Tim Sheehy, in his own words

This story is excerpted from Capitolized, a weekly newsletter featuring expert reporting, analysis and insight from the reporters and editors of Montana Free Press. Want to see Capitolized in your inbox every Thursday? Sign up here.

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Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy continues to dodge most opportunities to interview with Montana media. 

That was again the case when he appeared last Friday, April 19, at the Yellowstone County Republican Central Committee Lincoln Reagan Dinner. A campaign staffer declined to make the candidate available for an interview with Montana Free Press, which wished to get more detail about Sheehy’s conflicting accounts of his bullet wound, among other issues. 

But Sheehy did sit down for a “fireside chat” with a friendly fellow party member that evening, providing observers a glimpse into how the candidate, who is hoping to defeat longtime Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Jon Tester this year, views his campaign and some of the controversies Democrats have hoped would dog him on the trail. 

ON THE BEGINNING OF HIS INVOLVEMENT IN POLITICS

Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL who founded an aerial firefighting company near Bozeman and who has never before run for office, was a relative unknown when national outlets reported that the GOP was close to confirming him as a candidate last year. 

He started donating to Montana Republicans in 2016, and has contributed almost $40,000 to various state and local GOP-affiliated committees since. 

But last Friday he said his engagement in politics began in earnest with the U.S.’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in 2020 and 2021. Thirteen American troops were killed during the withdrawal, along with hundreds of Afghan civilian casualties.

“We abandoned kids there. We abandoned 800 American citizens there. And we disgraced the sacrifice of thousands of Americans,” Sheehy told the crowd at Swift River Ranch near Billings, adding that the withdrawal was the first time he felt “ashamed to wear the flag.” 

Although the bulk of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan took place under the administration of former President Donald Trump, Sheehy specifically blamed the Biden administration for the withdrawal’s lethal chaos. 

“That’s when I called [U.S. Rep.] Ryan Zinke, [U.S. Sen.] Steve Daines, the governor, and said, ‘whatever I can do, I have a personal vendetta against this administration, old FJB over there and all his lackeys, who include that stupid two-faced Tester,’ and I said whatever I can do to help … I have a personal bone to pick,” Sheehy said. “About a year later, Steve [Daines] said, ‘Hey Tim, you said you’d do whatever it takes. I’ve got an idea for you.” 

ON DIVISIONS WITHIN THE GOP

For months it appeared that Sheehy, a Minnesota native, would face a primary challenge from hardline Republican Congressman Matt Rosendale, who blasted Sheehy as a hand-picked lackey for the bipartisan status quo in Washington, D.C. Rosendale and Daines, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, were repeatedly at each other’s throats in the press. National Republicans fretted that Rosendale, who handed Tester the largest victory of his Senate career in 2018, would fare even worse the second time around. Grassroots right-wing activists, on the other hand, felt that Sheehy — who had previously donated to Tim Scott and Nikki Haley — was inadequately supportive of Trump, and that national Republicans were playing dirty to keep Rosendale out of the race. 

Rosendale ultimately launched a Senate bid but withdrew from the race after only six days, citing the fact that Trump endorsed Sheehy almost as soon as Rosendale formalized his candidacy. 

“I have been called Mitch McConnell’s Ken doll,” Sheehy said during Friday’s event.

He was asked what he would say to Montana Republicans skeptical of his candidacy. 

“Fighting is important,” he said. “We all want to fight. We want conservative fighters. American fighters. But what’s the whole point of fighting? You fight to win.”

Look to Japan during World War II, he said. “They fought very bravely … but we killed the shit out of them.” 

He said that if he decides to run for re-election in six years, “you can primary [me] then and beat me then and then we’ll have a true conservative.” 

ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND BRIDGER AEROSPACE

The Democratic opposition research machine pointed out early in Sheehy’s candidacy that Securities and Exchange Commission filings from Bridger Aerospace, his publicly traded aerial firefighting company, have discussed the impact of climate change on the intensity of wildfire season as recently as this year — an acknowledgment that’s earned him some criticism from Rosendale supporters. 

But since he began campaigning, he’s attacked what he called the “climate cult.” 

During the “fireside chat,” he was asked whether and how he has changed his position on climate change. 

He responded by minimizing anthropogenic climate change, opining that humans have no “appreciable impact” on global warming, an assertion that runs counter to the scientific consensus that human activity is one of the primary drivers of the Earth’s warming.

“Climate change is real, it’s been changing for 6 billion years,” he said.

He then attacked the Biden-era SEC and Federal Trade Commission for requiring public companies to disclose information about the effects of climate change on their businesses and the diversity of their boards — elements of “environmental, social and governance” investing that are often panned by conservatives. 

The vast majority of Bridger’s income comes from federal contracts. 

“There’s certain disclaimers you have to have as a large business,” Sheehy said.

ON THE FEDERAL BUDGET AND FIRST PRIORITIES

Sheehy acknowledged that as a junior senator he would have little ability to make policy. But he said he’ll have the power to vote against federal spending. He said he would support legislation to prevent members of Congress from being paid if Congress fails to pass a balanced budget in regular order.

He said the federal government needs to start “cleaving off” agencies, starting with the Department of Education. 

As another example of an expendable agency, he named the Department of Homeland Security — a position generally more common among left-wingers and Libertarians than Republicans. (Denny Rehberg, a Republican former congressman who is running for Montana’s eastern U.S. House district this year, also called for eliminating DHS on Friday, explicitly citing Sheehy’s support for that position.)

“We don’t need that [department],” Sheehy said. “It was a reaction to a terrible event. We’ve learned a lot since then.” 

Democrats have criticized Sheehy for advocating the dismantling of DHS after Axios first reported his position on the issue, asserting hypocrisy in a Republican candidate criticizing an agency that regulates the border (DHS encompasses U.S. Customs and Border Protection) even as the GOP blames Democrats for an “invasion” of immigrants across the U.S. border with Mexico.  

In a follow-up written statement to Capitolized, Sheehy did not explicitly say how he envisions replacing DHS, but said that “under the leadership of President Biden and Senator Tester, the Department of Homeland Security has become the Department of Homeland Sabotage, with liberal political appointees like [Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas tying the hands of federal law enforcement officers and orchestrating their radical open border agenda that has led to the invasion of nearly 10 million illegal immigrants in the last three years.”

Sheehy said that with fewer resources “wasted on these bureaucratic paper pushers, we can actually empower border patrol and other federal law enforcement officers to do the job they want to do and secure our border and protect the homeland.” 

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