HELENA — A conservative group is targeting Republican state legislators — including Frank Garner of Kalispell — who won’t sign a pledge to oppose Medicaid expansion in Montana and is holding events this week in the lawmakers’ districts to publicize the no-pledge stance.

Americans for Prosperity-Montana also is sending postcards and making telephone calls into the Republicans’ districts, telling voters to call the lawmakers and ask them to oppose Medicaid expansion as part of the Affordable Care Act.

“These are legislators from some of the most conservative parts of the state,” said Zach Lahn, state director for AFP-Montana. “We’re putting in the resources to educate voters in their district on what’s exactly going on.”

So far, the group has targeted Garner and Reps. Jeff Welborn of Dillon, Tom Berry of Roundup.

All three said they declined AFP’s request to pledge opposition to expanding Medicaid, saying they generally don’t sign blanket pledges of support or opposition on any issue.

“How come the folks from outside Kalispell are trying to tell me what to do?” Garner said Monday. “I’ll listen to the people of Kalispell. ... I made that a hallmark of my campaign.”

Garner, the chief of security for Kalispell Regional Medical Center and the former Kalispell police chief, is in his first term as a legislator.

Welborn echoed Garner’s comments, saying he doubts AFP-Montana knows what his constituents truly want, and he’ll be listening to them before deciding how to vote on Medicaid expansion.

“I think my constituents appreciate the fact that I’m willing to listen and have conversations with them rather than sign a pledge from an out-of-state group,” he said.

Medicaid expansion likely will be one of the biggest issues before the 2015 Montana Legislature.

Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock has proposed accepting federal money to expand Medicaid to cover 70,000 low-income Montanans.

Majority Republican leadership at the Legislature is generally opposed to the expansion, saying it’s an unnecessary welfare program that will end up costing the state millions of dollars.

However, some Republican lawmakers have said they’re open to considering some form of Medicaid expansion — leaving open the possibility that a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans may approve it.

AFP-Montana, part of the conservative, free-market organization founded by the billionaire owners of Koch Industries of Wichita, Kansas, is a prominent opponent of Medicaid expansion.

The group beefed up its presence in Montana last summer, expanding from two to 11 paid staffers, including six full time. Lahn, the 2012 campaign manager for Montana Republican congressional candidate Steve Daines, who is now a U.S. senator, became AFP-Montana’s state director.

Lahn said AFP-Montana surveyed legislative candidates on issues last year and has been going back to the dozen or so Republican legislators who didn’t answer the survey, asking them to sign a pledge to oppose Medicaid expansion.

Those who won’t sign likely will be targeted with telephone calls to activists in their district or local events organized by AFP, advertised this week as a “Healthcare Town Hall” where people can learn about why Medicaid expansion is “bad policy” and tell their legislator to oppose it.

A poster advertising Monday’s town-hall event in Dillon has a picture of Welborn superimposed over a picture of President Barack Obama.

Events also are planned Tuesday in Roundup targeting Berry and Thursday in Kalispell targeting Garner, Lahn said.

Any Medicaid expansion plan that accepts the federal money and offers coverage to “able-bodied, childless” adults violates AFP-Montana’s principles and should be opposed, he said.

“I would hope these legislators go there with certain principles, that no matter what (proposal) comes out, those things don’t change,” Lahn said.

Garner said he may support a Medicaid proposal helping low-income people who can’t get a federal subsidy to purchase personal health insurance and wants to examine the plans before the Legislature.

As for AFP, Garner said “they didn’t have the decency to tell me about [the meeting] before they did it; I think that tells me all I need to know.”