AP/BILLINGS, Mont. — Democrats are hammering the opposition in A heated political dispute over whether a wave of newcomers over the past ten years favored Republicans and if one of the newcomers could ever hold high office was resolved by Montana’s nationally significant U.S. Senate campaign.
With Tim Sheehy defeating three-term Democratic Senator Jon Tester, voters overwhelmingly said “yes” to both questions. This helped the GOP secure a Senate majority and exposed a significant cultural shift in a state that had long taken pride in choosing its own candidates based on their qualifications rather than their party affiliation.
In Montana, one party is completely in control for the first time in over a century. Aversion to foreigners that resulted from the corrupt influence that corporations and mining barons known as the Copper Kings previously had on state politics has subsided, and in its place is a partisan passion that Republicans exploited during the election.
Sheehy, a rich aerospace entrepreneur and fervent admirer of President-elect Donald Trump, defeated Tester, a centrist senator and third-generation grain farmer from modest Big Sandy, Montana, who moved to Montana ten years ago and purchased a home in the upscale resort enclave of Big Sky.
According to Jeff Wiltse, a history professor at the University of Montana, Montana’s political culture has undergone a significant transformation in the last ten to fifteen years. In Montana, the long-standing “us vs. them” and “outsiders vs. Montanans” mentality has greatly diminished.
A sign for Republican Tim Sheehy’s U.S. Senate campaign is seen along U.S. Interstate 90 on Nov. 1, 2024, near Whitehall, Mont. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)
Image: Matthew Brown/Associated Press
Larger tendencies that started more than ten years ago and picked up speed during the epidemic replaced the state’s long-standing tendency to select its own, regardless of party.
After fundamental Democratic constituencies dried up, there were no more jobs available in railroad, mining, or logging. Nearly 52,000 new entrants have arrived since 2020, many attracted by the state’s inherent social separation. According to U.S. Census figures, that is nearly as many as the previous decade. As the population shifted, local issues became less important as national concerns like immigration and gender identity took center stage in politics.
More than $315 million in outside funding, mostly from shady organizations with affluent donors, flooded both sides of the 2024 Senate election. That essentially nullified Montana’s nearly a century-long attempts to restrict corporate influence in politics.
Sheehy’s victory followed the party’s landslide in the most recent Montana elections, where voters elected other affluent Republicans, such as U.S. Senator Steve Daines, Gov. Greg Gianforte, and U.S. Rep.-elect Troy Downing.
Daines is the only member of the group who was originally from Montana, which used to be practically necessary to advance to high position in the state.
Champagne and whiskey with apple flavors
On election night, the differences between Montana’s traditional and modern politics were clearly visible. At the Best Western Inn in Great Falls, where rooms cost $142 per night, Tester’s party was a calm gathering where the lawmaker mixed with a few dozen supporters and drank apple-flavored whiskey from a plastic cup.
Sheehy’s more raucous gathering took place at a high-end hotel in Bozeman, the hub of Montana’s newfound wealth, where a typical room costs $395. Carts of champagne were rolled in long before his victory was declared, as the candidate spent the majority of the evening with a small group of supporters confined to a protected balcony area.
After leaving the service, Sheehy, a former Minnesota U.S. Navy SEAL, relocated to Montana and co-founded Bridger Aerospace, an aerial firefighting firm that relies on government contracts, with his brother.During the campaign, Sheehy also purchased a ranch in the Little Belt Mountains and positioned himself as the contemporary counterpart of early western settlers looking for a chance.
On November 5, Tester received 22,000 more votes than he had in his previous election, which was a larger margin of victory than his prior victories. But Sheehy picked up a few more votes for each Tester voter. Democrats lost their final statewide position in Montana as a result of the Republican’s overwhelming eight-point victory.
Republicans used it to complete their hegemony over states from the Rocky Mountains to the Northern Plains.
Don Kaltschmidt, the chairman of the Montana Republican Party, stated, “We have North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah, and we’re all kind of red now.”
As late as 2007, Democrats controlled nearly all Montana statewide offices and the majority of Senate seats in the Northern Plains.
During Sheehy’s election party, Daines, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the leader of the GOP’s campaign to recapture the Senate, noted that Republicans will have both Montana Senate seats for the first time in over a century.
Refugees who are conservative
Democrats like Tester lament the riches that has changed the state. It’s particularly noticeable in places like Big Sky and Kalispell, where hordes of service workers struggle to find housing while multimillion-dollar houses line the adjacent slope.
Democrats notice similarities, even though it’s not quite the same as the Copper Kings, who at their height dominated elected leaders from both major parties.
What do they say? Monica Tranel, the lost Democratic candidate in a western Montana House seat, stated that although history doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes. It evokes a lot of the events of the early 1900s. Who has a voice in this turbulent and changing time?
Due to population growth over the previous ten years, Montana won a second House member in 2022, providing Democrats with an opportunity to retake influence. Tranel ran again this year but lost after losing by a slim margin to Ryan Zinke, the former Trump Interior Secretary.
Tranel thought about the future even as she looked to the past to explain Montana’s current political dynamic. She admitted that a conservative electorate that is more sensitive to party labels has made Democrats out of step.
“They’re reacting to the label itself,” she remarked. Do we now require a different party?
Republican officials embraced wealthy newcomers.
Steve Kelly, 66, who calls himself a conservative refugee, moved to northwestern Montana from Nevada at the height of the pandemic. He spent most of his 30-year career in law enforcement in Reno, but said he tired of the city as it grew and became more liberal San Francisco East, he called it.
In 2020, Kelly and his wife bought a house outside Kalispell on a few acres so they could have horses. He got involved with the local Republican party and this fall won a seat in the state Legislature on an anti-illegal immigration platform.
It seems to be different here. Most of the people we have met have also been conservative refugees, getting away from other cities, he said.
Driving the growth are transplants from western states dominated by Democrats, especially California, where more than 85,000 Montana residents originated, or about 7.5% of the population, Census data shows. Almost half of Montana residents were born out of state.
Worker wages in Montana have been stagnant for decades, said Megan Lawson with the independent research group Headwaters Economics in Bozeman. Income from stocks, real estate and other investments has risen sharply, reflecting the changing and wealthier demographic.
Certainly a large share of it is coming from folks who are moving into this state, Lawson said. When you put all this together it helps to explain the story of the political shift.
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Associated Press reporter Michael Schneider in Orlando, Florida, contributed to this report.
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