Sheehy skepticism among ultra-Republicans still lingers going into primary

He moved about the crowd in an all-denim outfit, boots and a ball cap from the cattle ranch he co-owns (which he has received carpetbagger criticism over). Nothing about him revealed that he’s the frontrunner in the primary race to unseat three-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, but it was clear that many people in the room knew who he was.

Sheehy shook hands with families and made faces at babies, eliciting huge sparsely toothed smiles while their parents thanked him for his service in the military. Multiple people asked him to sign their copies of his book, “Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting,” spelling out their names and asking for photos with him.

At Bridger Aerospace (the aerial firefighting and surveillance company he founded) and in other circles, Sheehy is adored. But not everyone in Montana is as convinced of the first-time U.S. Senate candidate.

The race between the former Navy SEAL and businessman and the Big Sandy dirt farmer is one of the most closely watched contests in the nation, as Democrats have a razor-thin majority in the Senate and Tester is one of two incumbent Democrats running for reelection in the chamber in a state that Donald Trump carried in 2020. 

This race is already being fought like a general election contest, with Tester and Sheehy filling the airwaves with ads attacking each other, but the June 4 primary has yet to declare official nominees.

With the vote less than two weeks away, many Republicans interviewed by the Montana State News Bureau still have a bad taste in their mouth about how Sheehy became the anointed candidate and are unsure if they will end up voting for him, while others don’t care for the semantics and are solely motivated by the desire to beat Tester.

But it wasn't always going to be as simple as Sheehy vs. Tester.

Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale was teasing a Senate bid for months leading up to his brief candidacy that he officially announced in February. After pressure to leave the race from those backing Sheehy (including expenditures campaigning against Rosendale by a group with ties to one of Sheehy's staunchest allies), a Trump endorsement for Sheehy and nasty unsubstantiated rumors that swirled around Montana and D.C., the eastern Montana congressman dropped out.

“It gets winnowed ahead of time. The decision isn't really with the voters, especially if special interest and big money plays a role, which it did,” said Kendra Miller, political consultant and Democratic appointee to the 2020 redistricting commission. “That's the question for voters: Why does the primary even matter?”

Others, particularly those who are dead-set on unseating Tester, see it differently.

“We’ve gotta remember, he chose not to run,” Montana GOP chairman Don ‘K’ Kaltschmidt told the Montana State News Bureau in mid-May. “It [was] really Congressman Rosendale’s choice.”

Rosendale ran against Tester last cycle in 2018, losing narrowly but giving Tester the widest victory margin in his Senate campaign history. Rosendale, however, has remained highly popular among Montana Republicans, capturing far more votes than the other Republicans on the same ticket in the past. 

In 2018, there was new concern about Tester's electability because it would mark the first time he was running for reelection with a Republican in the White House. 

Tester, of course, was successful, but the state has gotten shades more red since then. Following the 2018 election, Republicans held 58 seats in the House to Democrats' 42 and had a three to two majority in the state Senate. Those gaps have since widened to 68 Republican seats in the House and 34 in the Senate. And this is Tester's first Senate race in a presidential election year where turnout is expected to be high, something that favored the GOP massively in 2020.

Sheehy has long said that the reason he got into the race — this is his first time running for elected office in Montana — is because of Democratic President Joe Biden’s “disastrous botched withdrawal of Afghanistan,” in which 13 U.S. service members and 170 civilians died at the Kabul airport.

"Tim Sheehy will proudly work alongside President Trump to rebuild our economy with low inflation and good-paying jobs, and ensure we finally secure our border, deport illegal immigrants, and make our communities safe again," a Sheehy campaign spokesperson said in a written statement. 

Republican Sen. Steve Daines and the group he chairs, which is tasked with taking back control of the U.S. Senate, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, are heavily backing Sheehy and tried to keep Rosendale out of the race for months. Republicans Gov. Greg Gianforte and Rep. Ryan Zinke also endorsed Sheehy.

“How do you fight a billionaire club?” asked Eric Olsen, a Yellowstone County conservative who's frustrated with how the candidate selection process played out.

Linda Harmon, a leader in the Daniels County GOP, said she’s unsure if she will vote for Sheehy in the general election. 

“Montanans did not have a vote for Senate [in the primary],” she said. “I absolutely would have voted for Rosendale.”

The Sheehy campaign did not respond to a question about voters' concerns over how the GOP primary field turned out.

But still, most voters are not as plugged in as these state and local level politicos, said Carroll College Political Science Professor Jeremy Johnson.

“Most people pay a little less attention to politics, they just take the label on the ticket and what President Trump says,” Johnson said. “[They’re] less concerned with all the intricacies; that’s more of an elite thing.”

Sheehy has a primary challenger in former Secretary of State Brad Johnson, but if fundraising, spending and endorsements are any indication, the contest does not appear to be close.

“It’s an uphill battle for sure," Brad Johnson said.

Unsurprisingly, Brad Johnson also shares the frustrations about how the selection process of Sheehy played out.

“It's not like I'm some newcomer that's just popped out of the woodwork. I've served in elected office for 12 years,” he said. “I'm pretty proud of my political resume.”

Brad Johnson served as Montana’s secretary of state from 2004 to 2008 and as the Public Service Commission chair representing District 5. He first got involved in Montana politics in the early '80s shortly after moving to Bozeman. He then went on to serve on the state party’s executive committee in the mid '80s. Between him and Sheehy, they’re “very close” on the policy stances, Brad Johnson said.

“I've never encountered that level of open favoritism. It's wrong. It's not good for the process,” Brad Johnson said. “It's hard to watch having been a committed part of the Republican Party.”

Charles Walking Child is also running for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate, but has yet to raise or spend any money, according to Federal Election Commission filings. He previously ran for the eastern Congressional district in 2022, coming in third in the primary capturing 6.1% of the vote.

“It isn't democracy if we've got these super-rich politicians pointing out their candidates. … They don't know the pain that the hard-working families are going through right now. I do,” Walking Child said.

Multiple people interviewed by the Montana State News Bureau of similar political persuasions, however, are completely on board with Sheehy, in large part motivated by the desire to get rid of Tester.

Bowen Greenwood formerly worked and campaigned for Brad Johnson (and he currently serves as Montana’s clerk of the Supreme Court, a partisan elected position). Despite his “love” for Brad Johnson, he’s voting for Sheehy in the primary.

Greenwood explained that he’s “laser-focused” on winning back Tester’s seat, because he sees Sheehy’s victory in the primary as “inevitable.”

“I think it's a good idea to send Sheehy through [to the general election] with as much strength as possible,” the Republican clerk said.

Most Republicans interviewed by the Montana State News Bureau who are apprehensive about Sheehy are also big fans of Trump, who has endorsed Sheehy. In their minds, those two facts are not contradictory of each other, as there’s a common belief that Trump does not do his own bidding.

Olsen, who says he will not be voting for Sheehy in the primary and is unsure about how he will vote in November, said the Trump endorsement doesn't sway him.

“Trump’s problem is he’s got some people behind him who don’t know what’s going on,” he said, adding that he believes his son, Donald Trump, Jr., is responsible for a lot of the former president’s endorsements.

Trump, Jr., last month headlined an event in Missoula to rally support around Sheehy, imploring the crowd to be active in the election and not get complacent.

But most voters do not have theories about the intricacies of Trump’s endorsements and they will rely heavily on the endorsement and the “R” next to Sheehy’s name, Professor Johnson argued.

“Most Republicans are going to end up supporting Sheehy in November,” Professor Johnson said. “He has the endorsement of Donald Trump and in today’s party that seems to count for a whole lot.”

Trump, however, was not able to tip the scales in Montana during the 2018 cycle when he came to Montana four times to campaign in support of Rosendale. This year the former president has his own race and legal battles to contend with.

Sheehy, a first-time political candidate, has faced a slew of bad headlines over the last few months, including a lie and conflicting stories about a gunshot wound, accusations that he's a "wannabe cowboy," misrepresentations about which groups his book proceeds are funneled to and more. 

After the primary, there are five months before the general election. According to the most recent polling from March, the race is a toss-up. In the last three races for this Senate seat, Tester has narrowly eked out a victory, with all of the wins being called the morning after Election Day as the last few thousand votes came in from the remaining counties.

Whether or not the Republican politicos who are frustrated with how Sheehy came to lead this Republican primary are the voice for a larger group or a loud minority is unclear, and the primary election does not tend to offer much clarity on how the general election will play out.

“With this close of an election, anything will matter,” Professor Johnson said. Rosendale himself emerged from a bruising four-way GOP primary in 2018, a race where Republicans aired each other's dirty laundry in an attempt to rise to the top.

Certain factions of the state GOP, particularly led by Kaltschmidt, have been urging unity among to party as a winning strategy against Tester, a message that's sure to come out in full force following the primary. 

“I believe everyone will get behind [Sheehy] in the end,” Kaltschmidt said.