MONTANA — A former teacher and multigeneration dirt farmer with seven fingers sounds like the ideal description for a politician trying to keep a seat in Montana. Yet it’s unclear if Sen. Jon Tester’s brand of “authenticity” still matters to voters.
Democrats in Washington are preparing for the worst in Montana, investing in long-shot races in Texas and Florida to try and salvage the map. And out West, Democrats are worried that being a real Montanan doesn’t cut through partisan rancor the way it once did (though they’re not giving up on Tester’s chances in November).
Ten years ago, a plagiarism scandal took out former Montana Sen. John Walsh; now, controversies around a candidate’s background don’t appear to be swaying the polls. Republican Tim Sheehy has been accused of plagiarizing parts of his book, where he talks about bootstrapping his business partly with family money (he’s never publicly acknowledged the allegations). He admitted to previously lying about how he sustained a gunshot wound and confirmed that he grew up in a wealthy Twin Cities suburb, despite repeatedly saying on the campaign trail that he grew up in “rural” Minnesota. His business may not be as successful as he claims, and he was caught on tape disparaging American Indians.
“No one cares and Tim Sheehy knows it,” Montana Democratic consultant Matt McKenna said. “They can get away with that because of this built-in advantage they have.”
Montana is changing. Several of the blue-collar industries are shells of what they once were, meaning the union-member Democrats are dwindling. The agriculture industry is consolidating, meaning fewer and fewer voters in rural parts of the state, and the state has a lot of new residents who don’t really care how long someone like Tester — or his fellow Democrats on the ballot — has been around.
Democrats are finding that they can’t just rely on ticket splitters like they used to; they have to make ticket splitters. Conventional wisdom says a Democrat in Montana needs to win about one in five Republicans, McKenna said. Playing to win means finding a group of typically conservative voters you can sway.
“Democrats here have to be pretty close to perfect,” he said. “The way they started winning was building nontraditional coalitions. … The way you keep winning is you have to realize that the state is changing and your coalition is changing.”
Up and down the ballot, Montana Democrats this cycle are grappling with how to build a new coalition and how to sell being an “authentic” Montanan to an increasingly divided electorate. Pretty much every Democrat in Montana mentioned the importance of creating distance from the national Democratic brand. Many have photos with Donald Trump supporters, with guns, out on the farm or all three.
At a Sasquatch-themed diner, with a Sasquatch mural and Sasquatch plushies, Democrats’ secretary of state candidate, Jesse James Mullen, said his own party has abandoned rural America.
“That is something that I’ve really tried to focus on throughout this campaign, is going out to these conservative communities that … I felt had been abandoned by the Democratic Party,” Mullen said.
At a fundraising dinner in Havre, Montana, Democrats’ candidate for governor, Ryan Busse, touted his past in the gun business and talked about hunting with his son while driving across the state.
“It’s really important for Democrats not to let other folks steal the flag or steal our traditions or pretend that we don’t hunt or fish or drive a truck or whatever those things are,” he said. “People are looking for an excuse to vote against [Gov. Greg Gianforte]. We just have to be two Democrats that weren’t cooked up in the Fox News lab. It’s really that simple.”
There’s evidence all around them that there aren’t as many of these voters around. Along the main street in Deer Lodge, Montana, a sign reading, “Save Hotel Deer Lodge” hangs over an empty building. Most of the buildings are empty, and some of the windows are smashed in. How many Republicans in these towns will vote for Tester, Busse and Mullen? A ticket splitter must split at some point.
There’s some hope for Democrats in parts of the state that are growing. Monica Tranel, who’s in a competitive rematch for Rep. Ryan Zinke’s seat, is running to represent a district that includes most of the expanding population centers that have tilted more Democratic in recent years.
“They know me, they know my dad. They do work with my brother. My sister was their teacher. Those personal relationships are really what I think bring Montanans into the political world. And so I really invested very, very heavily in developing those,” she said.
But after dominating the last few cycles, the GOP doesn’t seem concerned — especially regarding the Senate race. Zinke described Sheehy as “right out of central casting.” He’s a business owner, like Gianforte and Trump. He’s a former Navy SEAL, which picks away at Tester’s advantage as the former chair of the Senate’s Veterans’ Affairs Committee. And he has a ranch, which helps with rural voters.
Even Democrats concede: Describe the perfect Republican, “that, unfortunately, is Tim Sheehy to a T,” Max Johansen, the Democratic Chair of Park County, an area that has supported both Trump and Tester, told NOTUS.
Republicans in the state have all been working to tie their opponents to national Democratic figures or haven’t acknowledged their opponents at all — something that’s easy to do when the electorate defaults Republican.
“They’ve gotten too liberal,” Sen. Steve Daines said of Democrats.
“Voters are not going to be receptive to someone who publicly believes that boys should participate in girls sports, that the answer to affordable housing is government, the answer to our economic woes is punish corporations,” Zinke said of Tranel. “I don’t think Montana’s woke anymore than America.”
But Zinke admitted that ticket splitting will still be a phenomenon in Montana.
“Montana isn’t heavily left or right. A lot of it is dependent on the candidate,” he said. “Montanans go, ‘I’m gonna vote for leadership.’”
As for Tester, he’s counting on that legacy to propel him forward.
“Montana is known for splitting tickets. I’ve never voted for a straight ticket in my life,” he told NOTUS. “A lot of Montanans vote for the person, not for the party, and I think that’s the best way to have it. Now, obviously Tim Sheehy, being from Minnesota, doesn’t know that.”
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Casey Murray is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that the Deer Lodge, Montana, diner is Sasquatch-themed, not yeti-themed.