After a months-long campaign, Montana Senate candidates close their case
GALLATIN COUNTY — In the final 96 hours before Montanans will decide the most consequential U.S. Senate race in the country, the importance of this valley's coveted voters was clear to the two men who have been locked in an intense battle for months.
In downtown Bozeman, incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester , seeking his fourth term in office, held a rally alongside the rest of his party's slate of statewide candidates aiming to amp up the critical bloc of young voters in this college town.
Tester yelled "Give 'em hell!" from the front of an overflowing pizza joint as he and others reminded the crowd the polls have never done him any favors but have always been proven wrong by a vigorous ground game in the final days of his races. He also made sure voters knew about what he called his opponent's "tortured relationship with the truth."
Only 20 miles down the interstate in Manhattan, Republican Tim Sheehy was joined by U.S. Sen. Steve Daines and Arkansas Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton. Going into the final days, Sheehy is projecting cautious confidence and encouraging Montanans to get out the vote, in part by harping on the stakes of his race and tying his candidacy to former President Donald Trump.
"Literally, the future of America rests on your shoulders," Sheehy told an energetic crowd the Friday before Election Day.
The two men are battling for one of the most coveted U.S. Senate seats, as the outcome will likely determine which party controls the chamber after November, a reality that Sheehy has continually reminded Montanans of. The contest has consumed the airwaves and is on track to be the most expensive Senate race in the nation per voter.
Tester is the only working farmer in the U.S. Senate and carved a moderate path for himself in office, often breaking with his party nationally on issues like the southern border and firearms policy. Through this election, he touted the importance of his seniority in the race, pointing to his chairmanship of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, an arena where he focused legislative efforts on passing legislation like the PACT Act to ensure veterans exposed to toxins receive medical care.
Sheehy, a retired Navy SEAL, moved to Montana 10 years ago and this is his first run at public office. Shortly after settling in the Gallatin Valley, he founded an aerial firefighting and surveillance company which has helped him partially self-fund his campaign. Daines, also a Gallatin County resident, was integral to Sheehy's arrival at this moment. The Republican senator recruited Sheehy to run against his Senate colleague, in large part because of Sheehy's military service and ability to lend millions to his own campaign.
In all three of his past Senate victories, reputable polling has shown Tester trailing his Republican opponents. His first win was decided by a little more than 3,500 votes. He's never gone to bed on election night knowing his fate, and newspaper readers across the state woke up to headlines his Republican opponent was leading in 2018 before the race finally went for Tester by his largest margin.
This cycle he's also trailed in the polls by as much as 8 points, and though more recent surveys show a tighter race, Sheehy still leads.
"The reason Jon Tester is still U.S. senator is because people like you stood in line to vote," Democratic governor candidate Ryan Busse told the Bozeman crowd. That election was six years ago, when Gallatin County residents waited hours to cast their ballots.
"People were voting over two hours after the polls were closed. That's the kind of effort we're going to need if we're going to win," Tester said Friday night.
The senator's ground game is famed, and in the sprint up to Election Day his campaign has knocked half of a million doors and made 2.6 million phone calls in a state with 791,349 registered voters and just over a million residents. Tester's hoping that effort again powers him across the finish line.
Tester's campaign got some help this weekend from Lily Gladstone, an award-winning actor who grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation. She appeared as a surprise guest at a rally in Missoula on Saturday, calling herself a "reluctant public figure."
Many politicians have asked for her support, Gladstone said, but Tester is the only one she turned out for.
"We need people to remember that the heartbeat of this state is in the poetry of the people and how much we love this land," she said at a get-out-the-vote event. "And we just need to support each other."
The Republicans are likewise hammering voter turnout, including encouraging early voting.
"We are winning this race," Daines said to the crowd in Manhattan just a couple hours before Tester spoke in downtown Bozeman. "But these are just polls. It doesn't matter until you vote. The only thing that allows Jon Tester to win this race is if you don't show up and vote."
Sheehy, in the final days, is emphatically encouraging Montanans to vote by playing up the stakes of this race and tying himself to Trump, who's also on the ballot this cycle and endorsed Sheehy earlier this year. Tester has never shared a ballot with Trump, who is wildly popular in Montana and held a massive rally here in August to attack the Democrat. While Sheehy can embrace the top of the ticket and is making sure voters know GOP power is on the line, Tester's message is necessarily void of national politicians swooping in for support.
"Literally, the future of the free world is at stake this fall, and that runs right through Montana," Sheehy said in East Helena in late October. "It's not just the White House, it's what we do here in Montana, because if Donald Trump wins, and doesn't have a Senate, just like last time, Jon Tester will vote to impeach him. He voted to impeach him twice last time, and he'll do it again. So we have to give Donald Trump a Congress that can get things done ... "
At the Manhattan event, Daines matched this message, saying Sheehy "will support Trump's agenda."
When asked directly what his closing pitch is to voters, Sheehy said it's the "same as it's always been: common sense, common sense."
He has long staked his campaign message on bringing "common sense" back to legislating, which to Sheehy means "a secure border, safe streets, cheap gas, cops are good, criminals are bad, boys are boys and girls are girls," he has said countless times.
In a state that votes for Trump by double digits, Tester has been able to secure narrow victories in the last three cycles in large part by garnering the support of Republicans, Independents and those who vote for the Democratic senator and other Republicans on the ballot. In the final days, Sheehy appears acutely aware of the allure Tester has among some more conservative voters.
"Most importantly, if you know that elusive Trump-Tester voter that simply watches the TV and believes what they see ... Be nice: cup of coffee, buy them a Cinnabon, buy them a bag of chips, or a beer, whatever it is they'd like to consume, go over there and say, 'Do you understand if you're gonna vote for Donald Trump, you're gonna vote for the guy who impeached him twice at the same time? That doesn't seem to make much sense.'"
As Tester told voters in Bozeman on Friday night, he sees the future of Montana at risk.
"What's on the ballot is our public lands. That's on the ballot. What's on our ballot is access to health care. That's on the ballot. What's on the ballot is privatization of education. That's on the ballot. What's on the ballot is a woman's right to make her own damn health care decisions. That's on the ballot. What's on the ballot is how we're going to deal with climate change going forward," Tester said.
What's different in his race against Sheehy compared to previous battles, he told the crowd, is the scandals the Republican has been mired in through the election and intensified in the closing weeks. That includes Sheehy's claims he sustained a gunshot wound in Afghanistan when information surfaced to show it could have come from an accidental discharge in Glacier National Park.
"I'm running against a guy that's got a tortured relationship with the truth, and that's really the biggest difference. I don't mind running against the guy. We disagree on issues, but every one of those issues ... public lands, health care, education, women's right to choose, and a whole bunch more, we're on the other side of the equation with him," Tester said.
On Friday, Sheehy appeared on conservative Megyn Kelly's podcast and was pressed on the gunshot wound. Sheehy again said that the incident happened in Afghanistan and he did not report it for fear of investigation into friendly fire. But he also said there was "not an extensive medical record for any of this stuff;" he's been pressed to release his medical record from a Flathead hospital to clear up the conflicting stories.
The Kelly interview, in which she called Sheehy's account "confusing," marked the first time Sheehy addressed the injury on-camera. He also said that he had "internal bleeding" from a dislodged bullet, though Glacier ranger Kim Peach said Sheehy was bandaged that day at a hospital outside the park.
Outside Sheehy's East Helena event last week, a small group of Montana veterans gathered to call on the Republican to provide those medical records and answer media questions about the incident.
"I am so angry about Tim Sheehy's deceptions concerning his military record about receiving a gunshot wound in combat, when in fact he shot himself in the parking lot at Logan Pass in Glacier National Park, which is characteristic of a cartoonish nimrod," said Michael Jarnevic, a 40-year veteran of the Marines and Army Special Forces.
When reporting late this summer surfaced audio where Sheehy made racist remarks about Crow tribal members , the candidate refused to apologize and claimed the recordings were taken out of context, though full versions of the audio showed they were not altered.
" ... Every time he says something stupid, he goes, 'Oh, that's distorted' So then they released the whole damn tape, and he goes, 'Oh my gosh. I guess I did say that,'" Tester said.
At an event at Aaniiih Nakoda College in Fort Belknap a week earlier, Tester called Sheehy's prior comments about the Crow "completely ridiculous, beyond the pale ridiculous."
For Sheehy's part, he blames these criticisms on Tester's campaign tactics, his campaign's momentum and the media.
"Their entire campaign against me has been based on character assassination. I mean that's all it's been since the beginning," Sheehy said on the Kelly show four days before the election. "Every time he's run, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the state and they have one playbook and that is to literally just smear the opponent to the point where they're unrecognizable and they're doing the same thing to me."
Eight days before election day, at an event in East Helena, attendees from toddlers to teenagers and elderly people using walkers crowded Sheehy for a photo and a handshake once speeches wrapped up.
"The enthusiasm you can feel, you can taste, you can smell it," Sheehy said in East Helena. "People are showing up, and they're ready to save this country. So we've earned this lead we have."
Tester too was treated like a rockstar at his event in Bozeman, with voters lining up to tell the senator he had their support.
"I've felt good for a long time. I think the energy on the ground is good. I think that they've spent a lot of money trying to make me into something I'm not. I don't get the feeling that it's stuck," Tester said.
— Montana State News Bureau reporter Carly Graf contributed to this report.
Victoria Eavis is a reporter for the Montana State News Bureau.
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