Bobby's Law receives widespread support from state lawmakers and local advocates
Apr. 17—Legislation mandating harsher penalties for drunk drivers is poised to reach the governor's desk after receiving near-unanimous support from the state Senate.
At a March 27 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, numerous Flathead Valley residents testified in support of the measure, including the family of Robert "Bobby" Dewbre, the legislation's namesake.
"This law is not about vengeance. It is about accountability. It is about ensuring that the punishment fits the severity of the crime and that reckless choices carry appropriate consequences," said Dewbre's sister, Carli Seymour.
In 2023, Dewbre was struck and killed by a car while crossing a road outside Columbia Falls. The driver, John Lee Wilson, had a blood alcohol content of 0.20, over twice the legal limit of 0.08.
Despite what seemed like a clear case of drunk driving, the county attorney decided not to press charges for felony vehicular homicide while driving under the influence. The felony conviction requires the prosecution to prove a driver was acting negligently, which could have proven problematic as Wilson was reportedly following all traffic laws leading up to the fatal collision. Instead, Wilson was charged with two misdemeanors and eventually received the combined maximum sentence of 18 months.
Under House Bill 267, colloquially known as Bobby's Law, driving with a blood alcohol level at or above 0.16 would be considered inherently negligent, allowing prosecutors to more easily pursue serious legal charges for drunk driving incidents. If found guilty, offenders would face a state prison term of three to 30 years, a fine between $10,000 and $50,000 or both.
"Getting behind the wheel at over twice the legal limit is inherently negligent," testified Dewbre's father, Robert Dewbre. "This is not a radical stance. This is common sense."
If passed, Bobby's Law would not retroactively impact Wilson's sentencing, but the issue of drunk driving extends far beyond the Flathead Valley. A recent report from Forbes found that Montana has the highest per capita rate for drunk driving fatalities, with 7.14 people killed in drunk driving incidents for every 100,000 state residents.
Proponents of Bobby's Law, including the Montana Department of Transportation and the Montana County Attorneys Association, say harsher penalties will help serve as a deterrent to drunk drivers.
"It's clear that we are an embarrassment nationally, and that the status quo cannot continue," said the bill's primary sponsor, Rep. Braxton Mitchell, R-Columbia Falls.
Several other lawmakers from the Flathead Valley have signed on as co-sponsors for Bobby's Law.
While a few Democratic lawmakers balked at the bill's mandatory minimums, Bobby's Law has largely been met with bipartisan support. It passed the House with a 94-6 vote in February. The Senate passed the bill on April 15 with a 45-4 vote.
The legislation now moves back to the House for final approval of what Sen. Sue Vinton, R-Billings, called a "small technical amendment," altering some of the language in the bill. If the House concurs in the amendment, Bobby's Law will move to the governor's desk for final approval.
Reporter Hailey Smalley can be reached at hsmalley@dailyinterlake.com or 758-4433.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Bill Essayli is out for revenge
Bill Essayli, the recently appointed 39-year-old U.S. attorney for California's central district, spent years in Sacramento angrily chafing at one-party rule — elected but impotent. Now he's ready to show the state's Democrats how it feels to be powerless. He has already charged David Huerta, one of California's most powerful union leaders, with felony conspiracy for allegedly impeding an ICE arrest by participating in a protest. On Thursday, he stood by as California Sen. Alex Padilla was handcuffed and forced to the ground at a press conference hosted by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Now, other Democratic politicians say they fear being seen at immigration protests, confident that Essayli will seize any chance to put former colleagues behind bars and revel in the fallout. 'As legislators, we know fully well that if he has an opportunity and can somehow connect us to any violence or any disruptions that are going on, he is going to try to arrest us,' Assemblymember Corey Jackson said in an interview. 'It makes me feel crazy that I have to say these things. But it's the truth.' Essayli is President Donald Trump's man on the immigration battlefield of Los Angeles — a rapid status shift for a politician who not long ago was a junior, little-liked Republican state lawmaker. As an agitator turned enforcer with an ax to grind and the full weight of federal law enforcement at his back, Essayli is animated by many of the same vengeful impulses that drive the president who appointed him. (Essayli did not respond to interview requests for this story.) 'The Democrats that bullied Bill Essayli should be very worried,' said Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, a Republican who worked to get Essayli elected before serving alongside him. 'They've never been held accountable. But life changes.' Any story about the arc of Bill Essayli's career should probably begin on April 10, 2002. While visiting the Wells Fargo branch where his mother worked, the 17-year-old Essayli witnessed a bank robber leaving the building. As Essayli tells it, he instinctively jumped in his car to follow the suspect, writing down the thief's license number so he could report the vehicle to federal investigators. His actions that day earned him a personal letter from then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, a man who would later go on to investigate Essayli's current boss, who praised the teenager's 'tremendous initiative.' Raised by Lebanese immigrant parents on the western edge of the Inland Empire, east of Los Angeles, Essayli was long drawn to law enforcement, serving as a volunteer in Corona's police department Explorer program. After becoming the first member of his family to graduate college, Essayli attended Chapman University School of Law, which has been home to prominent conservatives like John Eastman and Hugh Hewitt. Essayli went into private practice before two years as a Riverside County prosecutor and four as an assistant U.S. attorney. In that role he worked on the deadly 2015 shooting and attempted bombing by alleged homegrown extremists in San Bernardino. In 2018, Essayli became directly involved in politics, joining a campaign to repeal a gas-tax increase while mounting his own failed, somewhat moderate, candidacy for the state assembly. Four years later, after district lines were redrawn, Essayli ran again on a tough on crime and conservative school issues platform. He was the first Muslim elected to the California State Assembly, representing a diverse, semi-rural region in a district Trump won by 12 points in 2024. But when the clean-cut Essayli came to Sacramento in 2022, he made little effort to conform to the capital's hobnobby culture and was quite open about how much he detested it. Even fellow Republicans who agreed with his politics disagreed with his tactics and aggressive stance toward Democrats and his own party. His political life, as his friend DeMaio described it, was a 'lonely' one. Upon arriving in the capital he hung the 2002 letter from Mueller on his office wall. Essayli quickly made a name for himself by taking up red-meat conservative causes and authoring bills that would require school staff to notify parents if their children might be transgender and mandate government identification to vote. He raged against the state's Covid-19 restrictions and criticized critical race theory. None of his bills became law, but Essayli distinguished himself on the Assembly floor with his penchant for political theater. His pattern of outlandish outbursts and near-physical altercations were of the sort that largely disappeared from the legislative process in the nineteenth century (Jackson himself once had to be restrained from Essayli after the two clashed on the Assembly floor). Other lawmakers, staff and lobbyists traded accounts of their favorite Essayli episodes. In one, he called the speaker pro tempore a 'fucking liar' on the Assembly floor. In another he banged a fist on his desk in petulant fury, shouting into the void of his muted microphone as state lawmakers looked on. To like-minded conservatives, this presented a vision of how a disruptive, aggressive opposition party should function. DeMaio, who was elected to the Assembly two years after Essayli and has followed in his footsteps, said he showed how an opposition party could 'illustrate how the other side is wrong' even if you don't get 'drinks paid for at the bars.' Essayli wasn't worried about rubbing people the wrong way, according to his former chief of staff Shawn Lewis. On a personal level, he was kind and even funny. But Essayli, according to Lewis, was also driven by 'an unshakable sense of what is right and wrong.' The outbursts were no performance, but rather the outward projections of a true believer's frustrations. 'Bill Essayli sees things as they can and should be, not as they are,' Lewis said. But at least some political observers believe that Essayli's moves were calculated. There are few avenues to power for a hard-right Republican in Democrat-dominated California. Serving as an avatar for the Trump administration's talking points within the state Legislature was one of them. And the performances led to even bigger platforms: regular appearances on Fox News that won him a casual following nationally among the MAGA faithful. 'I think he's a very smart guy,' Anthony Rendon, a former Assembly speaker, said of Essayli. 'There's nothing Bill does that isn't very well thought-out.' In April 2025, Essayli announced that he would be leaving Sacramento to accept an interim appointment as the top federal prosecutor for seven Southern California counties with a population of nearly 20 million people. Elsewhere, Trump sought out personal confidants, longtime political allies and loyal defenders to fill U.S. attorney's offices. In his hometown of New York City, Trump named Jay Clayton, who had served as his appointee atop the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the post. Trump's former personal attorney Alina Habba was named the prosecutor in New Jersey, home to Trump's Bedminster golf course. In Washington, D.C., he has placed conservative legal activist Ed Martin, a former lawyer for Jan. 6 defendants, and Fox News host Jeanine Pirro into powerful prosecutorial positions. Essayli does not have the same direct connection to Trump's circle, but his appointment vindicated the way Essayli had spent his brief time in Sacramento. Upon being named to the post, he made clear he was ready to adopt Trump's ethos. "I intend to implement the President's mission to restore trust in our justice system and pursue those who dare to cause harm to the United States and the People of our nation,' Essayli said. Newly backed by a small army of lawyers and special agents, Essayli is aiming at many of the same targets that eluded him as a politician. In April, he launched a task force to investigate fraud and corruption within homelessness funding sources administered by California's Democratic officials. In May, he threw his support behind a Justice Department investigation into Title IX violations in the state, alleging that transgender athletes were 'violating women's civil rights.' At the beginning of June, Essayli warned an air quality management district in Southern California to abandon plans to impose fees on gas appliances, threatening 'all appropriate action' to stop the regulations. But it is his role backing Trump's immigration enforcement actions that has given Essayli his biggest opportunity to flex his newfound power. Earlier this week, prominent conservative commentator Marc Thiessen suggested that Essayli may have found a workaround for sanctuary city laws, by charging migrants held on state charges with federal crimes in an effort to force local officials to turn them over to ICE. (Thiessen did not respond to a request to explain further.) In Los Angeles, his authority ran up against the most basic form of dissent: public protest. As immigration enforcement officials, aided by Essayli's search warrants and federal agents, launched targeted raids of migrant communities, they were met by demonstrators who intended to stand in the way. On Monday, Essayli announced that his prosecutors would use social media and video evidence to pursue protesters who threw objects at officers. Yesterday, two protesters were charged with possessing Molotov cocktails, which Essayli said would be punished by up to 10 years in prison. 'I don't care who you are — if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted,' Essayli wrote on X after Huerta's arrest on June 6. Immigrant advocacy and LGBTQ+ rights organizations allege that he intends to use that authority to 'prosecute his political opponents.' 'Bill Essayli spent his short career in the Legislature with a singular agenda: to attack the students and families he was supposed to serve,' said Kristi Hirst, the co-founder of Our Schools USA, an advocacy organization that pushes for LGBTQ-friendly school policies. 'Essayli is not interested in seeking justice.' Those concerns have now manifested in a political campaign called Stop Essayli run by Jacob Daruvala, a former constituent of Essayli's and a local LGBTQ+ advocate. The lobbying effort, which remains something of a hail Mary, is aimed at persuading Sens. Adam Schiff and Padilla to block Essayli's official confirmation, which would rid him of his interim title. If a permanent replacement is not confirmed within 120 days, the federal district court for his jurisdiction would instead appoint someone else to serve in the role until a Senate confirmation is successful. But without the votes to block his path, it is only a delicate historical courtesy, which Schiff and Padilla will have to ask the Senate to respect, that stands between Essayli and a permanent assignment. Daruvala is asking California's senators to withhold their 'blue slips,' a Senate tradition in which committees defer to a nominee's home-state senators for guidance on confirmation. There is something poetic in that question. After Essayli made his name defying the decorum of the California Legislature, it is only decorum that can halt his upward rise. Jeremy B. White contributed to this report.
Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
Bill Essayli is out for revenge
Bill Essayli, the recently appointed 39-year-old U.S. attorney for California's central district, spent years in Sacramento angrily chafing at one-party rule — elected but impotent. Now he's ready to show the state's Democrats how it feels to be powerless. He has already charged David Huerta, one of California's most powerful union leaders, with felony conspiracy for allegedly impeding an ICE arrest by participating in a protest. On Thursday, he stood by as California Sen. Alex Padilla was handcuffed and forced to the ground at a press conference hosted by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Now, other Democratic politicians say they fear being seen at immigration protests, confident that Essayli will seize any chance to put former colleagues behind bars and revel in the fallout. 'As legislators, we know fully well that if he has an opportunity and can somehow connect us to any violence or any disruptions that are going on, he is going to try to arrest us,' Assemblymember Corey Jackson said in an interview. 'It makes me feel crazy that I have to say these things. But it's the truth.' Essayli is President Donald Trump's man on the immigration battlefield of Los Angeles — a rapid status shift for a politician who not long ago was a junior, little-liked Republican state lawmaker. As an agitator turned enforcer with an ax to grind and the full weight of federal law enforcement at his back, Essayli is animated by many of the same vengeful impulses that drive the president who appointed him. (Essayli did not respond to interview requests for this story.) 'The Democrats that bullied Bill Essayli should be very worried,' said Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, a Republican who worked to get Essayli elected before serving alongside him. 'They've never been held accountable. But life changes.' Any story about the arc of Bill Essayli's career should probably begin on April 10, 2002. While visiting the Wells Fargo branch where his mother worked, the 17-year-old Essayli witnessed a bank robber leaving the building. As Essayli tells it, he instinctively jumped in his car to follow the suspect, writing down the thief's license number so he could report the vehicle to federal investigators. His actions that day earned him a personal letter from then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, a man who would later go on to investigate Essayli's current boss, who praised the teenager's 'tremendous initiative.' Raised by Lebanese immigrant parents on the western edge of the Inland Empire, east of Los Angeles, Essayli was long drawn to law enforcement, serving as a volunteer in Corona's police department Explorer program. After becoming the first member of his family to graduate college, Essayli attended Chapman University School of Law, which has been home to prominent conservatives like John Eastman and Hugh Hewitt. Essayli went into private practice before two years as a Riverside County prosecutor and four as an assistant U.S. attorney. In that role he worked on the deadly 2015 shooting and attempted bombing by alleged homegrown extremists in San Bernardino. In 2018, Essayli became directly involved in politics, joining a campaign to repeal a gas-tax increase while mounting his own failed, somewhat moderate, candidacy for the state assembly. Four years later, after district lines were redrawn, Essayli ran again on a tough on crime and conservative school issues platform. He was the first Muslim elected to the California State Assembly, representing a diverse, semi-rural region in a district Trump won by 12 points in 2024. But when the clean-cut Essayli came to Sacramento in 2022, he made little effort to conform to the capital's hobnobby culture and was quite open about how much he detested it. Even fellow Republicans who agreed with his politics disagreed with his tactics and aggressive stance toward Democrats and his own party. His political life, as his friend DeMaio described it, was a 'lonely' one. Upon arriving in the capital he hung the 2002 letter from Mueller on his office wall. Essayli quickly made a name for himself by taking up red-meat conservative causes and authoring bills that would require school staff to notify parents if their children might be transgender and mandate government identification to vote. He raged against the state's Covid-19 restrictions and criticized critical race theory. None of his bills became law, but Essayli distinguished himself on the Assembly floor with his penchant for political theater. His pattern of outlandish outbursts and near-physical altercations were of the sort that largely disappeared from the legislative process in the nineteenth century (Jackson himself once had to be restrained from Essayli after the two clashed on the Assembly floor). Other lawmakers, staff and lobbyists traded accounts of their favorite Essayli episodes. In one, he called the speaker pro tempore a 'fucking liar' on the Assembly floor. In another he banged a fist on his desk in petulant fury, shouting into the void of his muted microphone as state lawmakers looked on. To like-minded conservatives, this presented a vision of how a disruptive, aggressive opposition party should function. DeMaio, who was elected to the Assembly two years after Essayli and has followed in his footsteps, said he showed how an opposition party could 'illustrate how the other side is wrong' even if you don't get 'drinks paid for at the bars.' Essayli wasn't worried about rubbing people the wrong way, according to his former chief of staff Shawn Lewis. On a personal level, he was kind and even funny. But Essayli, according to Lewis, was also driven by 'an unshakable sense of what is right and wrong.' The outbursts were no performance, but rather the outward projections of a true believer's frustrations. 'Bill Essayli sees things as they can and should be, not as they are,' Lewis said. But at least some political observers believe that Essayli's moves were calculated. There are few avenues to power for a hard-right Republican in Democrat-dominated California. Serving as an avatar for the Trump administration's talking points within the state Legislature was one of them. And the performances led to even bigger platforms: regular appearances on Fox News that won him a casual following nationally among the MAGA faithful. 'I think he's a very smart guy,' Anthony Rendon, a former Assembly speaker, said of Essayli. 'There's nothing Bill does that isn't very well thought-out.' In April 2025, Essayli announced that he would be leaving Sacramento to accept an interim appointment as the top federal prosecutor for seven Southern California counties with a population of nearly 20 million people. Elsewhere, Trump sought out personal confidants, longtime political allies and loyal defenders to fill U.S. attorney's offices. In his hometown of New York City, Trump named Jay Clayton, who had served as his appointee atop the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the post. Trump's former personal attorney Alina Habba was named the prosecutor in New Jersey, home to Trump's Bedminster golf course. In Washington, D.C., he has placed conservative legal activist Ed Martin, a former lawyer for Jan. 6 defendants, and Fox News host Jeanine Pirro into powerful prosecutorial positions. Essayli does not have the same direct connection to Trump's circle, but his appointment vindicated the way Essayli had spent his brief time in Sacramento. Upon being named to the post, he made clear he was ready to adopt Trump's ethos. 'I intend to implement the President's mission to restore trust in our justice system and pursue those who dare to cause harm to the United States and the People of our nation,' Essayli said. Newly backed by a small army of lawyers and special agents, Essayli is aiming at many of the same targets that eluded him as a politician. In April, he launched a task force to investigate fraud and corruption within homelessness funding sources administered by California's Democratic officials. In May, he threw his support behind a Justice Department investigation into Title IX violations in the state, alleging that transgender athletes were 'violating women's civil rights.' At the beginning of June, Essayli warned an air quality management district in Southern California to abandon plans to impose fees on gas appliances, threatening 'all appropriate action' to stop the regulations. But it is his role backing Trump's immigration enforcement actions that has given Essayli his biggest opportunity to flex his newfound power. Earlier this week, prominent conservative commentator Marc Thiessen suggested that Essayli may have found a workaround for sanctuary city laws, by charging migrants held on state charges with federal crimes in an effort to force local officials to turn them over to ICE. (Thiessen did not respond to a request to explain further.) In Los Angeles, his authority ran up against the most basic form of dissent: public protest. As immigration enforcement officials, aided by Essayli's search warrants and federal agents, launched targeted raids of migrant communities, they were met by demonstrators who intended to stand in the way. On Monday, Essayli announced that his prosecutors would use social media and video evidence to pursue protesters who threw objects at officers. Yesterday, two protesters were charged with possessing Molotov cocktails, which Essayli said would be punished by up to 10 years in prison. 'I don't care who you are — if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted,' Essayli wrote on X after Huerta's arrest on June 6. Immigrant advocacy and LGBTQ+ rights organizations allege that he intends to use that authority to 'prosecute his political opponents.' 'Bill Essayli spent his short career in the Legislature with a singular agenda: to attack the students and families he was supposed to serve,' said Kristi Hirst, the co-founder of Our Schools USA, an advocacy organization that pushes for LGBTQ-friendly school policies. 'Essayli is not interested in seeking justice.' Those concerns have now manifested in a political campaign called Stop Essayli run by Jacob Daruvala, a former constituent of Essayli's and a local LGBTQ+ advocate. The lobbying effort, which remains something of a hail Mary, is aimed at persuading Sens. Adam Schiff and Padilla to block Essayli's official confirmation, which would rid him of his interim title. If a permanent replacement is not confirmed within 120 days, the federal district court for his jurisdiction would instead appoint someone else to serve in the role until a Senate confirmation is successful. But without the votes to block his path, it is only a delicate historical courtesy, which Schiff and Padilla will have to ask the Senate to respect, that stands between Essayli and a permanent assignment. Daruvala is asking California's senators to withhold their 'blue slips,' a Senate tradition in which committees defer to a nominee's home-state senators for guidance on confirmation. There is something poetic in that question. After Essayli made his name defying the decorum of the California Legislature, it is only decorum that can halt his upward rise. Jeremy B. White contributed to this report.
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
A historian of fascism is asked whether this was week was a turning point
Do you remember that day in March 2020 — five years and several eternities ago — when Tom Hanks tested positive for COVID-19, the NBA announced they were suspending their season and profound upheaval suddenly seemed inevitable? I've felt echoes of that feeling the past few days, as downtown businesses boarded up their windows and the facts on the ground grew ever more fantastical. Are we at the edge of some irreparable rupture in American democracy? Or is this just another strange and absurd chapter in a long series of them? On Sunday, the president sent federalized National Guard troops into a city against the will of the state's governor for the first time in 60 years. On Thursday, California's senior senator was tackled to the ground by federal agents and handcuffed at a news conference. Hundreds of active duty Marines were sent into the Los Angeles area, where for days they appeared to be performing heavily armed training exercises on what looked like a high school sports field. (A looming scoreboard, palm trees and jacaranda blooms were all visible behind their riot shields, according to a social media post from the U.S. Northern Command.) The president and the governor are having a momentous fight about constitutional rights in the courts, and flaming each other with insults and photoshopped memes on Truth Social and X. The ICE raids have thrown some Angelenos into a state of fear and virtual hiding. But for many others, ordinary life continues apace. Mayor Karen Bass has repeatedly cautioned that L.A. is being treated like 'a grand experiment' — a testing ground for President Trump to see if he can usurp the authority of Democratic mayors or governors in other states. Warning signs of democratic breakdown have been pointed out by scholars and Trump's critics since he took office for his first term in 2017 — so much so that many have grown numb to them. Has this week been any different? I called Federico Finchelstein, a historian of fascism and dictatorships who chairs the history department at the New School for Social Research in New York, to ask whether he saw this week as a turning point for the country. Finchelstein characterized Trump's federalizing of the California National Guard as a clear turn toward authoritarianism. He cited the move, along with attacks on the press and the judiciary and the manhandling of Sen. Alex Padilla on Thursday, as assaults on democratic norms that 'create the conditions for a further erosion of democracy.' But he hesitated about categorizing recent events as a turning point. It's hard while living in the middle of history to know precisely where you stand, he explained. 'It's very difficult to know what is the exact outcome of this sort of militarization of politics,' Finchelstein said. 'What we know is that democracy is at the other end, and this path is towards either disabling, denigrating or even destroying democracy. It's hard to know where it ends.' The outcome would also depend on more than Trump's next move, according to the historian. History has shown that when anti-democratic attempts are met with institutional and public resistance, they are less likely to succeed, Finchelstein said. 'In other words, this is not the end of the story,' he told me. A selection of the very best reads from The Times' 143-year archive. Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team Julia Wick, staff writerKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
