Tester digging into his ‘ground game’

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester is heading back to the future, so to speak.

The three-term incumbent senator from Montana isn’t running like a veteran politician, and that’s because he can’t. It’s been months since a poll has shown him leading or even tied up with political novice Republican Tim Sheehy. And Tester remains the last statewide Democrat in a state that was once known for its mix of political party power, but has grown more and more conservative recently.

Tester has felt this feeling before, though, he said. He spoke with the Daily Montanan on Sunday and said it feels a lot like 2006 when Tester, himself the challenger to longtime Republican U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, beat the sitting incumbent by just fewer than 4,000 votes with more than 400,000 cast.

“It’s the ground game,” Tester said. “It’s the energy.”

And that’s what he stressed to more than 200 supporters who gathered on an unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon in Billings in autumn, as voters start receiving their ballots. Tester campaign staff had to find more folding chairs to accommodate the standing-room crowd. Tester said he needed the crowd to understand the contrasts between him and Sheehy.

“They won’t hold a press conference. He’s hiding in a bunker three weeks before an election,” Tester said, to an audience that was encouraged to knock doors, talk to friends and get out the vote. “If you help me out a little, I’ll be able to help you out a lot.”

The Daily Montanan reached out to the Sheehy campaign for comments on Sunday, but received no response.

By late afternoon, it was Tester’s fourth campaign stop of the day, where he started in Helena, went to Columbus and Red Lodge before finishing in Billings.

He has campaigned on familiar issues during this election cycle, reproductive freedom, the economy and veterans affairs, highlighting his work on the PACT Act, which got veterans medical and financial benefits for U.S. military veterans exposed to toxic chemicals during service, a sweeping update to legislation that he co-led with Republican U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas. He also pledged support for a different piece of legislation he authored, which he said had 70 Senators support, many of them Republican, which would not take disability pay from combat veterans’ pensions.

“The truth is that I am one of the most bipartisan and most effective senators in D.C., and those two things go hand-in-hand,” he said.

He said that’s because of his Montana roots as a third-generation farmer from Big Sandy. He said that Montana is still the kind of place where neighbors help out neighbors because it’s the right thing to do, not because they always agree.

“Politics is the only profession where the longer you’ve been in, the more of a liability you are,” Tester said.

But he said that no one would use the same approach needing a dentist or a heart surgeon. And, he said that his time in Washington has given him experience and seniority to navigate the system to get legislation passed.

In addition to rallying his supporters, sending them with yard signs, T-shirts and neighborhoods to door knock, Tester pointed out the large policy divide that separates him from Sheehy, focusing on healthcare, reproductive rights and public lands.

“Always believe what they say when the microphone is going,” he said, referring to some of Republican Sheehy’s comments on healthcare and privatization.

“Understand what pure privatization of healthcare means: Medicare and Medicaid go away,” Tester said. “And we want to make sure it’s around and around for future generations.”

Politifact has broken down what Sheehy said, and his stance, compared to what Tester has claimed. Politifact has determined that it’s mostly false that Sheehy wants to eliminate it.

Tester also took aim at Sheehy’s involvement and not disclosing that he was on the board of the controversial Property and Environmental Research Center, which has, at times, advocated for the transfer of public property to other government and private entities. He pointed out that Sheehy actually wore a shirt with a PERC logo emblazoned on it in one of his ads, only to have it edited out.

“It brings in $6 billion a year to our economy,” Tester said. “Maybe he wants it all to go to his millionaire group. Our ability to go fishing and hunting should not be based on being a millionaire.

“He didn’t want that logo on his ad because of what it stands for.”

Tester also addressed the struggle to preserve reproductive rights in Montana, saying that the United States Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade was the biggest removal of rights in his lifetime.

“If you want a judge or a bureaucrat or a politician to make that decision for you, then he’s your man,” Tester said of Sheehy, who has advocated for the ending of abortion.

Darrell Ehrlick is the editor-in-chief of the Daily Montanan, after leading his native state’s largest paper, The Billings Gazette.