Hayden Cook (Missoula City Council Ward 2, Montana, candidate 2025)
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Hayden Cook ran for election to the Missoula City Council Ward 2 in Montana. He was on the ballot in the primary on September 9, 2025.[source]
Cook completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.
[1]Biography
Hayden Cook provided the following biographical information via Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey on July 17, 2025:
- Birth place: Missoula, Montana
- High school: Big Sky High School
- Gender: Male
- Incumbent officeholder: No
- Campaign website
- Campaign Instagram
Elections
General election
General election for Missoula City Council Ward 2
Rebecca Dawson and Justin Ponton are running in the general election for Missoula City Council Ward 2 on November 4, 2025.
Candidate | ||
| Rebecca Dawson (Nonpartisan) | ||
| Justin Ponton (Nonpartisan) | ||
| ||||
 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Nonpartisan primary election
Nonpartisan primary for Missoula City Council Ward 2
Hayden Cook, Rebecca Dawson, Tim Garrison, Justin Ponton, and Michele Whitmire ran in the primary for Missoula City Council Ward 2 on September 9, 2025.
Candidate | ||
 | Hayden Cook (Nonpartisan) | |
| Rebecca Dawson (Nonpartisan) | ||
| Tim Garrison (Nonpartisan) | ||
| Justin Ponton (Nonpartisan) | ||
| Michele Whitmire (Nonpartisan) | ||
| ||||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Election results
Endorsements
Cook received the following endorsements. To send us additional endorsements, click here.
Campaign themes
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Hayden Cook completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Cook's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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My name is Hayden Cook, I am 24 years old and have lived in Missoula, Montana my entire life. I grew up low-income and received services such as MTHealthyKids, McKinny-Vento, Foodstamps, and Section8 just to get by. My political engagement began in highschool when I attended protests for March for our Lives following the Parkland shooting in Florida. In my professional life, I have worked for Missoula's Parks & Recreation department, Montana owned Town Pump, and coffee giant Starbucks. During my time with Starbucks, I organized the first union location in the state of Montana and assisted the second to unionize here in Missoula. In my free time I enjoy quality time with my partner and our fur babies, gaming, listening to music, and walks by the Clark Fork River.
- Champion practical climate initiatives by boosting recycling and composting to tree planting and green roofs.
Support community cooling stations, solar-powered public shelters, and incentives for energy-efficient building and appliances.
Prioritize stormwater management and embed climate-resilient features in all public and private developments. - Push for stronger renter protections: landlord registration, mandatory fee and hazard disclosures, solid enforcement, and just-cause eviction standards. Collaborate with legal aid groups and nonprofits to empower tenants with education and resources. Advocate for legislative change to give cities more authority over landlord oversight.
- Improve street lighting, road quality, and sidewalks for better safety and connectivity across neighborhoods. Advocate smart infrastructure development through working with developers to ensure growth doesn’t outpace essential services. Leverage bonding and grants for long-term, equitable upgrades.
Climate and environmental policy, Housing equity and tenant protections, and Community infrastructure and equity.
Municipalities possess the unique role of appropriating tax dollars for essential services such as police and fire as well as enforcing zoning code for developments within the city limits. There are other roles that local government uniquely possess but for me another crucial role is representation. Much of the large-scale changes that affect people come from the state/federal level and trickles down to municipalities. As a local official, you are granted the privilege of having meetings with high profile figures in the community, being allowed through certain doors you otherwise may not, and to speak directly to other elected officials. This power enables local officials to advocate and collaborate to push large-scale changes out from the local level rather than waiting for scraps.
Growing up financially independent since the age of 13, I have never had an idol or adult figure to strive to follow. I look back to my young self and I applaud him for keeping it together and moving forward.
Watching the shows Shameless and Maid would give viewers an idea of what my upbringing and lived experiences were like to get me to where I am today. Much of what is portrayed in those shows I have experienced, but not all, and those experiences have molded me into the person and candidate I am today.
Empathy is the biggest one for me. If you seek to represent diverse and in most cases large groups of people, you have to be able to understand them. Fundamentally, to represent, you have to relate and/or empathize with them as individuals otherwise you're representing yourself or third-party interests. Additionally, trust, transparency, and presence are incredibly necessary. Constituents must be able to trust their representatives, should demand transparency, and should expect them to show up for them when they need them most and not just when politically convenient.
Empathy, transparency, and presence. This is becoming a common theme!
Fiscal responsibility, building partnerships and relationships across the municipality and the state, and being present for their constituents when they need them most.
I would like to leave a legacy of being an effective negotiator, legislative pusher, and advocate for my constituents.
I was 7 years old when the 2008 financial crisis occurred and I remember that being the start of my families affordability struggles. I remember the election of the first African American president and the first election where a woman was the nominee for president. I remember when we elected a billionaire r@p!st not once but twice. The pandemic was probably the most daunting and life altering event to date.
My very first job was at Krispy Kreme and I was there for a year.
A Game of Thrones character, not a Lannister and likely a Stark/Targaryen if I had a choice.
You're Losing Me - Taylor Swift
Being a parentless child and young adult has been an incredibly difficult course to chart.
The city of Missoula has a rather broad authority to control water quality and to prevent pollution/hazards from impacting the community. If the city intends to convert open-space land to something else, public approval through a vote is required.
In the case of city council absolutely not, I don't believe there needs to be some kind of background requirements for someone to be capable of representing their neighbors. If someone is capable of running a campaign and securing the votes from their neighbors, that's the system working as intended. In larger scale government, state/federal level, I do think some background of education, teaching, union leading, community leading, local experience, etc should be favored over someone fresh to the game.
Empathy, transparency, and presence.
The City Council is the legislative branch of Missoula government and that gives them the power of writing legislation, passing resolutions, and ordinances.
I am a firm believer that when you are managing money, whether it be from donations, revenue, taxation, etc, it is imperative that we criticize the spending of that money. If elected to city council, my approach during budget season will be to audit and investigate line by line every dollar we spend to make sure that we are using tax dollars as effectively as possible.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2025 Elections
External links
Footnotes
