BUTTE, Mont. — Tim Combo arrived at the second-floor union hall of the Western States Carpenters in Butte covered in dust and grime from a day spent on the job Wednesday. Combo, a 27-year union carpenter, feels deeply that the election will directly affect his life — and he has made his choice.
“I came up here to vote for Jon Tester, and I am going to vote for Donald Trump, as well,” Combo said at the hall, where Tester was speaking.
Combo represents the best hope for Tester, a three-term Democrat, to win another election for the Senate — and with it, the possibility that Democrats will maintain a slim majority in the chamber, which is split 51-49. But ticket-splitters like him are becoming less common with every passing election in a polarized U.S., giving Republicans a very good chance of capturing the majority this fall.
Poll after poll indicate Tester trailing Republican first-time candidate Tim Sheehy, a wealthy businessman and retired Navy SEAL, though by smaller margins than Vice President Kamala Harris trails Trump at the top of the ticket. To win, Tester will need even more Montanans willing to vote for a Republican for president and a Democrat for the Senate.
Tester, who has defied the odds before, said he believes union halls like the one he spoke at that Wednesday night represent the deep connection he has with the people of his state.
“Look, I’ve got my own brand here in the state, and it’s different than national Democrats,” he said in an interview. “I would have never been elected the first time or any other times if it had been the same as a national Democrat.”
In his TV ads, Sheehy hammers at that distinction. A recent spot features Montana ranchers saying Tester “votes with Biden 95% of the time.”
But Tester’s campaign is making an aggressive pitch to convince Montana Trump voters that it’s worth keeping him around because of the issues he has worked on specifically to benefit the state. In the Butte union hall, Tester touted his work to make sure billions of dollars for infrastructure projects appropriated in 2022 would create union jobs. The mostly male group packing the hall, many of whose members Tester concedes will vote for Trump, cheered loudly.
Tester, who twice voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges, has promised he could work with Trump and even listed issues on which they agree.
“We probably agree on the Second Amendment. We probably agree on the southern border. We, I mean, there’s a number of things, yes, yeah,” he said.
The pitch to union voters is one part of a Democratic strategy to make the Montana campaign as local as possible. Tester is making a concerted effort to rally the state’s significant Native American population, as well. Indigenous people are 7% of the population in Montana, the highest share in the U.S., but there are many challenges in getting reservation residents to the polls.
Cinda Burd-Ironmaker, who works to rally Native American voter participation in Montana for Democrats, said: “Native Americans, they have a long history with the government of mistrust, even the voting. They don’t want to give their names, they don’t want to give their addresses, afraid of this or that would happen.”
Burd-Ironmaker organized an early vote rally at the Blackfeet reservation near the Canadian border. Handing out coffee and donuts in a grocery store parking lot, she directed people to an early voting location two doors down and told them not to wait to cast their ballots.
“It’s a lot of convincing, and it’s a lot of storytelling from your own perspective, of why our vote is important and why this election is so important,” she said.
Democrats have also made a point of highlighting an audio recording of Sheehy using racist stereotypes to describe members of the Crow Indian Nation. In the recording, first obtained by the Native publication Char-Koosta News, Sheehy is heard talking about “a great way to bond with all the Indians while they’re drunk at 8 a.m.” NBC News hasn’t independently obtained the recording.
Sheehy has claimed the recording was chopped up and taken out of context, and despite being pressed by Tester at their recent debate, he refused to apologize for the comments.
“The reality is, yeah, [it was] insensitive. I come from the military, as many of our tribal members do. We make insensitive jokes and probably off-color sometimes,” he said.
Patrick Armstrong, the Business Council secretary for the Blackfeet Tribe, said, “We’re trying to move forward and everything.” But he added: “It was very, very disappointing, for sure, to hear about that and then to learn there was no apology. You know, that stands out to us.”
Armstrong is voting for Tester.
Abortion on the ballot
Tester’s team also hopes it can close the gap with the help of a referendum vote on abortion policy that will also be on the ballot. The measure would amend the state constitution to protect the right to an abortion. Tester has supported the referendum and has been clear that he supports restoring the rights originally protected under Roe v. Wade.
“On abortion, women need to make the decision. Reinstate Roe v. Wade. That’s my message, and that’s absolutely the message. That’s the biggest removal of freedom in my lifetime. And we ought not be doing that kind of stuff,” he said.
But abortion in a state like Montana cuts both ways. Conservative cultural issues — including abortion, guns and LGBTQ rights — have been a big part of the state’s move to the right. While Democrats are encouraged the ballot referendum will fire up the base, Republicans believe more voters support more abortion restrictions, not fewer.
Among them is Tester’s Montana colleague in the Senate, Steve Daines, who also runs the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Daines said he believes Tester’s abortion stance is on a long list of issues that put him out of line with the state he represents.
“The last Democrat standing [in Montana] is Jon Tester,” Daines said in an interview in Belgrade, Montana. “And what’s happened here, I think the Democrats have just moved too far left as a party, as an ideology.”
Daines said he believes this time around his party has the right candidate in Sheehy, whom he personally recruited to run. Sheehy quickly collected Trump’s endorsement and has pounded Tester on the airwaves as being too close to Washington, D.C., Democrats.
Sheehy has eschewed interviews with local and national reporters, and there is little evidence of a significant grassroots campaign. The Montana GOP’s website lists only three events for the entire month of October, none of them including Sheehy. The events Sheehy does hold are by invitation only and not open to the media. His campaign didn’t acknowledge repeated requests to interview him or to cover an event with him talking to voters.
An invitation obtained by NBC News showed Sheehy was raising money in Texas this week.
Still, Daines argued that Sheehy is connecting with voters and that his walled-off strategy is working.
“He’s been in all the counties in Montana, and he gets out the grassroots. Handshake-to-handshake is working so well right now for Tim Sheehy,” Daines said. “When he does events, I’m seeing turnout unlike anything I ever saw when I ran and unlike any other candidate I’ve seen.”
'If they lose him, then they're just going to fade'
Montana is one of just five states with senators from different parties, and that number is all but certain to go down this election. The question is by how much. And the prospect of Tester’s losing in November has raised questions about Democrats’ ability to get elected in Montana in today’s increasingly polarized political landscape, particularly with a shifting electorate.
“Montana’s definitely moved further to the right in terms of the way it votes,” Daines said.
“When I first ran for the U.S. House back in 2012, there was one statewide elected Republican and seven statewide elected Democrats,” he said. “Today, eight of the nine major officeholders in Montana are Republicans.”
Longtime Montana political operative and strategist Pepper Peterson called the Senate race “one for the political science books,” likening the shift he’s seeing in Montana to what he saw working with Democrats in Tennessee in the early 2000s. If Republicans win, Peterson said, “the Democrats are probably dead for 16 years in Montana or so, maybe longer.”
“Jon Tester is the linchpin. He’s the cornerstone of the entire Democratic Party in Montana,” Peterson said. “And if they lose him, then they’re just going to fade.”
But Tester continues to argue that Sheehy, who was born in Minnesota and moved to the state as an adult, doesn’t have the deep connection with Montana voters that he has as a lifelong resident.
“All you got to do is look at his words. Look at his words. I mean, he wants to privatize public land, his own words. He wants to purely privatize health care, his own words. He thinks that the ballot initiative that’s on the ballot, people shouldn’t even be allowed to vote on it, his own words. So all you got to do is listen to what he says, and what I say is when people say stuff, believe them,” Tester said.
It’s an argument that rings hollow for Darryl Rider, a lifelong Montanan voting for Trump — and for Sheehy.
“I don’t really care if they’re born here or not so much as what their values are. Jon Tester doesn’t carry the same values I do,” he said.
