Dems Lose Montana Senate Seat as Tester Falls to Sheehy

The Senate career of seven-fingered Montana dirt farmer Jon Tester came to an end on Tuesday after an expensive battle with former Navy Seal and questionably wounded Tim Sheehy, a Montana businessman. The win, called on Wednesday morning, is part of a massive Election Day for Republicans, with Donald Trump coasting to a presidential win and the GOP taking back control of the Senate.

For three terms, Tester had fought the headwinds of the Republican takeover of Montana, where Donald Trump won by 16 points in 2020. All six of the state’s key officeholders are Republicans, and the GOP holds solid majorities in the state legislature. Tester made a point of distancing himself from the national party by not officially endorsing Kamala Harris or attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He declined most interviews with national reporters while concentrating on touting federal dollars and projects he brought back to the Big Sky State, particularly his work on behalf of farmers and veterans.

That did not inoculate Tester from Republican attacks. He faced off not only against Sheehy but a vindictive Trump, who held an August rally in Montana — not a swing state — where he mocked Tester’s weight and turned the microphone over to Congressman Ronny Jackson. Tester, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affair Committee, had blocked Jackson’s nomination to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs over credible allegations of misconduct — including drunkenness and the liberal distribution of prescription meds to Jackson’s colleagues while he served as Trump’s presidential physician. Perhaps seeking payback, a visibly furious Jackson declared at a Bozeman rally that Tester was “a sleazy, disgusting, swamp politician.”

All the mudslinging conveniently drew attention away from Sheehy, the longtime CEO of Bridger Aerospace, an aerial firefighting company. A generically handsome, first-time candidate, Sheehy had been recruited by the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, who saw defeating Tester as key to the GOP gaining the majority in the Senate. While he looked the part, Sheehy, a Minnesota native and prep school graduate, rarely held press availabilities or announced his public schedule. His Montana campaign signs read “American Warrior,” but his introduction to the rest of America came through a series of damning articles, first in The Washington Post and then in The New York Times, questioning his story about how Sheehy received a bullet wound in his arm. 

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The facts suggested Sheehy had wounded himself by the accidental discharge of his handgun while in Glacier National Park. However, Sheehy claimed he had lied about that, and he had been wounded in a friendly fire incident while serving in Afghanistan and did not report it at the time because he feared his comrades would be disciplined. Recently, Sheehy’s story changed again, and he told podcaster Megyn Kelly a different account, suggesting he might have been wounded by an Afghan soldier. 

Democrats have been mostly wiped out in the Plains states as the party leaned more on coastal college graduates than non-college rural whites, but there was hope that the plain-spoken Tester could buck the trend. (The senator from Big Sandy, Montana, still owns the butchering machine that took three of his fingers as a youth). But the colorful Tester couldn’t beat back Montana’s demographic wave as MAGA refugees from the West Coast relocated in droves to Big Sky country over the past decade. Montana had long been considered the key seat in determining control of the Senate and money was spent accordingly, the two campaigns topping over $250 million in spending.