About a minute after Chief Justice Mike McGrath was sworn into office Monday morning, he was promptly pressed into service: swearing in almost everyone else who won statewide offices in November. He didn’t even have his robe, yet.

By 12:30 p.m., it was official: Montana was under new management after all 100 members of the state House and 25 newly elected senators formerly assumed their duties and the 2009 Legislature convened.

For lawmakers, swearing-in was a fairly perfunctory affair. They stood as a group. They raised their right hands. They swore to uphold the constitutions of Montana and the United States. And they sat down, official legislators at last.

For Montana’s statewide office holders, inauguration was grander, including a packed ceremony under the Capitol Rotunda with onlookers watching from balconies one and two stories above.

The ceremony was both somber and historic, reflecting the tense economic times under which each official now assumes office and several history-making turns. For the first time since 1948, every single elected official is a Democrat.

Two of those Democrats made some history of their own: Secretary of State Linda McCulloch is Montana’s first woman secretary of state. Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau is the first American Indian woman to hold any statewide office and the first American Indian statewide official whose native ancestry is commonly known.

Juneau is an enrolled member of the Mandan-Hidatsa tribe of North Dakota, where her mother, Democratic state Sen. Carol Juneau, D-Browning, was born and raised. Juneau’s father is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe. Juneau was raised in Browning and could have enrolled in either tribe.

Another man, former Chief Justice Jean Turnage, of Polson, was the first American Indian elected to statewide office. Turnage is an enrolled tribal member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes on the Flathead Reservation, but little was said of his ethnicity during his public life.

That history wasn’t lost on the crowd. While every official got hearty applause after their official swearing-in, Juneau certainly got the most.

A contingent of tribal leaders was in the audience for Monday’s inauguration. A drumming circle from Browning also performed an honor song for Juneau and all the statewide officials.

Their rhythm filled the Rotunda, overwhelming all other sound.

Schweitzer also spoke of Montana’s American Indian history in his brief remarks. He thanked Montana’s first citizens for teaching him to look out for those who came before, the elders, and those will come after, our children.

“Children that we will never know” will live in Montana one day, Schweitzer said, and leaders today must be mindful of how we generate and use energy and how we grow and consume food. Both must be done sustainably, he said.

As lawmakers embark on what is certain to be a legislative session of budget cuts and tight times, Schweitzer also encouraged lawmakers to remember the elderly, the handicapped and children.

“The moral first test of government is how that government treats those in the dawn of life,” he said. “Children.”

The Rev. Marianne Niesen, the minister of St. Paul’s Methodist Church in Helena, along with the Rev. Jerry Lowney, of the Roman Catholic Carroll College, also in Helena, who delivered prayers during the ceremony, urged all the new leaders to remember the poor.

Lowney added a few more to his list: “the homeless, the jobless, the hungry and those without adequate medical care.”

In total, 10 officials were sworn in during Monday’s hour-long ceremony. They were, in order:

- Justice Patricia Cotter

- Public Service Commissioner Brad Molnar, R-Billings

- Public Service Commissioner John Vincent, D-Bozeman

- Public Service Commissioner Gail Gutsche, D-Missoula

- Attorney General Steve Bullock

- Secretary of State Linda McCulloch

- State Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau

- State Auditor Monica Linden

- Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger

- Gov. Brian Schweitzer

As each were walking away from the podium at the end of the ceremony, a small group of bison activists positioned themselves in a place all the officials had to walk past. The protesters held signs reading “Stop the Slaughter,” in reference to the shooting of Yellowstone-area bison. The activists did not disrupt the ceremony.

Reporter Jennifer McKee: 447-4069 or jennifer.mckee@lee.net