Republican leaders got the recruit they wanted for Montana’s Senate race on Tuesday when Navy SEAL veteran Tim Sheehy, an aerospace company CEO who reportedly plans to self-fund, announced that he’d seek to take on Democratic incumbent Jon Tester. Sheehy may need to use some of his wealth to win a primary first, though, as Politico reported just days ago that Rep. Matt Rosendale has been telling his colleagues he plans to run as well.
Rosendale, who lost the 2018 contest to Tester 50-47, responded to Tuesday’s news by tweeting, “Congratulations to Mitch McConnell and the party bosses on getting their chosen candidate. Now Washington has two candidates - Tim Sheehy and Jon Tester - who will protect the DC cartel.” The congressman, who led Sheehy 64-10 in a recent in-house survey conducted by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, is an ally of the far-right Club for Growth, and the well-funded organization in February pledged to support him if he ran for Senate again. The previous month, Rosendale had refused to support Kevin McCarthy on any of the 15 ballots needed to elect a new House speaker, a move the Club expressed appreciation for.
But party leaders don’t have fond memories of Rosendale’s failed bid to unseat Tester and have been eager for an alternative. NRSC chair Steve Daines celebrated Sheehy’s launch by declaring, "I could not be happier that he has decided to enter,” though Montana's junior senator stopped short of officially endorsing the fledgling candidate.
While GOP strategists have been talking up Sheehy for months, several stories have already previewed some of the attacks Tester’s side may level at him―including a few liabilities similar to those that helped sink Rosendale’s 2018 effort. To begin with, HuffPost's Chris D'Angelo noted late last month that Sheehy is a Minnesota native who only moved to the state in 2014. Tester used every chance he got during his last campaign to remind voters that Rosendale was a Maryland native who'd only relocated 16 years prior. The state Democratic Party crowed, “Jon Tester has farm equipment that’s been in Montana longer than Tim Sheehy" in response to his kickoff.
D'Angelo’s report also highlighted the fact that Sheehy has variously listed his occupation as “cowboy” or “rancher” on donation forms yet owns “thousands of acres of land and multimillion-dollar properties on Flathead Lake and in the lavish resort community of Big Sky.” Rosendale likewise described himself as a “rancher,” but Talking Points Memo reported during his first Senate bid that he didn't own any cattle or actually ranch his property. Tester, who is a third-generation farmer who still works his land, blasted Rosendale as a phony, while a Democratic group dubbed the Republican “all hat, no cattle."
Those aren’t the only ways that Sheehy, contrary to Axios' characterization of him in March, may not be recruit “straight out of central casting.” That item described him as an appealing candidate for Republicans in part because he “doesn't have a history of controversial statements or unpopular votes,” but that was a month before he responded to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that, at least temporarily, protected access to the abortion pill mifepristone.
Sheehy told a conservative radio host, “It’s really frustrating how, you know, we have one party in this country that seems to be bent on murdering our unborn children and taking that, taking that tack, you know, in a very militant way.” Rosendale, HuffPost noted, has a similar stance: He’s not only cosponsored a bill to ban abortion but has also tried to outlaw birth control.
Those anti-choice positions could be a liability for either Republican in a general election, even in a state that Donald Trump took 57-41. Last fall, a referendum that would have required doctors to take extraordinary measures "to preserve the life of a born-alive infant"—even those with no chance of living—or face up to 20 years in prison failed 53-47. The Democratic firm Civiqs also finds that 52% of the state's voters agree abortion should be legal in all or most cases while 44% believe the opposite; a separate February survey from the progressive pollster Middle Fork Strategies showed an even wider divide, with a strong 60-37 majority saying the procedure should remain legal.
Sheehy was also the subject of a Daily Beast story earlier this month that detailed a 2019 incident in which the small plane he was in crashed into a Florida home and injured a 17-year-old on the ground named Carmelle Ngalamulume. (Click the link for some astonishing photos.) Sheehy, says reporter Ursula Perano, was taking flight lessons when the instructor, James Wagner, lost control of the craft; Wagner died in the accident, while Sheehy suffered only minor injuries.
Federal authorities blamed the incident on Wagner’s decisions and “a total loss of left engine power for reasons that could not be determined,” but Ngalamulume's family has sued Sheehy, arguing that he was responsible for “carelessly and negligently flying, inspecting, maintaining and/or operating” the aircraft. An unnamed person close to the NRSC insisted to Perano, “This lawsuit does not raise any concerns whatsoever with regard to the NRSC’s support for Tim Sheehy.”