"I would be pretty hard pressed to not accept a nomination," Curtis said before Saturday's convention. "Even though it's scary uncharted territory, it's an opportunity for us to pull together and electrify the whole state."

Curtis's political track record is brief. She was elected in 2012 and was not seeking re-election this year in a redrawn district that would have pitted her against a party ally. She's built a following largely through active use of social media to get her views out.

Curtis sponsored several bills that didn't make it through Montana's Republican-controlled statehouse. Among them was legislation to increase the mandatory percentage of Montana workers hired for state public works projects. Contractors, especially in the energy industry, opposed the measure.

Curtis criticized a 2011 law that banned medical marijuana commercial transactions and that drastically scaled back Montana's medical marijuana industry. She also tried to rally support for expanded gun background checks in a state that cherishes its gun rights. She has said that a brother playing Russian roulette at a party killed himself when she was 17.

"When someone says the government is going to come and take your guns, that is crazy. That is not going to happen," she told a rally last year. "We wouldn't ever let that happen."