Tim Sheehy defeats Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in key contest that boosts Republicans’ chamber majority.
First-time candidate Republican Tim Sheehy has ended Montana Sen. Jon Tester’s (D-Mont.) three-term tenure in the U.S. Senate, capturing a seat that boosts the GOP’s newly-gained majority in the chamber.
The race was called at 6:26 a.m. Eastern Time on Nov. 6 by The Associated Press, with Trump-endorsed Sheehy leading 52.8 percent to 45.4 percent over Tester, the only statewide-elected Democrat in deep red Montana.
“We The People made our voices heard, we completed our mission, and now we will secure our children’s future and save America together!” Sheehy wrote on the social media platform X.
Republicans had already secured control of the Senate even without the flip in Montana.
Tester, 68, was seeking reelection in a supermajority GOP trifecta state that former President Donald Trump won by 16.5 percentage points in 2020 that has been reliably Republican for decades; state voters haven’t elected a Democrat to the House since 1994 and only two Democrats since 1952—Bill Clinton in 1992 and Lyndon Johnson in 1964—have won presidential elections in Montana.
Sheehy, 38, a Minnesota-born former U.S. Navy SEAL and Iraq/Afghanistan war veteran, founded aerial fire-fighting company Bridger Aerospace in 2014, which employs more than 200 Montanans.
Trump maintains that Tester is out-of-step with the people of the state, often citing the senator’s two votes to impeach him. In recent ads, Montana ranchers say Tester “votes with Biden 95 percent of the time” in imposing unpopular policies.
The pair debated twice, a June 9 Sunday morning clash in Fairmont Hot Springs and a Sept. 30 exchange on the University of Montana campus in Missoula.
Tester, who never endorsed Democrat presidential candidate Vice President Harris, in both debates and in campaign stumps, touted his key vote in the Senate to secure billions for union job-generating infrastructure projects for the state in 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act.
He was critical of the Biden administration’s border policies, calling the repeal of Trump’s stay-in-Mexico policy “a bad decision” among “other decisions [Biden] made I thought were bad for the border,” he said during the second debate.
Sheehy denied Tester’s claims he’d privatize Medicare and Medicaid but in stumps said the way those programs are funded must change and “private healthcare is going to be our answer” in making health insurance affordable for all.
He opposes any federal “single-payer” healthcare system and any effort to sell federal lands.
The Republican challenger said he not would support a federal law limiting or banning abortion, noting he supports exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.
Tester made abortion access a campaign cornerstone. There is an abortion rights measure on the state’s Nov. 5 ballot that Democrats believe will incidentally boost his reelection odds.
Democrats entered the 2024 election cycle with a 51-49 chamber advantage. Unlike 2022’s midterms, when the GOP was defending 20-of-34 seats in the split 50-50 chamber, Democrats and the four independents who caucus with them are defending 23-of-33 seats on Nov. 5.
Republicans needed only flip two to notch chamber leadership and began Nov. 5 near-certain to take one seat, when two-term Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) became an independent and announced his retirement. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican, is the overwhelming favorite to succeed him in a state where Trump garnered nearly 69 percent of the vote four years ago.
Tester and three-term Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), facing a “toss-up” challenge from Republican Bernie Moreno in Ohio, are the other top two targets for Republicans in their efforts to retake the Senate.
More than $250 million has been spent in Montana’s U.S. Senate race, making it the most expensive election in state history, with Democrats committing millions in boosting Tester’s campaign.
Through mid-October, dozens of state and national PACs spent more than $160 million in ads supporting or opposing the candidates, according to OpenSecrets. GOP-supporting PACs have spent nearly $83 million and Democratic-leaning PACs have spent almost $82.37 million, it reports.
According to Tester’s last quarterly Federal Elections Commission (FEC) filing, on Oct. 16, he had raised $88.16 million, spent $84.5 million, and had $4.15 million cash-on-hand.
In Sheehy’s Oct. 16 FEC filing, his campaign reported raising nearly $25.8 million, spending $21.9 million, with $4 million in the bank. At least $2.45 million is self-funded.