MISSOULA — Ahead of Tim Sheehy’s Monday night debate with Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, the Republican candidate spoke at a rally held by a conservative student organization at the University of Montana.
Sheehy and Turning Point Action founder and conservative activist Charlie Kirk discussed bureaucracy, the border and the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and targeted Tester during the “Save Big Sky Rally” at the University of Montana’s George & Jane Dennison Theatre.
Before introducing Sheehy, Kirk spoke for about 15 minutes, describing a shift among young people toward the political right because of inflation and immigration. Kirk said a national movement rejecting “radical Democrats” includes people who may disagree on certain issues but agree on the big things.
“We agree that free speech is a bedrock of this country,” he said. “We agree that when decisions must be made, citizens must always be prioritized above citizens of another country. … We believe that if you do not have a border, you do not have a country. An open border is not a border. We believe that God created men and women and that men don’t belong in women’s sports.”
Tester is outspending Sheehy on advertising because the incumbent is “perfect for California liberals,” Kirk said.
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Sheehy maintains poll lead
U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy held a commanding lead with likely Montana voters in a new election poll commissioned by AARP. The poll, released Sept. 5, reflects the responses of 1,064 likely voters age 18 to 65-plus with an overall sampling error of plus or minus 4%. Sheehy, a first-time Republican candidate, held an 8-point advantage over incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester — a margin wide enough to suggest a Sheehy victory if the election were held today.
Kirk told the crowd of several hundred that the opportunity to send “true conservative” Sheehy to the Senate will only be achieved if audience members tell family and friends to vote the entire ballot and “make sure Trump has a unified government to work with.”
Sheehy said the most “insidious” change during the last four years of the Biden administration is the growth of “unaccountable bureaucracy.” Restrictions on businesses and schools during the COVID-19 pandemic are a preview of what Democrats want America to look like, he said.
“Our Constitution did not imagine an executive branch this overreaching and this aggressive in going after its own citizens,” he said. “It’s important we get back to a pro-business set of policies. It’s more than just taxes. It’s recognizing that businesses are the heart of the American spirit.”
Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL, spent about 10 minutes discussing his service in Afghanistan and the state of the U.S. military. Sheehy said it was his experience in the war and watching the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 that got him involved in politics.
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Trump and Sheehy train attacks on Tester in Bozeman
The Bozeman rally was Trump’s sixth in Montana since 2016, the most of any American president. All but the first of those Montana appearances have been aimed at unseating U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, Montana’s only statewide elected Democrat. Ahead of the rally, Tester’s campaign published a large ad in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle featuring endorsements by dozens of Republicans, including several former officeholders at every level of state government. But Trump’s swats at Tester emphasized that the farmer-politician from Big Sandy isn’t part of Trump’s club.
“We were there for 20 years and the government that we built lasted less than a day,” he said. “If that doesn’t scare you about how incompetent our own government has become, that they can’t solve any problems, whether that’s our border, whether it’s health care, whether it’s our budget or whether it’s the foreign war we spent 20 years fighting, I don’t know what’ll scare you.”
Sheehy said the military is seeing “record levels of non-readiness” regarding its aircraft and ships and low recruitment. While the Department of Defense doesn’t need more money, it needs less bureaucracy to spur innovation, he said.
Sheehy told the veterans in the room they have a responsibility to continue their service by getting involved to “save this country on and before November 5th.”
Kirk and Sheehy highlighted the importance of the race and its potential to flip the Senate to a Republican majority.
“For a state like Montana, the Senate is our most potent expression of political power in the nation, because we only get — now we have two Congressional representatives. We don’t have a whole lot of say who becomes president. But we have just as much say in the U.S. Senate as New York, California and Florida. That’s the great equalizer.”
Sheehy acknowledged that while Trump has a big lead in Montana, his race with Tester is tighter because of voters who will split the ticket. He encouraged the crowd to talk to those voters and remind them that Tester voted to impeach Trump and voted against his cabinet and Supreme Court nominees.
Kirk and Sheehy encouraged Montanans to vote early. Sheehy said Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen is doing a “fantastic” job and that this will be Montana’s most secure election.
During his comments, Sheehy was interrupted twice, once by two protesters calling him a racist and later by another protester.
Tribal leaders and community members have called for Sheehy to apologize for references to Crow Indians and alcohol after audio recordings of the comments were published in late August. In a recent Fox News interview, Sheehy said the recordings were old and suggested they were edited to make him sound bad, the Daily Montanan reported.
“These friends back here, they just called me a racist,” Sheehy said during the rally on Monday. “It’s like, you know what? I fought alongside Muslims, Jews, Hindis, every possible race you could imagine, I was in foxholes with them, in gunfights with them. We were covered in the same mud in the same spots.”
About two dozen people protested outside the venue at the end of the event, chanting “get your hate out of our state” and “shady Sheehy has to go.”
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