THREE FORKS, Mont. \u2014 Wylie Gustafson has been voting for Sen. Jon Tester, a third generation Montana farmer, for years, sticking with the Democrat even as Montana turned redder and redder.<\/p>\n
But this year, Gustafson, a 63-year-old rancher and musician, will be voting for Tester\u2019s Republican challenger, Tim Sheehy, a businessman born out of state \u2014 even if he feels a bit badly about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe there\u2019s a little bit of guilt involved with not going with Jon this time,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause I think Jon is a good guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether other Montanans feel the same way will not only determine Tester\u2019s fate, but may decide which party controls the U.S. Senate next year, with profound implications for federal tax policy, judicial nominations, and more.<\/p>\n
The Senate is split 51-49 in Democrats\u2019 favor and West Virginia\u2019s seat is almost certainly going to flip after the retirement of Sen. Joe Manchin III. That leaves Tester as Republicans\u2019 No. 1 target next month and Republicans and Democrats have flooded the airwaves with more than $270 million in advertising to try to influence the race.<\/p>\n
There was a time when the Senate had many like Tester in it \u2014 Democratic lawmakers who charmed votes from people who chose Republicans at the top of the ticket, or vice versa. But in recent years, split-ticket voters have become more rare, as people line up in their partisan corners, voting straight red or blue up and down the ballot.<\/p>\n
In Montana this year, voters are weighing their affection for Tester, 68 \u2014 a local fixture with a flap top and three missing fingers lost in a meat-grinding accident \u2014 against their discomfort with the Democrat\u2019s votes to convict Donald Trump in both impeachment trials. The election will reveal whether the once-purple state has trended even redder since Tester won his last race by 3.5 percentage points in 2018.<\/p>\n
The latest polls suggest Sheehy, 38, a former Navy SEAL who moved to Montana 10 years ago and became a millionaire founding an aerial firefighting company, has a seven percentage point edge, according to a recent New York Times\/Siena poll. With Montana in jeopardy, National Democrats have poured millions of dollars into long shot attempts to unseat GOP senators in Texas and Florida.<\/p>\n
Voters, many of whom refer to Tester by his first name, rarely brought those national stakes up in interviews with The Washington Post this month, instead wrestling with more local and personal concerns about Montana\u2019s rapidly changing identity amid an influx of newcomers in recent years.<\/p>\n
Gustafson decided his appreciation for Tester\u2019s authenticity as a native Montanan does not outweigh his desire for a representative who more closely matches the state\u2019s politics, saying he turned away from Tester after he voted for a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill and Democratic climate change legislation.<\/p>\n
He is voting for Sheehy, despite his \u201creservations\u201d about the veteran not being a native Montanan. \u201cYou know Montana: It\u2019s like, you have to be here for a couple of generations before we consider you not a Johnny-come-lately,\u201d joked Gustafson, who is related to the state\u2019s lieutenant governor. \u201cBut I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they come to Montana and understood why Montana is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
That question of what makes Montana what it is has loomed over the Senate contest, with Tester repeatedly charging that his opponent is a wealthy outsider who wants to change the state, and Sheehy, who has never held office, punching back that Tester\u2019s liberal votes are what do not belong here.<\/p>\n
Tester is fighting for his political life in a state that backed Donald Trump by more than 16 percentage points in 2020 by playing off many Montanans\u2019 anxieties about the wealthy outsiders relocating here and driving up real estate prices. He\u2019s blanketed the airwaves with grainy images of his ancestors arriving to homestead their land in Montana eons ago and painting his opponent as a wealthy carpetbagger.<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s Republicans think many of the tens of thousands of transplants who have flooded in since 2020 are conservatives who were fleeing covid-19 restrictions in the nearby blue states of California and Colorado. However, the state does not register voters by party, making it difficult to precisely assess the newcomers\u2019 lean.<\/p>\n
Almost half the state is now made up of people who were not born there, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, including Sen. Steven Daines (R) and Gov. Greg Gianforte.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a theory that Jon Tester has a 10-year overdue invoice on the changing demographics of Montana and I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s true,\u201d said Matt McKenna, a Montana Democratic strategist who\u2019s worked on past Tester campaigns. \u201cYou should be very skeptical of anyone who tells you they know who these new people are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several voters who had moved to the state recently and planned to vote against Tester said they saw Montana as a red haven.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe left California to get away from the politics,\u201d said Rhonda Brennecke, 58, who moved to Montana 5 \u00bd years ago and stopped for a brief interview on her way into a GOP fundraiser for Sheehy and others in Gallatin County. \u201cSo happy to be here. We\u2019re just really happy for people like Sheehy and [GOP Rep. Ryan] Zinke.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tester has painted many of these newcomers, including Sheehy, as lacking \u201cMontana values\u201d of fairness and trustworthiness.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of folks that move here that have hundreds of millions of dollars who want to buy their friends and buy places, buy houses and buy, buy, buy, buy, buy,\u201d Tester told a crowd of a few dozen voters in Butte this month. \u201cBut the truth is, this state\u2019s always been about the working man. It\u2019ll always be about the working man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sheehy, who has largely shunned the news media, has protested that he couldn\u2019t control where his mother\u2019s womb was when he \u201ccrawled out of it,\u201d and moved to the state as soon as he could.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat Jon Tester is saying is that unless you were born here, you don\u2019t matter to him and your voice shouldn\u2019t be heard,\u201d Sheehy\u2019s spokeswoman Katie Martin said in a statement. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if you moved 30 years ago, 40 years ago or 10 years ago like Tim and his wife did after their military service. In Jon Tester\u2019s mind you don\u2019t matter, your vote shouldn\u2019t count, and he doesn\u2019t represent you in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tester said in a brief interview that his message against Sheehy is not targeted at all newcomers. \u201cA lot of working folks have moved here,\u201d he said. \u201cJust a few people are trying to buy the state and make it into their own personal playground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tester\u2019s argument has broken through to some voters, some of whom blame newcomers for the housing crisis in Montana, which was recently ranked the least affordable state by a national Realtors group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that Tester has been homesteading his family\u2019s property for so long and [is a] third generation Montana and dirt farmer, represents Montana values or represents what Montanans are like \u2014 a lot of people just vote strictly on that,\u201d said Katie Campbell, a grassroots engagement coordinator for the Americans for Prosperity Action conservative group, which is canvassing for Sheehy.<\/p>\n
Campbell said she tries to convince skeptical voters in the bluer southwest part of the state that Sheehy is also a true Montanan. \u201cI just try to say, \u2018What makes you Montanan?\u2019\u201d Campbell said. \u201cI think that if an individual has chosen to put down their roots here in the state of Montana and build up their family and build up their life and their business and create their future here, I mean, that qualifies you as a Montanan to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Tester faces a cascade of daunting polls, Democrats hope his sophisticated ground game operation, built up over several cycles, and an abortion rights initiative on the ballot will boost their candidate, who has campaigned on abortion rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Tester goes over the top, I think that will be what will do it,\u201d Don Seifert, the former GOP county commissioner of Gallatin who supports Tester, said of the abortion rights initiative. Still, he conceded he\u2019s very concerned about his candidate\u2019s chances.<\/p>\n
Tester appears frustrated that the race is tight, telling the crowd in Butte it \u201cshouldn\u2019t be.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s made a ton of mistakes. Just a ton of mistakes,\u201d Tester said of Sheehy.<\/p>\n
Sheehy has been dogged by reporting that raised questions about the origin of a gunshot wound in his arm that he once told a park ranger was the result of an accidental discharge in Glacier National Park and later says he sustained in combat, leaked recordings that revealed him disparaging Native Americans as drunks, and young women as \u201cindoctrinated\u201d single issue voters on abortion, and questions about the financial health of his firefighting business that he touts as a success story.<\/p>\n
Sheehy has hit Tester for taking campaign contributions from lobbyists, and has also attacked Tester in personal terms, taking a page from Trump\u2019s playbook. In leaked recordings of Sheehy\u2019s campaign stops released by the Daily Montanan, Sheehy made fun of Tester\u2019s \u201cstupid\u201d haircut, described him as \u201cwaddl[ing]\u201d around the state and called him \u201cJabba the Hutt.\u201d Trump and his allies have also gone after Tester\u2019s weight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Montana is going to decide that Jon Tester is 350 pounds of B.S.,\u201d said Zinke, one of the state\u2019s two GOP congressmen, when asked to comment on the race while riding a horse at the Montana State University Homecoming Parade in Bozeman. \u201cHis record finally caught up with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laura Benshoff contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
THREE FORKS, Mont. \u2014 Wylie Gustafson has been voting for Sen. Jon Tester, a third generation Montana farmer, for years, sticking with the Democrat even as Montana turned redder and redder. But this year, Gustafson, a 63-year-old rancher and musician, will be voting for Tester\u2019s Republican challenger, Tim Sheehy, a businessman born out of state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11154,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}