Montana GOP Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy has spent the final a number of months defending himself in opposition to accusations that he poses a menace to America’s federal public lands — a multitude that the multimillionaire businessman and former Navy SEAL created when, shortly after launching his marketing campaign, he explicitly known as for federal lands to be “turned over to state agencies, or even counties.”
Round 640 million acres, or 28% of all land within the nation, are managed by the federal authorities — and owned collectively by all U.S. residents. Republicans throughout Western states, the place the overwhelming majority of federal lands are situated, have lengthy sought to wrest management of them from the federal authorities — a transfer that conservationists and public land consultants warn would finally result in them being bought and privatized.
“If that happens, that really means we’re going to lose those federal lands,” stated Chris Marchion, a Montana public lands advocate and inductee within the Montana Outside Corridor of Fame. “The state of Montana does not have the resources to manage those lands, and the first thing they’re going to do is sell it.”
Democratic and conservation-focused political motion committees have aired quite a few public land-focused assault advertisements in opposition to Sheehy, most of which cite HuffPost’s reporting that first revealed Sheehy’s feedback in assist of transferring land and his failure to disclose his place on the board of a nonprofit with a historical past of advocating for privatizing America’s federal lands.
Sheehy in the meantime has accused his opponent, incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, of politicizing public lands and mendacity about Sheehy’s agenda for America’s pure heritage. Someday final month, Sheehy even added a part to his marketing campaign web site titled “Public Lands,” by which he declared his perception that “public lands belong in public hands” and vowed to “oppose any federal transfer or sale of our public lands.” The brand new part sits on the very high of his points web page.
In Sheehy’s first public lands TV advert, launched in early August, Stryker Anderson, an avid Montana hunter and looking information, says he’s “sick and tired of Jon Tester lying about Tim Sheehy.”
“Here’s the truth: Tim Sheehy knows public lands are important to our way of life,” Anderson tells viewers. “That’s why Sheehy opposes the sale or transfer of our public lands.”
However when reached by way of electronic mail this week, Anderson — one among two key folks Sheehy turned to in hopes of restoring his picture as a champion of public lands — successfully poured gasoline on the fireplace that Sheehy and his workforce have been making an attempt to place out. Anderson plainly said that he needs to see federal lands transferred to states, a view he understood Sheehy to share. He condemned the federal authorities as a poor steward of the federal property and stated Sheehy’s previous remark in favor of states taking management of federal lands reveals his “understanding of proper management.”
“The goal would be to turn them over to the states,” Anderson instructed HuffPost. “The state of Montana understands our public lands better than the federal government. Just like we don’t understand California, Wyoming, Washington, Arizona, etc. Let the people in their own state decide what is best for them. Our public lands suck almost everywhere because they have no management. Turning over ownership to the states will allow for much better management.”
Aaron Weiss, deputy director on the Colorado-based conservation group Heart for Western Priorities, known as Anderson’s feedback “old Sagebrush Rebellion nonsense,” referring to the motion of the Seventies and ’80s that sought to wrest management of shared public lands from the federal authorities.
“States can’t afford to fight wildfires or clean up abandoned mines,” Weiss stated. “The inevitable result is privatization.”
Requested how “turning over ownership to the states” is any totally different than a full-fledged public land switch, Anderson stated the TV commercial’s anti-sale and switch message was particular to the “sale or transfer to private ownership,” not state possession.
“You are correct that turning it over would be a transfer,” he stated. “But who it is transferred to is what is important.”
Once more, Sheehy’s up to date web site states that he opposes “any federal transfer or sale of our public lands.”
Anderson’s unfiltered endorsement of pawning off federal lands to states — a place he clearly anticipated Sheehy to advance in Congress — threatens to successfully upend practically a 12 months of injury management inside Sheehy’s camp.
When reached on Thursday, Sheehy’s marketing campaign dissociated itself from its personal public lands surrogate. Marketing campaign spokesperson Katie Martin stated Sheehy doesn’t share Anderson’s assist for transferring federal lands to states, however didn’t reply when requested why Sheehy selected to function somebody he doesn’t see eye-to-eye with — significantly on the very topic of the commercial.
“Your answer shopping won’t change Tim’s position on this issue, which is crystal clear and has been stated to you repeatedly,” Martin stated in an electronic mail. “Tim opposes any federal transfer or sale or ‘turning over’ of our public lands.”
Whereas which may be Sheehy’s purported place now, he sang a really totally different tune shortly after launching his marketing campaign. As HuffPost first reported in October, Sheehy instructed the “Working Ranch Radio Show” that “local control has to be returned, whether that means, you know, some of these public lands get turned over to state agencies, or even counties, or whether those decisions are made by a local landlord instead of by, you know, federal fiat a few thousand miles away.” Contacted about his feedback on the time, Sheehy’s marketing campaign tried to stroll a splintering tightrope, telling HuffPost that “calling for better management and more local control is not the same as ‘transferring them.’”
Pressed concerning the conflicting and deceptive messaging, Anderson stated “it is hard to explain someone’s stance on a 30-second ad or even on someone’s website,” including that public lands are a “complex issue that takes time to discuss the entire scope.” As for the language Sheehy lately added to his web site, Anderson stated “he might be saying that because he knows reporters will twist it and make it sound like he is transferring or selling off public lands to private entities.”
“If only we had honest journalism where the reporters cared about truth and the betterment of our lands, wildlife, environment and people,” he stated.
The reality is that Sheehy stated what he stated early in his marketing campaign, flipped his script and spent months working to restore his picture, solely to then dispatch somebody who helps a state takeover of federal lands in hopes of convincing voters that federal lands can be protected in Sheehy’s arms in the event that they elect him to the Senate.
A second surrogate
HuffPost additionally first reported that Sheehy failed to incorporate his publish on the board of the nonprofit Property and Atmosphere Analysis Heart, or PERC, in his Senate monetary disclosure — a violation of Senate guidelines that additional sophisticated his already muddled messaging on public lands. Sheehy’s marketing campaign known as it an “oversight” and later amended his monetary disclosure.
For his second public lands advert, launched final week, Sheehy tapped Okay.C. Walsh, with whom he served on PERC’s board for a couple of 12 months earlier than launching his marketing campaign for Senate. Walsh is the longtime former president and government chairman of Simms Fishing Merchandise, the Bozeman, Montana-based producer of high-end fishing gear.
Within the advert, Walsh introduces himself as a longtime “advocate for conservation and public lands in Montana.”
“I voted for Jon Tester twice, but this time I’m supporting Tim Sheehy,” Walsh says. “As an aerial firefighter, Tim Sheehy’s been on the front lines, fighting wildfires to protect our forests in rural communities. Tim knows public lands belong in public hands, and I trust Tim Sheehy to protect and preserve access to Montana’s public lands.”
Based in 1980 and primarily based in Bozeman, PERC advocates for “free market environmentalism” — the concept personal property rights and market incentives obtain higher environmental and conservation outcomes than authorities regulation. Over its historical past, PERC has known as for privatizing federal lands, together with nationwide parks, and rising charges for visiting parks and different federal lands. It has additionally been a staunch opponent of Montana’s distinctive stream entry legal guidelines, which offer anglers and recreationists nearly limitless entry to the state’s rivers and streams, together with people who circulation by personal property.
“Montana has led the way in the erosions of private property rights” by way of such legal guidelines, PERC’s Reed Watson wrote in 2009.
Bradley Jones, a Helena, Montana-based conservation advocate, instructed HuffPost “it is disingenuous of both Mr. Sheehy and Mr. Walsh to crow about Sheehy’s support for public lands when both of them come from PERC.”
“This is an organization that has made attacking public ownership of federal lands and support for the giveaway of public waters to the wealthy and landowners blessed enough to own prime real estate a cornerstone of their gospel; though they try to disguise it as academic musings on the economy,” he stated. “By association with this group, Sheehy seems to be endorsing PERC’s ideology. Selling Montanans’ publicly owned lands and stream access, which are the only ‘riches’ most Montanans will inherit, is an extremely unpopular idea here.”
Together with serving on PERC’s board since 2020, Walsh is on the board of the Nationwide Fish and Wildlife Basis and is a previous board member of Trout Limitless. In 2021, Montana GOP Gov. Greg Gianforte, who helps transferring management of federal lands to states and famously sued the state of Montana in 2009 to dam river entry on his property close to Bozeman, appointed Walsh to serve on Montana’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks Fee — a state regulatory advisory committee that Gianforte stacked with wealthy trade executives.
Walsh didn’t reply to HuffPost’s requests for remark.
PERC has distanced itself from a few of its personal historical past, beforehand telling HuffPost that its previous assist for privatizing federal lands “is not representative of PERC’s current thinking” and that it “firmly believes that public lands should stay in public hands.”
Nonetheless, Sheehy’s time on the suppose tank has turn into fodder for his political opponents. In a TV advert earlier this month, the Democratic Senatorial Marketing campaign Committee argued that pay-to-play looking and fishing entry is “Montana’s future if Sheehy has his way.”
“He was on the board of an outfit that wanted to privatize public lands, even our national parks, sold off to the highest bidder,” the advert states. “Sheehy’s loaded, he’ll take that deal. What about you?”
A well-recognized quagmire
As in earlier Montana elections, public lands have emerged as a key subject on this 12 months’s contested Senate race — in no small half as a result of Sheehy stepped on the identical third rail as Republicans earlier than him.
Take outgoing Montana congressman and unsuccessful Senate candidate Matt Rosendale. Whereas operating for the U.S. Home of Representatives in 2014, Rosendale known as for a state takeover of all Forest Service and Bureau of Land Administration lands inside Montana’s borders. By the point Rosendale took goal at Tester’s seat in 2018, Montana voters had compelled him to show tail. Throughout a candidate debate that 12 months, Rosendale acknowledged that “there was a time when I thought they could be better managed by the state,” however stated he “talked to people all over the state, and they’ve made it exceedingly clear that they do not want those lands transferred. And I not only understand that, I agree with that.”
However, Sheehy waded into the identical political quagmire. And in current months, Montana voters have been bombarded with advertisements that paint Sheehy as a wealthy outsider who threatens Montana’s prized federal lands and the Montana lifestyle. A local of Minnesota, Sheehy moved to Montana in 2014 after retiring from the Navy and based Bridger Aerospace, a Bozeman-based aerial firefighting firm.
As Sheehy works to stroll again, or camouflage, his anti-federal land views, the Montana Republican Get together — a celebration he’s looking for a management function in — is unabashedly clear.
The Montana GOP get together platform, adopted in June, requires the “granting of federally managed public lands to the state, and development of a transition plan for the timely and orderly transfer.”
It’s a place that ballot after ballot after ballot reveals a majority of residents in Montana and different states within the Mountain West oppose, as Sheehy is now studying the arduous method.
As he campaigns for a fourth time period within the Senate, Tester has touted his document of working to safeguard and increase protections for federal lands whereas casting Sheehy as a part of the rich class that’s shopping for up massive ranches and locking the general public out of surrounding public lands.
“Despite his best efforts to hide his position, transplant Tim Sheehy can’t run away from the fact that he publicly called to transfer Montana’s public lands, which would make it much easier for that land to be sold to out-of-state multimillionaires like him,” stated Hannah Rehm, senior communications adviser for the Montana Democratic Get together.
Sheehy’s troubles within the public lands enviornment don’t finish along with his ties to PERC and his pro-transfer feedback. His cattle ranch, the Little Belt Cattle Firm, has supplied the type of pay-to-play looking that Tester says is popping Montana right into a “playground” for the wealthy.
As NBC Information reported, Sheehy’s ranch contracted with a non-public clothing store — which one is unclear — to promote paid looking excursions and touted itself as a “premier destination for hunters” with “private access to over 500,000 acres of National Forest.” In 2022, the ranch supplied a five-day, five-person archery hunt costing $12,500, which the Montana Free Press on the time recognized as “the most spendy package currently available in Montana.”
Anderson, the clothing store featured in Sheehy’s advert, didn’t reply to HuffPost’s query about whether or not he’s ever guided hunts on Sheehy’s property however instructed HuffPost that Sheehy “allows hunters to come on his place where the previous owners did not.”
Sheehy’s view of the federal property aligns with many Republicans in crimson Western states the place the federal authorities controls massive swaths of land: merely, that federal businesses are crappy landlords and native residents know greatest.
“When you get asked by your fellow hunters and fly fishermen, ‘Oh, I hear Tim’s gonna sell public lands?’, you tell them, ‘Hey, that’s bullshit. He’s not selling any public lands, but what he is saying is us, as the Montanans who live here, when I share a fence line with a [Bureau of Land Management] lease, I should have more say over what happens on the other side of that fence than some guy in New York City who comes and visits to fly fish for a week,’” Sheehy stated at a meet-and-greet with voters in Twin Bridges, Montana, final month. “When I have a Forest Service road that goes through my property, and I use that, and I have a lease on that Forest Service, I should have more say of what happens there than some, you know, environmental student in Seattle.”
It’s a mind-set that casts apart the truth that federal public lands are held in belief for all People, not simply these most adjoining to them or who manage to pay for to purchase 1000’s of acres subsequent door. Each American, whether or not they stay 1,000 ft or 1,000 miles from a swath of federal land, has an equal stake.
On the finish of the day, Marchion says, Republicans like Sheehy “don’t want to tell you exactly what they want to do” with regards to public lands. What Sheehy is telling voters now, that he’ll defend and protect federal public lands, is “devious” and “deceptive,” he stated.
“He’s learned that when he’s attacked for a vulnerability, then he just changes,” Marchion stated. “He makes a statement, like, ‘I’m for public lands!’ Bullshit he is.”
“To say ‘I’m for public lands,’ it’s easy to say that,” he added. “How do you prove it?”