Montana Senate Candidates Spent 7 Minutes Sparring Over 1 Problem

Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester and Republican challenger Tim Sheehy spent a full seven minutes of Monday evening’s one-hour debate sparring over the difficulty of federal public lands.

Tester, who’s working for a fourth time period in a pivotal race that might in the end resolve which social gathering controls the Senate subsequent 12 months, repeatedly painted Sheehy as a menace to America’s public lands and the Montana lifestyle.

He referred a number of occasions to HuffPost’s reporting that first revealed Sheehy known as for federal lands to be “turned over” to states or counties; didn’t disclose his publish on the board of the Property and Surroundings Analysis Heart, a Bozeman-based property rights and environmental analysis nonprofit with a historical past of advocating for privatizing federal lands; and appeared to physician a latest TV advert to take away PERC’s emblem from the shirt he was sporting.

Sheehy largely averted partaking within the specifics of Tester’s assaults, as a substitute persevering with a muddled effort to rewrite his document on the difficulty and accusing Tester of making an attempt to tear down any group he has been affiliated with.

The in depth back-and-forth got here after Montana PBS journalist John Twiggs requested the candidates which entities are finest geared up to handle the roughly 27 million acres of federal lands in Montana whereas sustaining public entry.

“Bottom line: Public lands belong in public hands,” Sheehy stated.

Tester marveled at what he described as Sheehy’s “incredible transformation on this issue” whereas warning voters to “watch out what people say in back rooms.”

“What they say in back rooms, when they don’t think the recorder is going or the camera is running, is usually what they think,” he stated. “And Tim said we need to turn our lands over to either his rich buddies or county government. That’s not protecting public lands.”

Tester was referring to feedback Sheehy made to a ranching podcast final October, shortly after launching his Senate bid. As HuffPost first reported, Sheehy advised 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.”

Whereas Sheehy has spent the previous 12 months doing harm management on this difficulty, claiming he opposes the sale or switch of federal lands regardless of his personal phrases on the contrary, his feedback Monday clarify that when he says “public hands,” he means the palms of Montanans solely.

“Public lands belong to the public, that’s you — the people of Montana,” Sheehy stated. “Public lands belong to the people, especially those who live amongst them. And I believe that if you’re a Montanan and you share a fence line with National Forest property, if you’re a rancher who has a [Bureau of Land Management] grazing lease, if you live next to state trust land, you should have more input into what happens on that land than bureaucrats 3,000 miles away.”

Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and multimillionaire businessman, owns a sprawling ranch in Martinsdale, Montana, that, notably, shares a fence line with Forest Service land and as soon as supplied high-dollar searching excursions with what it known as “private access to over 500,000 acres of National Forest.”

Sheehy’s place — that federal businesses are poor stewards of the federal property and that locals know finest easy methods to handle federal lands — disregards the truth that federal lands, in Montana and in every single place else, are held in belief for all People, no matter the place they reside, not simply those that occur to reside subsequent door.

“I, absolutely, will every day advocate for more local control of those lands, because I believe they belong to you, not the government,” Sheehy stated.

Sheehy is strolling the identical high quality line as many members of the GOP. Republicans in Western states have spent a long time working to wrest management of federal lands from the federal authorities. However broad public assist for shielding public lands has pressured them to largely abandon requires outright switch and sale and as a substitute advocate for giving states broad administration authority — a transfer that will in the end enable them to attain lots of the identical industry-friendly targets that will include stripping lands from federal management.

Repeatedly, Tester introduced the dialog again to Sheehy’s document.

“Tim even served on a think tank, on their board of directors, that’s job was to privatize our public lands,” Tester stated. “In Tim’s case, his view of turning these lands over to counties or opening ’em up for his rich friends to buy them, is just the wrong direction to go for Montana.”

Sheehy defended himself with a false declare about PERC: “No one, including myself, in that organization has ever advocated for selling our public lands — never have, never will.”

In reality, in a 1999 coverage paper titled “How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands,” PERC’s then-director, Terry Anderson, and others laid out what they known as “a blueprint for auctioning off all public lands over 20 to 40 years.” (PERC beforehand advised HuffPost that that paper “is not representative of PERC’s current thinking.”)

“Tim, it’s time to be honest with the people of Montana,” Tester fired again. “You were on a board of an organization that wanted to privatize our public lands. In fact, you even dulled out a badge on one of your ads of a shirt that you wore that was promoting that group. When you found out that badge was on there you said, ‘Hey we can’t be doing that because these guys, I served on their board and they want to get rid of our public lands.’”

“You also didn’t even disclose to the public when you filed for this position that you belonged on that board,” Tester added. “Why? It wasn’t because they were a great organization doing great things for our public lands. It was because they wanted to get rid of our public lands and you were a part of that organization and you didn’t want anybody to know about it.”

As HuffPost first reported, Sheehy failed to incorporate his publish on PERC’s board in his Senate monetary disclosure — a violation of Senate guidelines that Sheehy’s marketing campaign chalked as much as an “oversight.” Since its founding in 1980, PERC has known as for privatizing federal lands, together with nationwide parks, and 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 movement via personal property.

Sheehy’s pro-transfer feedback and ties to PERC have been a constant thorn within the facet of his marketing campaign, which over the previous 12 months has run a damage-control effort geared toward recasting Sheehy as a champion of public lands. Sheehy’s marketing campaign lately aired a public lands-focused TV advert that featured a present PERC board member, and final month despatched out public land mailers to Montana voters that included an image of Sheehy sporting a flannel shirt with the PERC emblem clearly seen on one sleeve. Extra lately, Sheehy’s staff doctored a TV commercial to take away PERC’s emblem from the shirt he was sporting.

At Monday’s debate, Sheehy stated Tester’s assaults towards PERC are a part of a sample.

“The reason that organization has been criticized by Jon Tester is simply because I was affiliated with it,” he stated. “And this has been their plan this entire campaign. If Tim Sheehy is affiliated with anything, attack it, tear it down, smear it.”

If Monday’s debate shined gentle on something, it’s that Sheehy has gotten an earful from Montana voters who assist defending and preserving federal public lands. However not like Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), who credited voters with altering his thoughts on transferring federal lands to states when he ran towards Tester in 2018, Sheehy is refusing to acknowledge the explanation for having walked again, or disguised, his anti-federal land views.

Whether or not Sheehy’s newfound opposition to pawning off public lands would survive a six-year Senate time period stays to be seen — if he manages to defeat Tester in November.

Through the debate, the Montana Republican Social gathering took to X, previously Twitter, to defend their candidate towards Tester’s repeated swings.

“@SheehyforMT will work to preserve and expand public access to your public lands and he will KEEP PUBLIC LANDS IN PUBLIC HANDS!” the social gathering wrote.

Simply three months in the past, the Montana GOP — the social gathering Sheehy is looking for a management function in — adopted a social gathering platform that explicitly requires the “granting of federally managed public lands to the state, and development of a transition plan for the timely and orderly transfer.”