City Desk
- Details
- Category: City Desk
Opinion
By U.S. Senator Jon Tester
10-24-2024
I’m Jon Tester. I’ve lived down a long dirt road outside of Big Sandy all my life, where I still farm
the same land my grandparents homesteaded more than 100 years ago.
Out here, your word is your bond, and you look out for your neighbors. A handshake still means
something. And that’s why Montana is the greatest state in the greatest country on earth.
But that Montana that we know and love is changing, and the Last Best Place is at risk of being
lost forever. I want to make sure Montana remains the place that we grew up in or made you
want to move here, where you don’t need to be a millionaire to hunt, fish, or afford to live here.
That’s why after talking with my wife Sharla, I decided to run for reelection — because the state
we love is worth defending.
This is our last shot to protect Montana for all of us, not just multimillionaires, hedge funds, and
big corporations. Wealthy outsiders are coming into our state, jacking up prices and trying to
change our way of life. I won’t let them.
My opponent Tim Sheehy is one of them. Here is a guy that moved here recently from the big
city suburbs, bought up a bunch of properties across Montana, and then started charging folks
$12,500 to hunt on his land. Sheehy is part of the problem, not the solution.
If anyone thinks Tim Sheehy will stand up to the out-of-state interests buying up our housing,
I’ve got beachfront property in North Central Montana to sell them. If anyone thinks Tim Sheehy
is going to protect our public lands, I’ve got an audio tape of him pledging to transfer them off so
wealthy outsiders can buy them up for themselves. If anyone thinks Tim Sheehy would send the
government packing when they try to interfere in our personal lives, just look at how he wants
politicians to make health care decisions for Montana women, robbing them of their freedoms.
Those aren’t the Montana values we grew up with.
Here, we work hard for what we’ve got. We know that nothing is given, and everything is
earned.
So every day, I wake up and go to bat to keep Montana the Last Best Place. And I’ll work with
Republicans, Democrats, and Independents to do it. That’s why former President Trump signed
more than 20 of my bills into law to help veterans, crack down on government waste and abuse,
and support our first responders. It’s why I’m working hard to lower costs like housing, hire more
Border Patrol agents to secure the border and shut off the deadly flow of fentanyl, keep our
public lands in public hands, and push back against one-size-fits all regulations from the Biden
administration that just don’t make sense for rural America.
The truth is that Montana’s way of life is on the line, and we have a choice. We can fight to
protect our state and hold on to the freedoms that make it great, or we can let Tim Sheehy and
his out-of-state, special interest backers turn it into a playground for the rich.
If you want Montana to stay a place where you can afford to raise your family, where you don’t
have to be a millionaire to hunt or fish or buy a home, and where our freedoms are protected,
then this election is your last best chance to choose someone who will defend that Montana way
of life.
For me, this has always been about Montana – and always will be.
- Details
- Category: City Desk
Click on the image above for the audio.
PNS - Friday, November 1, 2024 - Harris says her campaign is prepared for Trump to prematurely claim victory, Pennsylvania election officials say safeguards in the system are preventing vote fraud, and the Montana Senate race could hinge on the "political refugee" vote.
- Details
- Category: City Desk
Click on the image above for the audio.
PNS - Friday, November 1, 2024 - Trump Attacks Liz Cheney Using Violent War Imagery; Election insights: What 50 Ohioans want to hear from candidates; Consumer groups slam CA Supreme Court ruling on lemon law; On National Brush Day, new resources in KY to boost oral health.
- Details
- Category: City Desk
By Mark Moran - Producer-Editor, Contact - News
Big Sky Connection - THE CONVERSATION/RURAL NEWS NETWORK/BIG SKY CONNECTION COLLABORATION – The last statewide Democrat in Montana is locked in a political battle that experts say is more about polarized party politics than the issues important to the state's residents. Sen. Jon Tester, who upset a longtime Republican to win his first election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, is no stranger to political scrapes, but this year's challenge may be the toughest. Comments from Lee Banville, director and professor, University of Montana School of Journalism.
Click on the image above for the audio. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006, defeating Republican incumbent Conrad Burns in one of the year's closest Senate races. (Tester for U.S. Senate campaign)
Mark Moran
October 31, 2024 - By Lee Banville for The Conversation.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Big Sky Connection reporting for the Rural News Network-Public News Service Collaboration
Jon Tester has never had it easy.
The three-term Democratic senator from Montana has scored more than 50% of the vote only once in his three runs for the U.S. Senate, attracting 50.3% of the vote in 2018 against state auditor and future U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale.
This year, Tester’s always-perilous path to reelection seems narrower and more harrowing than ever before. And the outcome could determine whether the Senate remains in Democratic control or flips to the Republicans.
Current polls and political prognosticators are even starting to turn on the moderate from the farming community of Big Sandy with the flattop haircut. FiveThirtyEight has Tester’s opponent, former Navy SEAL and businessman Tim Sheehy, up four percentage points, and the venerable Cook Political Report has gone so far as to say the race “leans Republican.”
For Montana State University political scientist Jessi Bennion, this election may be the end of an era in rural America.
“I used to always call Tester the unicorn candidate because there was no one like him,” she told my students a couple of weeks back. “He was a farmer, he was a rural Democrat, the last rural Democrat.”
The end of the unicorn?
I teach political reporting at the University of Montana School of Journalism, and every two years I send students out to interview candidates, profile races and talk with voters. It is true that the state has changed even since Tester won in 2018.
Despite an influx of outsiders over the past decade, Montana is still a sparsely populated state boasting 1.1 million people in the latest census. Though the state has historically relied on mining and timber for much of its economy, new economic activity in tourism and technology have helped fuel a 10% jump in population in the most recent census.
But with that influx, housing costs have soared and so have property taxes. It also leaves one of Montana’s political traditions in danger.
See, Montana has a history of doing something very few people do these days – ticket splitting, when a person votes in an election for candidates from opposing parties. In a time of deep polarization, it is hard to imagine, but out here in the Rocky Mountains and the northern plains, voters would consistently vote for a Republican for president and often for the Legislature, but also for Democrat Jon Tester.
Tester was able to put together a coalition of voters in the few pockets of liberals – college towns such as Missoula, union strongholds such as Butte and Indigenous voters on the reservation – and carve away enough moderate voters in more rural areas to eke out wins. When I moved here in 2009, it was not just Tester who did this. Back then, Montana had a Democratic governor, attorney general and head of schools. But over time those statewide offices have all gone, often by double digits, to Republicans.
No Democrat has won statewide since Tester did it back in 2018.
Migration and the march from purple to red
Then COVID-19 hit Montana.
The state saw a surge in population, jumping nearly 5% between 2020 and 2023, and experts such as political scientist Jeremy Johnson told my students earlier this fall that it is important to know who these new residents are.
“I still think the race, you know, can be competitive,” Johnson said. “I do think that some of my broader themes here – the polarization, the calcification, the reluctance to ticket split – makes it harder for Tester. Plus, I think there is some evidence that more Republican-leaning voters have moved to the state than Democrat-leaning voters in the last few years.”
One analysis reported on by the Montana Free Press found that for every two Democrats who moved to Montana since 2008, three Republicans did.
Montana does not have party registration, so when you vote in a primary, they give you a ballot for both parties, and you choose the one you want to participate in. In the highly publicized U.S. Senate primary this year, only 36% of primary voters voted in the Democratic primary, while 64% chose to vote in the Republican primary.
The one question mark of 2024
Ask Sen. Tester, and he will say his campaign is anything but over. He is stressing his independence from his political party, how Republican President Donald Trump signed bills he sponsored and his long-running support of veterans as cornerstones of his campaign.
But his path to reelection may run right through Roe v. Wade.
Montana’s constitution was written in 1972, and it has some pretty progressive elements, including a right to a clean environment and an explicit right to privacy, as opposed to the more implied one in the U.S. Constitution. And in 1999, the state Supreme Court said that right to privacy included abortion access.
Still, in part to ensure that a later court decision could not strip away that right, voters have put CI-128 on the ballot this fall, which would explicitly include protection for abortion access in the state constitution.
Tester hit the issue hard in his last debate with Sheehy on Sept. 30, 2024.
“The bottom line is this: Whose decision is it to be made?” Tester said during the debate. “Is it the federal government’s decision, the state government’s decision, Tim Sheehy’s decision, Jon Tester’s decision? No, it’s the woman’s decision. Tim Sheehy’s called abortion ‘terrible’ and ‘murder.’ That doesn’t sound to me like he’s supporting the woman to make that decision.”
Tester’s supporters hope the initiative could inspire younger voters and moderate women to flock to the polls this fall, and that might make Tester’s path to reelection a bit more doable.
But it is going to take a bit of unicorn magic, perhaps, for Tester to win a fourth term.
Back at Montana State University, Bennion said the situation looks pretty dire for the Democrats in rural states.
“I don’t see, unless our state changes in a lot of different ways, I don’t see a Democrat winning in a long time,” he said. “Just the way our state is growing, the kind of person that is moving here and voting.”
This story was originally produced by Lee Banville for The Conversation as part of the Rural News Network, an initiative of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), supporting more than 475 independent, nonprofit news organizations.
| Best Practices |
