Raph Graybill, a fifth-generation Montanan from Great Falls has put his hat into the running for Attorney General against Austin Knudsen, John Bennion, Kim Dudik.
He has served as a public attorney for three years in Helena and privately for one year. Graybill is currently Governor Steve Bullock’s Chief Legal Counsel.
He is hitting the political trail running with an impressive Ivy league resume. A Rhodes Scholar from Montana, he is a graduate of Columbia University, received his Masters from Oxford in 2012, and his Law degree from Yale Law School in 2015.
Greybill aims include reducing effects of dark money, any time someone tries to spend money to influence an election, protecting public lands, defending worker’s right, and taking on corrupted health care and insurance practices. “Everywhere I go,” Graybill says, “people are facing the same issues with healthcare. The system is deliberately confusing and price gouging is out of control.” “Montana needs an independent watch dog, with ear to the ground.”
Graybill was the lead attorney in a lawsuit by Governor Bullock against the federal government and the IRS. The suit challenged the IRS’s decision to shield dark money groups from disclosure of their donors. Judge Brian Morris’s ruling concluded that the IRS violated the law when they changed the disclosure requirements.
In December 2018, Graybill successfully defended the Habitat Montana program before the Montana Supreme Court. By a vote of 6-to-1, Graybill and Bullock defeated sitting Attorney General Tim Fox and secured public access to three new hunting and fishing sites.
Most recently, Graybill worked on the Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue case that was heard in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. This case involves public money going towards private schools which the Montana Constitution does
not allow. Petitioners asked the Supreme Court to strike down part of Montana’s Constitution and allow public dollars to go to private schools.
He served as an Auxiliary Police Officer in the New York City Police Department, patrolling the 26th precinct of Manhattan and West Harlem while studying at Columbia. In 2008, Graybill was elected to serve as Montana’s youngest delegate to the Democratic National Convention.
His grandfather, Leo C. Graybill, Jr., was president of the 1972 Montana Constitutional Convention and his uncle, Ben, carries on the same family law firm in Great Falls that his great grandfather founded nearly 100 years ago.
