A test of Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) infamous vow “to control the primary outcome” in 2024 against outsider anti-establishment candidates in the Donald Trump mold is shaping up in Montana, home state of National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Steve Daines (R-MT).
McConnell and Daines have both elevated Tim Sheehy, CEO of Bridger Aerospace and an Afghanistan veteran who plays that card to the hilt, to be their choice to run against Democrat Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), widely seen as one of the most vulnerable upper-chamber incumbents due to Montana’s solid-red standing. But Sheehy may face a bumpier road than the GOP senatorial poohbahs imagined. Numerous questions surround his lack of familiarity with on-the-ground state Republican activists, his business career, and his dubious bona fides as a Trump-flavored America Firster.
“For the grassroots movement, and people who knock doors and put up the signs and are busy for conservative Republican candidates, we have no idea who Tim Sheehy is – it’s ‘Sheehy who?’” Dr. Al Olszewski, chairman of the Flathead County GOP, told The Daily Caller. “He’s a ghost, he has not been involved in local politics or statewide politics.”
McConnell’s Handpick for Montana
Right off the bat, it’s hard to garner the support of the former president’s loyal fan base when you have been very publicly handpicked by McConnell. Trump and the aged party Senate leader have been engaged in a not-so-cold war that owes much to the 2020 election and its aftermath. But its roots are in a much longer clash between populist nationalists who have been furious with the GOP establishment’s inability or unwillingness to effectively oppose the ascension of a progressive ruling political elite in Washington, DC, that in their eyes shows no concern for American citizens.
Ponder those potent sentiments, and then consider that Bridger Aerospace, the company Sheehy co-founded and runs, owes all of its success to lush federal contracts.
“Bridger has brought in about $87.6 million in unclassified federal contract awards since its founding in 2014, according to Bloomberg Government data,” the news site reported June 30. “In 2022, it pulled in nearly $50 million in federal business.”
It’s a bit difficult to credibly promise to shrink the size of Washington when you’re raking in that kind of haul from its taxpayer-dollar spigot.
Then there is the awkward woke corporate website scrubbing.
“[A]ccording to screenshots first provided by a source opposed to Sheehy and then verified by ABC News, [Bridger] removed language from its website touting its efforts to combat climate change and support for [Environment Social and Corporate Governance], both major fronts in the GOP grassroots’ culture wars,” the network reported July 21. “ESG is a type of investing that takes into account non-financial information about a company, such as its climate impact and staff diversity,” ABC noted.
Seasonal Stances?
The primary hurdle stands first in the way. in the Republican Party today, one must tilt toward Trump to a strong degree in order to clear it.
Sheehy is fully aware of America First Republican sentiments about the massive expenditure of US taxpayer money on a war in Ukraine that seems to have no end in sight, all while economic and border security issues worsen at home.
(Photo by Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“We are a year into this war and America has done our duty in stopping this vicious and unprovoked attack,” Sheehy told the Montana Talks radio show in mid-July, “and we must now demand a settlement which ends the killing of innocent people and the unlimited supply of arms from the United States.”
But as Matthew Kassel at the website Jewish Insider observed, this “support for an isolationist approach to the war in Ukraine” marks a major break “with previous comments in which [Sheehy] advocated for an unusually aggressive response to Russia’s invasion.”
Kassel referred to a particularly bellicose post Sheehy authored on his LinkedIn page in 2022 in which he painted an apocalyptic portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin poised to roll over multiple European nations.
“Sweden and Finland are next? We’ve seen this movie before … stop him now before the price tag for putting Putin down will be a lot higher,” Sheehy wrote. “Georgia, Crimea, Syria, now Kiev – then what? Estonia? Finland? Sweden? GoFundMe pages and Twitter likes aren’t enough. Soldiers, planes, bombs and bullets will be needed against this tyrant.”
The most vehement NATO chickenhawk in the Biden administration couldn’t have put it in harsher terms.
No matter how you may feel about Ukraine, the higher question here is Sheehy’s believability as a Senate candidate. Which foreign policy vision would he embrace should he be sent to McConnell’s side in Washington?
Republican in the Way
Sheehy’s main GOP opponent for the nomination is likely to be Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), who won the party nod in 2018 before losing to Tester by 3.5 percentage points. Montana, however, has only grown more red in the following years, making a general election victory for the Republican nominee a distinct possibility in 2024.
The Daily Caller sees Rosendale as having an enormous early advantage over Sheehy.
“Rosendale would beat Sheehy in a potential primary matchup by over 50 points, according to a late June survey from the liberal firm Public Policy Polling (PPP),” the news site wrote. “The most recent polling on a 2024 general election between Rosendale and Tester has the GOP congressman up five points.
Mitch McConnell (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“‘Rosendale is widely popular with GOP voters in the state, with 67% viewing him favorably and just 17% unfavorably,’ the PPP survey indicates. ‘At 10% favorable, 14% unfavorable[,] Sheehy has only a nominally greater profile than a name out of the phone book.’”
“Our ability to control the primary outcome was quite limited in 2022 because of the support of the former president [Donald Trump],” McConnell brazenly declared on Dec. 13. “Hopefully in the next cycle, we’ll have quality candidates everywhere.”
Unfortunately for McConnell, things aren’t the way they used to be. The “selected not elected” game that the GOP establishment ran so well for years came crashing down with a thud in 2014 with the fall of pre-anointed but never-seated House Speaker Eric Cantor.
There is no going back. Primaries are contested now. And the raging battle inside the GOP goes on.
