MT-Sen: Previous Guy Resorts To Fat Shaming Sen. Jon Tester (D) When Campaigning For Weak GOPer

The Washington Post has a great piece out about U.S. Senate candidate, Tim Sheehy (R. MT), who loves to brag about how successful he is a businessman. As he campaigns in one of the nation’s most competitive U.S. Senate races, Montana Republican Tim Sheehy recounts how he started an aerial firefighting business in his barn and built it into a publicly traded company on the front lines of increasingly dangerous wildfires. “That’s a success story,” he said in a June television interview.Reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in recent months tell a different story about Bridger Aerospace, known for its “Super Scooper” planes that can remove up to 1,400 gallons at a time from a body of water to dump on a nearby wildfire.Bridger is facing a cash crunch so dire that there is “substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue,” according to public filings that show the company lost $77.4 million last year and $20.1 million in the first three months of 2024. Several directors have left, including one who flagged concerns about internal auditing, as an unusually slow wildfire season in 2023 put the company at risk of defaulting on its debt.And then last month, Sheehy said he couldn’t devote enough time to running the company and resigned — a move that Bridger, which had promoted his key role in “every facet” of the business, previously said would happen if he was elected to the Senate.“The business has disappointed,” said Vince Martin, a North Carolina-based investment analyst and blogger who has examined the SEC filings. “As a result, they don’t have a ton of room for error.”By the way, it says a lot about lousy of a candidate Sheehy is that Trump had to show up in Montana and resort to this:Donald Trump launched a barrage of jibes at Montana Senator Jon Tester's weight during his rally on Friday night, just hours after he was accused of repeatedly calling Kamala Harris a 'b****.'The former president, 78, took aim at the Montana senator's size as the Democrat faces a tough re-election fight in November for a race that could define who controls the upper chamber of Congress.'I don't speak badly about somebody's physical disability,' Trump said, possibly noting that Tester lost three fingers on one hand in a meat-grinder accident when he was nine.'But he's got the biggest stomach I've ever seen,' Trump added.Here’s why Trump is hell bent on getting rid of Tester:The former president went to Bozeman hoping to remedy some unfinished business from 2018, when he campaigned repeatedly in Big Sky Country in a failed bid to oust Sen. Jon Tester. On Friday, Trump leveled personal insults at the three-term senator, mocking him for his weight and calling him a “slob.”Trump’s drive to oust Tester traces back to the lawmaker’s work in 2018 as chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.Tester revealed past misconduct by Trump’s former White House physician, Ronny Jackson, that sank Jackson’s nomination to lead the Veterans Affairs Department. A scathing report by the Department of Defense inspector general later substantiated allegations including that Jackson violated the policy on drinking alcohol on a presidential trip.Trump took the matter personally. On Friday, Trump invited Jackson, now a Texas congressman, to the stage to assail Tester.Here’s the current state of the race: 2024 Montana Senate GE: Tim Sheehy (R) 48% (+2) Jon Tester (D-Inc) 46% .@EmersonPolling/@thehill, 1,000 LV, 8/5-6https://t.co/LL4moHgO96— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) August 8, 2024Tester has been staying on message hitting Sheehy on the key issues: Montanans don’t like the federal government telling them what to do. Plain and simple. That’s why I’ll always defend a woman's right to make her own health care decisions. pic.twitter.com/80CFYOGXxt— Jon Tester (@jontester) August 11, 2024While also touting his crossover appeal:As Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester seeks to court ticket-splitting voters, his campaign unveiled a list of “Republicans for Tester” supporting him for reelection.The group includes 16 named co-chairs – including a number of current and former state, local and tribal officeholders – as well as dozens more listed only by first name, last initial and hometown.“Montana will always come first for me – and I will take on anyone, from any party, to defend our state,” Tester said in a statement. “I’m honored to have the support of Montana Republicans who have stood with me to fight for our veterans, protect our freedoms, and keep the government out of our personal lives. Montanans didn’t send me to Washington to play politics, they sent me to deliver results – and together we’re going to win this election and keep fighting to keep Montana strong.”Several of the co-chairs have had strained relationships with the Montana Republican Party in recent years – especially the top name on the list, former Gov. Marc Racicot. While Racicot served two terms as a Republican from 1993 to 2001 and later became chair of the Republican National Committee, the state GOP executive committee rebuked him last year after he supported Democratic-backed candidates in several recent elections.However, the list also has more recently elected officials, like sitting state Sen. Terry Vermeire of Anaconda and former state Rep. Mallerie Stromswold, who represented Billings in the House before resigning during the 2023 legislative session.Other co-chairs include former Secretary of State and gubernatorial nominee Bob Brown, former state GOP chair and Lewis and Clark County commissioner Susan Good Geise, former Great Falls mayor Mike Winters, former Gallatin County commissioner Don Seifert and Columbia Falls city councilmember Mike Shepard.Here’s who Sheehy is trying to appeal to:When the memes started appearing, many leaders in Montana’s Jewish community thought that U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy was probably not aware of the deep roots of the cartoon.They thought the same might be true of the Gallatin County Central Republican Committee, after another meme popped up in the middle of June.But now, most of those leaders don’t know what to think because both the Sheehy camp and the Republican leadership in one of Montana’s largest communities remain silent and non-responsive to two social media messages they’ve posted depicting Jewish leaders controlling other liberal politicians by puppet strings, harkening back to an antisemitic trope that Jews secretly control politics, the media or banking.Memes aren’t the only issue; comments from a campaign staffer also have raised concerns, and those same Jewish leaders weren’t the only ones taking notice.They heard from fellow Jews and concerned citizens reacting to the postings. When the Daily Montanan reached out earlier this summer, most said they didn’t want to talk about it until they reached out to the campaign and committee to have conversation.Since then, there’s been little response by the Sheehy campaign and even less response by the Gallatin Republicans to counteract the notion that they’re trading on old antisemitic tropes that depict Jews as secretly exerting control.Meanwhile, attacks against the Jewish community have grown since Hamas’ assault on Israel, although support from faith communities has increased in Montana as well.The Nation has a great profile piece out on Tester’s record and what he’s up against in Montana this year:Because the Democratic Party leadership has given him influential committee assignments, Tester has had the opportunity to put such thoughts into action, and he has written and passed several bipartisan bills during a period marked by legislative gridlock.In 2009, just three years into his first term, Tester was given a seat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and in 2014, he cosponsored and passed the Rocky Mountain Heritage Act, which protects 275,000 acres of wildlife habitat south of Glacier National Park, an area long threatened by oil and gas development.As one of the 10 senators who wrote the 2021 infrastructure bill, Tester has channeled hundreds of millions of dollars into clean-water projects for rural communities in Montana and the state’s Indian reservations. And last year, in a bid to address the rising cost of housing in Montana, he secured $225 million for the PRICE grant program, which funds the construction of factory-built homes in eligible communities.As the chair of the Senate’s Veterans’ Affairs Committee and the Appropriations subcommittee on defense, he’s also expanded healthcare for a new generation of veterans. In 2022, he passed the PACT Act, the largest expansion of Veterans’ Affairs health services in decades, which grants thousands of veterans exposed to toxic chemicals access to VA health benefits. Last year, he successfully introduced the Veterans’ Compensation COLA Act to ensure that benefits for veterans with service-connected injuries keep pace with inflation.Still, legislative achievements have a limited effect on voters’ partisan affiliations, which are becoming less flexible each year, particularly for Republicans, whose partisan preferences have calcified since Donald Trump effectively took control of the GOP. Without trusted local news sources to inform voters, actual policy outcomes, such as increased funding for veterans, may influence them less than inflammatory attack ads.In April, the conservative One Nation PAC purchased $15 million in television ads to paint Tester as soft on immigration, and that investment has paid dividends. Undocumented immigration is arguably the top issue for Montana Republicans, even though the state is more than 1,000 miles from the southern border.Tester, though, is reluctant to accept polarization as a foregone conclusion, even on issues like immigration, perhaps because he’s defied the trend more than once. In 2012, when Mitt Romney defeated Barack Obama by a 14-point margin in Montana, Tester beat his challenger, Representative Denny Rehberg, by nearly four points. Then he won by nearly the same margin in 2018, two years after Trump vanquished Hillary Clinton by 20 points.“I think the ticket-splitting stuff is still going to happen,” Tester said, “because I think Montana is still a small enough state where [the voters will] look and say, ‘All right, what’s the dude done, what’s he done that’s helped my life?’ And I think they’re going to—” He paused, searching for an end to the sentence. “I think it’s going to be fine.”Health, Democracy and Freedom are on the ballot and we need to get ready to keep Tester in the Senate and protect abortion rights in Montana. Click below to donate and get involved with Tester’s re-election campaign and the Montana Democratic Party:U.S. SenateJon TesterU.S. HouseMonica TranelMontana Supreme CourtErin Farris-OlsenState PartyMontana Democratic Party