He served 23 years as a United States Navy SEAL. He also served in the state senate, and as Montana's At-Large Member of Congress when the state had just one member of the US House of Representatives. Now Ryan Zinke will serve as a Montana Congressman once again- this time as the representative for the state's Western District in district 1.

We spoke with Zinke shortly after he was officially announced as the winner of the US House race with 50% of the vote to Democrat Monica Tranel's 46% on Thursday morning.

Aaron Flint: Mr. Secretary, Commander Zinke, congratulations on yet another victory in the great State of Montana.

Ryan Zinke: Well, I appreciate it. And a big thank you goes out to all the people that gave me the confidence and support and now it's time for business. It's time to go to work. The election's done. And now we have to do exactly what we say we're going to do, and that is curb the budget, and work on bringing cost down for energy, and making sure that Montanans can ink out a living in Montana and protect the values that we hold dear.

By the way, we threw out the question LIVE on the air Thursday morning. Is this the first time that Montana will be represented by two Republicans in the US House of Representatives? This will be the first time since the early 1990's that Montana will have two members of the US House, but as far as two Republicans in the House- this will be the first time in 100 years.

Thanks to Josh Sizemore for the answer!

Plus, which committee will be a priority for Zinke and why? You might be surprised at his answer. Full audio with Rep.-elect Ryan Zinke (R-MT) from Thursday morning:

 

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

 

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