Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) wasted no time portray his Republican opponent, Tim Sheehy, as a risk to public lands and the Montana lifestyle throughout the first debate of what’s broadly seen as one of the crucial contested races in 2024.
The three-term incumbent mentioned “Montana’s values are on the line” in November.
“The bottom line is Montana is changing. We’re seeing a lot of folks come into the state — rich folks — who want to try to buy our state, to try to change it into something it’s not,” Tester mentioned. “Unfortunately, many of these folks are coming in, they’re buying big ranches. They’re locking people off of not only that ranch, but the public lands around it. And that’s not what Montana is about.”
It was one in all many delicate jabs Tester took at Sheehy throughout the occasion on Sunday, which got here simply days after each candidates cruised to victory of their respective primaries.
“Folks are coming in here and buying two, three houses, making this into their personal playground. That’s not right,” Tester mentioned, including that in terms of Montana’s housing disaster, Sheehy is a part of the issue.
Sheehy swung again at Tester’s repeated jabs at him for being an outsider.
“Well, you heard it again — if you come here from out of state, you’re part of the problem,” Sheehy mentioned. “If you’re not from here, Jon Tester doesn’t think your voice matters, apparently.”
Tom Williams by way of Getty Photos
A professional-Donald Trump conservative and adorned ex-Navy SEAL, Sheehy moved to Montana in 2014 after retiring from the navy, and he constructed a profitable aerial firefighting firm. Along with his wealth, Sheehy has bought multimillion-dollar properties on Flathead Lake and within the lavish resort neighborhood of Massive Sky. In 2020, he bought three contiguous ranches, spanning some 7,000 acres, in Martinsdale, Montana, and co-founded the Little Belt Cattle Firm.
Whereas Little Belt’s major enterprise is cattle ranching throughout its roughly 30,000 non-public and leased acres, it has additionally provided unique, pay-to-play searching entry.
As NBC Information reported, Little Belt contracted with a personal clothing store to promote paid searching excursions and selected to not take part in a state program that enables free public searching. In a now-deleted itemizing on LandTrust, a community that connects out of doors recreationists to personal landowners, Little Belt touted itself as a “premier destination for hunters” with “private access to over 500,000 acres of National Forest.” In 2022, the ranch was providing what the Montana Free Press recognized as “the most spendy package currently available in Montana” — a five-day, five-person archery hunt costing $12,500.
Shortly after NBC’s story on Sheehy’s ranch was printed, Little Belt deleted a part of its web site that marketed the ranch’s “impressive game” and its five-mile border with U.S. Forest Service land.
“If you want a Montana that continues to be a place where people can continue to hunt and fish without being millionaires, this election is really important,” Tester mentioned Sunday.
The controversy didn’t embody a query particularly concerning the candidates’ place on public lands, however each spoke of their significance when requested about Montanans’ hesitancy to embrace outsiders and tourism.
“Tourism is a part of our economy. That’s never going to go away,” Sheehy mentioned, including that it’s vital for Montanans to verify vacationers are “respecting our values, they’re respecting our public lands, and we don’t turn Montana into California or New York or Texas.”
Tester mentioned tourism is important to the Montana financial system however confused the state is below elevated strain from wealthy transplants working to form it in methods Montanans don’t approve of.
“I think we need to push back against that,” he mentioned. “We get folks who buy ranches and lock it up to hunters and charge people 10,000 bucks to go hunting on their place — that’s a nonstarter. When you have folks who want to sell off our public lands … that’s a nonstarter. We have to preserve the Montana we know.”
Together with beforehand advertising his ranch as an unique vacation spot for deep-pocketed hunters, Sheehy just lately embraced a poisonous place on public lands. As HuffPost reported final 12 months, the multi-millionaire businessman advocated for federal lands to be “turned over” to states — a place that voters in Western states, together with Montana, overwhelmingly oppose.
“Local control has to be returned,” Sheehy advised the Working Ranch Radio Present in October. “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.”
Sheehy and his marketing campaign have been doing harm management ever since his feedback drew nationwide consideration. On a bit of his marketing campaign web site titled “Get the Facts,” Sheehy accuses Tester and his allies of mendacity about Sheehy’s help for public lands and writes that whereas he opposes the sale and switch of federal lands, he believes “Montanans know best how to manage our land.”
Tester didn’t particularly spotlight Sheehy’s earlier feedback in favor of transferring public lands throughout Sunday’s debate. However in a publish on X, previously Twitter, shared throughout the occasion, Tester painted his opponent as a risk to the federal property.
“Montana is not for sale,” Tester wrote. “If @SheehyforMT wants to carve up our public lands and sell them off, he’ll have to go through me first.”
On Sunday, Sheehy sought to persuade Montana voters that he’s been a longtime champion of public lands and that it’s environmentalists who threaten their future.
“My job is protecting public lands. I fight fires from the air,” he mentioned, referring to his Bozeman, Montana, aerial firefighting firm, Bridger Aerospace. “Right now, we’re looking at a public lands crisis across our nation. We have public lands that are being walled off. We have lawsuits stopping any potential timber development, controlled burns or basic public access projects because they will be injuncted. There will be lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit.”
As in previous Montana elections, public lands will possible show to be a key situation on this race. Montana Outside Values Motion Fund, a brilliant political motion committee of environmental group Montana Conservation Voters, just lately launched a statewide TV advert that options “Private Property” indicators and warns that if Sheehy have been elected, Montanans might lose entry to extra of their favourite searching and fishing spots. (The advert cites earlier HuffPost reporting on Sheehy.)
