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The state’s Republicans think many of the tens of thousands of transplants who have flooded in since 2020 are conservativeswho were fleeing covid-19 restrictions in the blue states of California and Colorado. However, the state does not register voters by party, making it difficult to precisely assess the newcomers’ leanings.
Almost half the state is now made up of people who were not born there, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, including Sen. Steven Daines (R) and Gov. Greg Gianforte.
“There is a theory that Jon Tester has a 10-year overdue invoice on the changing demographics of Montana, and I don’t know if that’s true,” said Matt McKenna, a Montana Democratic strategist who has worked on past Tester campaigns. “You should be very skeptical of anyone who tells you they know who these new people are.”
Several voters who recently moved to the state and plan to vote against Tester said they saw Montana as a red haven.
“We left California to get away from the politics,” said Rhonda Brennecke, 58, who moved to Montana 5 ½ years ago and stopped for a brief interview on her way into a GOP fundraiser for Sheehy and others in Gallatin County. “So happy to be here. We’re just really happy for people like Sheehy and [GOP Rep. Ryan] Zinke.”
Tester has painted many of these newcomers, including Sheehy, as lacking “Montana values” of fairness and trustworthiness.
“There’s a lot of folks that move here that have hundreds of millions of dollars who want to buy their friends and buy places, buy houses and buy, buy, buy, buy, buy,” Tester told a crowd of a few dozen voters in Butte this month. “But the truth is, this state’s always been about the working man. It’ll always be about the working man.”
Sheehy, who has largely shunned the news media, has protested that he couldn’t control where his mother’s womb was when he “crawled out of it,” and he said he moved to the state as soon as he could.
“What Jon Tester is saying is that unless you were born here, you don’t matter to him and your voice shouldn’t be heard,” Sheehy’s spokeswoman, Katie Martin, said in a statement. “It doesn’t matter if you moved 30 years ago, 40 years ago or 10 years ago like Tim and his wife did after their military service. In Jon Tester’s mind you don’t matter, your vote shouldn’t count, and he doesn’t represent you in Washington.”
Tester said in a brief interview that his message against Sheehy is not targeted at all newcomers. “A lot of working folks have moved here,” he said. “Just a few people are trying to buy the state and make it into their own personal playground.”
Tester’s argument has broken through to some voters, some of whom blame newcomers for the housing crisis in Montana, which was recently ranked the least affordable state by a national Realtors group.
“The fact that Tester has been homesteading his family’s property for so long and [is a] third-generation Montanan and dirt farmer, represents Montana values or represents what Montanans are like — a lot of people just vote strictly on that,” said Katie Campbell, a grassroots engagement coordinator for the Americans for Prosperity Action conservative group, which is canvassing for Sheehy.
Campbell said she tries to convince skeptical voters in the bluer southwestern part of the state that Sheehy is also a true Montanan. “I just try to say, ‘What makes you Montanan?’” Campbell said. “I think that if an individual has chosen to put down their roots here in the state of Montana and build up their family and build up their life and their business and create their future here, I mean, that qualifies you as a Montanan to me.”
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