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In 2006, Montana voters sent a third-generation, seven-fingered farmer— he lost three fingers on his left hand in a meat-grinding incident — to the U.S. Senate, choosing the burly and jovial Democrat over incumbent Republican Conrad Burns, who was known for funneling millions of dollars into the state.
Both then and now, Tester appeals to many Montanans’ sense of independence: He isn’t afraid to cross party lines, he has a libertarian streak, he sponsored legislation taking Northern Rockies wolves off the endangered species list and is a gun-owner who refuses to support an assault weapons ban. This independence, along with the Native vote, support from the hook-and-bullet crowd and his own down-home style, exemplified by his signature crew cut, helped him defeat Republican challengers in 2012 and 2018.
This year — in the contest likely to determine control of the Senate — Tester faces Republican businessman Tim Sheehy. In past elections, Sheehy might not have stood a chance. A political rookie and a relative newcomer to the state, he has been caught fabricating stories about a bullet wound, his aerial firefighting business is struggling, he’s made racist statements about Indigenous people and says young women have been “indoctrinated” on abortion, and he is being bankrolled by Wall Street dark money. He has even expressed support for transferring ownership of federal public lands. That alone used to be a death knell in Montana politics, yet in the weeks leading up to the election, it’s Tester who has fallen behind in the polls. The current projection is that he will lose by several percentage points.
Tester is not behind in fundraising; in fact, he’s outraised Sheehy by about 3-to-1 in one of the nation’s spendiest races. Nor has he been caught in any scandals or voted for controversial legislation. He’s struggling because Montana — and much of the Interior West— is shifting politically. The once-purplish state has recently turned Republican red, making the electoral math tougher for Tester. This change hints at a deeper shift, though, one less tied to blue-versus-red voting maps, and more to a loss of the independence that was once the hallmark of both Republicans and Democrats in the region.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, when the term “New West” was first used to describe the region’s economic, demographic and cultural shifts, the conventional wisdom was that the region would also move politically, turning from red to purple and (perhaps eventually) to blue. The prediction stemmed from the premise that the rural Interior West was inherently conservative but that this would change as more liberal people fled the urban coasts, looking for clean air and access to public lands. All those lefty, Subaru-driving, cappuccino-drinking newcomers would soon outnumber the old-timers and elect Democrats.
The once-purplish state has recently turned Republican red, making the electoral math tougher for Tester.
But that’s not what happened, mostly because the original premises were flawed and failed to account for the complexity of Western politics. Nearly every hardrock and coal-mining town in the Rockies had a strong labor union, for example, and leaned Democratic, favoring workers’ rights over robber barons and corporate control. Even Republican-majority states that reliably voted for their party’s presidential candidate regularly split the ticket, voting for moderate Democrats in more localized contests. Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Arizona, for instance, have elected Democratic governors at least as often as Republicans during the last five decades.
If anything characterized the “Old West” voter and politician, it was flexibility, both ideological and electoral: Politicians rarely hesitated to veer from the party line if they thought it was in their constituents’ best interest. Witness the late Sen. John McCain, who took pride in his “maverick” status and stood against his party on crucial votes; or Utah Republican Sen. Reed Smoot, a Mormon bishop and Gifford Pinchot-style conservationist; or former Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat and a fossil fuel-booster. In Idaho, voters elected Democrat Cecil Andrus, a staunch conservationist, as governor on two separate occasions. Perhaps the strongest evidence of this independence — and the clearest illustration of how much has changed — appears in Idaho’s willingness to elect legendary Democrat Frank Church, who was instrumental in passing the 1964 Wilderness Act, to the Senate in 1957, and then keep him there until 1981.
Tester carries on this legacy, as do all the Republicans and Independents who voted for him. You could call it partisan fluidity: Their political affiliation may guide their vote for president, but it becomes less relevant as the contests get more local.
The migration and resulting shifts of the “New West” did lend a bluer tint to some Republican-majority areas, but it also turned many GOP strongholds an even deeper shade of red. That’s because the migratory paths didn’t always follow the patterns envisioned by demographers in the 1980s and ’90s. A recent analysis found that since 2008, three Republicans have moved into Montana for every two Democrats. Billionaires bought up homes and established residency in Wyoming to guzzle the “Cowboy Cocktail,” a financial concoction that allows the wealthy to skirt income and estate taxes. Not only are they more likely to vote Republican — largely for the tax breaks — but their campaign donations go a lot further in the sparsely populated rural West.
At the same time, the Republican Party has slid away from its former self. The rise of the Tea Party — a racism-tinged backlash to the election of Barack Obama — yanked the GOP rightward, resulting in a political culling of its relatively moderate members. Trump took advantage of this right-wing wave and then took it to its extreme.
Today’s GOP, even in the West, is all about toeing the party line, and the party line is all about Donald Trump. There is no room in today’s GOP for Teddy Roosevelt or John McCain-style Republicans, or even for arch-conservatives like Liz Cheney — unless they pledge fealty to Trump and the party’s MAGA wing. The same seems to be true for old-school Republican voters who were once willing to side with moderate Democrats if their values aligned. On a regional as well as a national scale, split-ticket voting has declined substantially in recent decades.
And that does not bode well for Tester. Most of the well-heeled newcomers have not only turned Montana’s electorate a deeper shade of red, they have also brought their own politics, cultures and values with them, diluting or overwhelming those once considered endemic to the state. Old Montanans surely would have been turned off by Sheehy’s wealth — he’s worth between $74 million and $200 million — as well as his luxurious mansions in Big Sky and Flathead Lake, not to mention his lack of partisan independence. But Montana is not the place it used to be. And it appears the New Montana — and the New West — has more in common with Sheehy than with a seven-fingered farmer.
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