Dunning had started organizing as MIC alongside paid work I was doing at the Poverello Center with the Homeless Outreach Program—a program I helped the shelter launch in 2010. Casey also attended the Presbyterian church made famous by Hollywood’s adaptation of A River Runs Through It—the same church my parents attend. With so much of this “good” organizing work focused on the faith-based community, how in the hell (pun intended) could the Biblical adversary Lucifer be involved, you might ask?

I’m not being unnecessarily provocative here. Saul Alinsky, the infamous Chicago community organizer who helped seed the rise of Obama, established the Industrial Areas Foundation, of which Common Good Missoula is a member of its Pacific regional arm. For those unaware of Alinsky’s admiration for the world’s “first radical,” Lucifer, here’s Alinsky’s quote from his book Rules for Radicals—the Bible for leftist organizers—in its full context:

“Lest we forget at least an over the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins—or which is which), the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer.”

Saul Alinsky. Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.

Did anyone at this training know that Common Good Missoula is a part of the Pacific Industrial Areas Foundation? And, if they did know this history, did they “give a shit” about it?

I don’t usually use profanity in my freelance articles for Western Montana News, but “giving a shit” is an actual political slogan being run by Forward Montana. Forward Montana, established in 2004, claims to be a youth-advocacy organization helping to promote the interests of young people in Montana. For the purposes of this piece, my contention is that Forward Montana embodies the dark spirit of inversion I associate with that “radical” that Saul Alinsky gives credit to. If anyone finds the topic of suicide to be triggering, please be advised that is where this article is unfortunately going.

What’s the opposite of helping someone? Hurting them, obviously. And what is the purpose of Forward Montana? According to their website, “to transform government and communities to be just, sustainable, and equitable while working toward a future where Montana celebrates and reflects the diversity of our generation.” If this long string of words doesn’t resonate, let me provide my interpretation: “Forward Montana seeks to exploit the general ignorance of the youth vote with emotionally-charged language—like the weaponized anecdotes of identity politics—in order to further an agenda that actually serves power instead of challenging it.“

Well, I have anecdotes too, and the anecdotal story of Catherine Virginia Tooley Shepherd, former Operations Coordinator for Forward Montana, is what I’ll be concluding this piece with. Catherine’s story exemplifies how impressionable young people can be conned into thinking they’re fighting fascism while, in reality, they are merely perpetuating their own mutated form of it in the guise of cancel culture, which Catherine experienced the ultimate manifestation of before her life ended tragically via a drug overdose.

According to multiple sources, including the longest serving Mayor of Billings and Catherine’s uncle, Chuck Tooley, Catherine’s idealism ran into a serious problem, and that problem had a name: Ellie Boldman. The long-simmering rumor, recently given some public attention in a Reddit thread, has Catherine involved in an extra-marital affair with Ellie’s husband, Tyler. When Ellie discovered this affair, she allegedly went scorched earth against Catherine, and the result is that a young woman is no longer alive.

Tooley told me on the phone that Catherine’s mother had a long conversation with Ellie, which appears to be the reason no further action has been taken by Catherine’s family to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again—which, if the stuff I’m not writing about is true—it most certainly will.

To emphasize this tragic loss—and the esteem Forward Montana held for Catherine—here’s a portion of Catherine’s obituary:

Forward Montana, an organization devoted to getting young people involved in politics, provided a perfect work home for Catherine’s talents and passion. Starting with supervising door-to-door pollsters, she progressed to become Operations Coordinator. She kept finances in order, did the political filing and was a valuable member of the leadership team. (See: forwardmontanafoundation.org/goodbye-catherine) Catherine is survived by her mother, Sue Tooley, her brother Creath Shepard, her uncle and aunt, Chuck and Joanie Tooley, cousins Marni and Jim Edmiston, Deby and Dave Daniels, Larry and Marian Tooley, half-siblings Susan Starcevich, Jim Shepard, Bob Shepard and their children, many other well-loved relations from the Tooley, Wainman, and Shepard families in various parts of the country, the Sisterhood of the Mother of Finn, numerous friends, and her fur-love Finn.

It’s not realistic, or appropriate, to expect a grieving family to be responsible for holding someone like Ellie Boldman accountable for her actions. When you commit a crime—like Ellie did when she operated a motor vehicle while significantly intoxicated in Lewis and Clark County—cops and county attorneys are the ones who get public dollars to ensure the law is equitably enforced.

When it’s worse than an isolated criminal act—like, say, a pattern of behavior—one might hope the media would provide some accountability. Nationally, that didn’t happen with President Joe Biden, so a few shameless media vermin, like Chuck Todd, have recently scurried from their Trump survival bunkers to blame—wait for it—Democrats for not telling them, the media, that the man with access to the nuclear codes was senile.

If you don’t believe the craven audacity of this cowardly deflection, here’s Chuck—the stenographer of political talking points—telling the American people where he thinks our attention should be “laser-focused”:

“So I do think this scandal should be more laser-focused on the Democratic party. I think the press is, again, I always look at the criticism of the press here—through the person that’s making the criticism and I think in some ways, there’s almost an eagerness to blame the press without looking at actually who should be blamed here—and it’s the leadership and frankly the members of the Biden administration and the leadership of the Democratic party—who, they’re the ones that lied.”

Chuck Todd appearing on Piers Morgan Uncensored. May 30, 2025.

If the scope of Ellie Boldman’s pattern of behavior ever got wider traction than a citizen journalist blowing the whistle on her role perpetuating the scam of the Homeless Industrial Complex, I can imagine the Missoula Current Editor Martin Kidston lamenting how none of his former peers in the Montana Democratic Party told him explicitly that Ellie was a clear and present danger to vulnerable populations in the same way a wolf would be a clear and present danger to chickens if elected to run the operations of the local chicken coop.

The reason Ellie Boldman can allegedly bully a young woman into committing suicide while she worked at a political organization intended to help young people, not harm them, is the same reason mindless slogans of “Saving Democracy” are still emanating from the mouths of left-leaning do-gooders: the liberal mind is totally broken, and our legacy media have been too busy turning the word “conservative” into a pejorative to notice.

If the people who get paid to report on what’s happening in our community want to suddenly start doing their job in regards to Ellie Boldman (formerly Ellie Hill, then Ellie Smith), I have some questions worth pursuing. Here’s a few to get any would-be journalists started:

1. Has Ellie ever had complaints filed against her for her billing practices as a lawyer?
2. Did Ellie offer expedited Cannabis licensing services due to her husband’s job within the industry and her own position as a lawyer?
3. Why did Ellie resign from the Senior Center?
4. Why did Ellie resign from the Poverello Center?

And why do people who know the answers to some of these questions, but remain silent (like Eran Pehan, Missoula’s Director of Community Planning, Development & Innovation) get cushy jobs, while those who speak up, like this citizen journalist, get a heaping pile of lawfare?

In his bid to avoid accountability, Chuck Todd said a journalist is only as good has his sources. Surprisingly, I’m not in disagreement with that statement. Beyond my own direct knowledge, the many sources I’ve spoken to over the years have consistently contextualized Ellie’s pattern of behavior as being immoral, predatory, and now, probably criminal with her DUI conviction.

Why is this pattern of behavior being protected? Could unlocking the answer to that intriguing question be concealed within the unspoken motivation that inspired Governor Gianforte to appoint Ellie as a member of his high-profile Housing Task Force?

Stay tuned, because I’m far from done putting Ellie Boldman into the context she so richly deserves.

Thanks for reading!