He’s a former Navy SEAL combat veteran, a successful entrepreneur in a dynamic emerging field, a rancher, and a young father who is a conservative in a deep red state.
By all indications, Tim Sheehy should be the perfect GOP candidate to unseat Sen. Jon Tester, who has defied the odds three times since 2006 to be elected to the U.S. Senate in Republican-dominated Montana.
Nearly half the state’s registered voters are Republicans, with more than 20 percent independents. Democrats constitute less than a third of the electorate.
The GOP controls the offices of governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and both chambers of the state legislature. Both Montana’s Congressional representatives are Republicans and its junior U.S. Senator is Steve Daines, who is spearheading the Republican National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee (NRSCC) and championing Mr. Sheehy’s campaign.
When Mr. Sheehy ended months of speculation and formally declared in late June that he would seek the GOP nod to challenge the three-term incumbent Democrat, Mr. Daines in his NRSCC Chair capacity touted the newcomer as the ideal candidate to join him in the Senate.
“Tim Sheehy is a decorated veteran, successful businessman, and a great Montanan. I could not be happier that he has decided to enter the Montana Senate race,” Mr. Daines said in an endorsement echoed by Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
That announcement drew a sharp response from Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) who, as then-state auditor, was defeated in 2018 by Mr. Tester, 50.3 percent to 46.8 percent, and is expected to seek a rematch.
“Congratulations to Mitch McConnell and the party bosses on getting their chosen candidate. Now Washington has two candidates—Tim Sheehy and Jon Tester—who will protect the DC cartel,” Mr. Rosendale said in a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter).
“Unfortunately for them, Montanans don’t take orders from Washington. I believe that Montanans are tired of business as usual and will reject the McConnell-Biden Establishment.”
As of Aug. 9. Mr. Rosendale has not officially declared his intent to seek the Republican nomination for a rematch with Mr. Tester. The deadline to officially enter the June 4, 2024 primary is March 11, 2024.
Elected to Congress in 2020 and reelected in 2022, he is a House Freedom Caucus member who opposed Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) ascent to Speaker and an outspoken MAGA conservative.
Mr. Rosendale has been touring the state and is sounding very much like a candidate. He has an active campaign committee registered with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) that began July 1 with $1.2 million in the bank.
His campaign did not return requests for comment from The Epoch Times.
GOP Eyes ‘Vulnerable’ Senate Seat
The expected inter-party clash between the neophyte Mr. Sheehy and decade-long veteran of partisan agitation Mr. Rosendale will be among key GOP primary battles next winter-into-summer before the Nov. 5, 2024, general election.There will be 34 U.S. Senate seats on ballots across the nation in November 2024, including 20 held by Democrats, three by independents, and 11 by Republicans.
Of the 20 seats now held by incumbent Democrats, at least eight are in states defined as “competitive” by elections ratings services such as Sabato’s Crystal Ball and Inside Elections, with three Senate Democrats in states won by former President Donald Trump in 2020: West Virginia, Ohio, and Montana.
Therefore, mere math gives Republicans confidence heading into the 2024 elections that they can gain control of the chamber now led by Democrats, 51-49, and defeating Mr. Tester in Montana is key to that aspiration.
Yet, Mr. Tester, a third-generation rancher who is regarded as a moderate and has a solid favorable rating among state voters, has managed to be elected three times as a Democrat in Montana.
He could not have done so in 2018 without being endorsed by a significant segment of those who voted to re-elect President Donald Trump by a 99,000-vote margin, receiving nearly 344,000 votes, in 2020.
This is not necessarily surprising. Montana voters have sent 14 Democrats to the U.S. Senate, compared to just five Republicans since 1900.
And despite the heavy red lean, elections ratings services such as Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Inside Elections, and the American Enterprise Institute rate the Tester-vs.-GOP challenger race a “toss-up” and Cooks Political Report classifies it as ‘Lean Democrat.’
According to Mr. Tester’s July 1 filing with the FEC, he began the third quarter with $10.5 million cash on hand with the promise of plenty more contributions from within the state as well as nationally as Democrats desperately fight to retain the seat.
Therefore, Mr. Sheehy is concentrating on challenging the Biden administration and Democratic policies, and not on a prospective primary scrum with Mr. Rosendale in his still-evolving platform, campaign spokesperson Katie Martin told The Epoch Times.
“We obviously can only control the race that we are in currently,” she said, noting that, despite barbs from the not-campaigning-but-campaigning Mr. Rosendale, Mr. Sheehy has secured key endorsements not only from current U.S. Senate leaders but Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), a fellow former SEAL, and Gov. Greg Gianforte, who were among those purportedly eyeing a 2024 Senate run before Mr. Sheehy’s announcement.
Some Early Stumbles
Mr. Sheehy, 37, and his wife, Carmen—a former U.S. Marine and Afghanistan War veteran—are raising four children on their ranch near Helena they’ve managed since moving from Minnesota to Montana in 2014.As a Navy officer and SEAL, Mr. Sheehy was deployed for “hundreds of missions” with special forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, South America, and the Pacific. Among his commendations is the Bronze Star with Valor for heroism and the Purple Heart.
Mr. Sheehy’s wounds forced him out of the SEALs and into a successful business career as the founder of Bridger Aerospace in 2014 and, later, Ascent Vision Technologies. His campaign maintains Bridger Aerospace employs more than 200 Montanans.
In addition, he owns Little Belt Cattle Co. and is an active firefighting “Water Bomber” pilot. He will remain Bridger Aerospace CEO through his campaign, but will resign if elected, his campaign states.
In his June 27 announcement, Mr. Sheehy said he hopes to be part of a vanguard of “a new generation of strong conservative leadership and common-sense solutions to fix our nation’s problems.”
As a veteran and a business owner, he cited: “career politicians and their failure to run our government like a business” as among attributes he would bring to the Senate while opposing “Jon Tester and the Democratic Party’s agenda of inflation, open borders, criminals over cops, drugs and violence in our communities, and a woke culture impacting our classrooms and military bases.
“My life has been shaped by my service to our country and our community,” Mr. Sheehy continued. “My commitment to job creation here in Montana has been steadfast across multiple industries, and I am a firm believer in the power of conservative values and the strength of the American individual.”
As of Aug. 10, Mr. Sheehy’s campaign is registered with the FEC but has not posted any details. The next FEC filing deadline is Oct. 1. He has the resources to self-fund much of his campaign.
Despite the endorsements and early spurt of enthusiasm, Mr. Sheehy’s campaign has stumbled a bit coming out of the gate with questions raised about his status as a federal contractor—the U.S. government are their primary clients—and, in at least one widely-noted example, an apparent flip-flop from being an enthusiastic supporter of United States’ support for Ukraine in fighting off Russia’s February 2022 invasion, to a recently-minted opponent.
Sheehy modified that stance in July when he called for the United States to “compel an immediate peaceful outcome” by ending its support for Kyiv.
“We are a year into this war and America has done our duty in stopping this vicious and unprovoked attack,” he said in a July 19 statement, “and we must now demand a settlement which ends the killing of innocent people and the unlimited supply of arms from the United States.”
Mr. Sheehy said that Mr. Tester and President Joe Biden have engaged in “wasteful spending” in support of Ukraine and across a range of issues that distract from domestic issues such as border security and the nation’s economy.
That stance reflected a significant departure from previous social media posts, including August 2022 LinkedIn posts where he appeared to favor the use of American troops in assisting Ukraine.
“Georgia, Crimea, Syria, now Kiev—then what? Estonia? Finland? Sweden? Gofund me pages and twitter likes aren’t enough. Soldiers, planes, bombs and bullets will be needed against this tyrant.”
Mr. Rosendale has staunchly opposed United States funding for Ukraine and has knocked the “establishment-backed” Mr. Sheehy as a novice who doesn’t know what he wants.
There is one thing that Mr. Sheehy and Mr. Rosendale—a Maryland native—share in their quest to unseat Mr. Tester: Many in Montana regard them as outsiders while the three-term Democrat comes from a well-known family that has been active in state politics for decades.
Several of Mr. Sheehy’s early campaign photos and videos purporting to show Montana were actually from elsewhere, an oversight by a South Carolina firm handling his media that was duly noted across the state.
The Montana Democratic Party has made no bones that, as it was in Mr. Tester’s 2018 defeat of Mr. Rosendale, Mr. Sheehy’s status as a relative newcomer to the state will be a factor among Montana voters.
“Good morning,” the Montana Democratic Party said in an X post (formerly Twitter) the day after Mr. Sheehy announced he was running. “Jon Tester has farm equipment that’s been in Montana longer than Tim Sheehy.”
