On this date in 1965, future state legislator Bob Carter was born in Great Falls, Montana, where he grew up working on area farms and ranches during high school and college. He was baptized Episcopalian and was raised in a Catholic household. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Montana, earned a B.S. in computer science with minors in math and media arts with an emphasis in accounting and worked in the Silicon Valley in software development and as chief information officer (I.T. manager) for several leasing and finance-related companies.
Carter and his wife Laurie then moved to Montana to raise a family. They have three sons — Nick, Max and Ben — and as licensed foster parents have cared for as many as seven children in their home, ranging in age from 4 to 16. “When we decided to have kids, I volunteered for the job as primary caregiver, choosing to be a stay-at-home dad while still volunteering for a multitude of nonprofit, childhood and education-related causes in the Missoula area,” Carter said on his campaign website.
“In college I had a Jewish friend who cast doubt on all of Christianity,” Carter said in an email shortly after being named FFRF Action Fund’s Secularist of the Week in November 2024. “Not long after that I concluded that maybe all religions were wrong. From a young age I was a fan of Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins, and that broadened my perspective even further. I remember thinking, ‘If God is able to create an entire universe, and is credited with healing all kinds of sicknesses, cancers and tumors, why has she never healed an amputee? Does God not like amputees? Do amputees not pray hard enough to be healed?’ ”
He threw his hat in the legislative ring as a Democrat in red-state Montana in 2022 after serving four terms on the Missoula School Board and won a seat in the state House. He was reelected in 2024 by a margin of 22 points. Former president Donald Trump won Montana by 20 points in 2024.
On his campaign site, Carter lists nearly three dozen groups he supports, volunteers for or is active with in some capacity, including FFRF and the Missoula Area Secular Society. On Ballotpedia in 2022, he named women’s reproductive rights and public education as the issues he’s most passionate about and climate change as the biggest challenge facing Montana. “If I had to choose the one thing that I felt would be most important for the future of humanity, it would be the progressive, science-based education of our children.” (The Humanist, March 20, 2023)
Carter said in his email to FFRF that he knows and respects that religious beliefs are important to many people: “In fact, I volunteer to support of all kinds of beliefs like Native American ceremonies, churches, mosques and temples. That said, I am against indoctrinating children. I am a proponent (and product) of our public education system. I feel strongly that a child’s education needs to be secular and not based on whatever theology happens to be popular at the time. The knowledge, values and actions that we pass on to future generations need to be independent of any religious authority.”
