“This election is about making sure we can have a state that is the same state that we grew up in,” Senator Jon Tester warned a group of Montanans packed into a local Democratic field office in Great Falls one chilly evening last month, just 35 days from Election Day. Ticking through priorities like protecting rural health care and supporting veterans, he noted, “You can’t get all this stuff done with somebody who doesn’t really understand Montana.”
Watching Mr. Tester rally the faithful, it’s hard to tell if he really gets it: Gets how much trouble he’s in politically, how much many voters don’t care where you were born anymore, how much Montana has changed. That last part is painful to contemplate. The 68-year-old has lived his life here, and made a career of winning elections as a Democrat in a red state by being flat-top-and-tractor-driving authentic. But the state’s changing electorate and America’s polarized politics have his beloved Montana slipping away from him, and he has become this fall’s most closely scrutinized senator — the Democrat in the toughest Senate fight, whose outcome could give Republicans control of the chamber next year.
Mr. Tester’s low-key, folksy manner can be read as either unflappability or resignation. His slight Western drawl carries the trace of a smile, as though he’s chewing over some secret joke. But every now and then, you catch a flash of edge. He shared with the crowd that, earlier in the day, a reporter told him, “The guys in Washington, D.C., they’ve already figured this out: You’re in deep, deep, deep doo-doo.”
“But the bottom line is this,” he went on, with a defiant grin. “The people in Washington, D.C., don’t know jackshit about Montana.” (Casual cursing is part of his good ol’ boy charm.)
“That’s a fact. And we’re gonna show ’em.”
Mr. Tester has withstood the prevailing partisan winds before. He is the only remaining Democrat in statewide office in Montana. He has held on in large part by playing to Montana’s sense of exceptionalism, its self-image as a place where independence and down-to-earthiness beat party. While he’s happy to talk health care or taxes or crime, what he really wants you to remember is that he is a third-generation dirt farmer. As one of his longtime supporters bragged to me, “He’s real Montana.”
Except that the American West isn’t “real” the way it once was. Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona — they have all experienced a flood of new residents from other states, especially during the pandemic. Between July 2020 and July 2021, Montana had the third highest rate of growth in the nation. The transplants here, many of them with money to burn, are transforming the state economically and culturally.
The waves of newcomers over the last decade happened to include his Republican opponent in the Senate race, Tim Sheehy, a multimillionaire businessman, and Mr. Tester is leaning into an us versus them argument.
“I’ve had enough of what’s happening. It’s time to take our state back,” he says in a campaign ad titled “Generations,” which ends with an ominous variation on the boilerplate tagline, “I’m Jon Tester, and I approve this message to defend Montana before it’s too late.”
But the senator’s parochial appeals are not packing the punch they once did. A new Times/Siena poll shows him running seven points behind Mr. Sheehy. Untold numbers of the transplants may care more about having a Republican Senate in Washington than backing a moderate Democrat with multigenerational Montana cred.
For a state with just about 1.1 million residents — and whose mythos is wrapped up in being the “last, best place,” as the unofficial motto goes — it has been a shock to the system as newcomers drive up costs, strain infrastructure and upend the culture. Home prices and property taxes have shot skyward. Whether the issue is Silicon Valley titans buying up ranch land or corporations turning existing homes into short-term rentals for tourists, longtime residents are being squeezed. “There is not any housing available for our sons in Helena that is affordable,” said Linda Hanson, a Montana native and retired physician assistant.
Public lands are another flashpoint. Private landowners allowing public access to their property for hunting and fishing is something of a state tradition, one that long-timers see as under attack as outsiders move in and gobble up acreage. Democrats are delighted to note that Mr. Sheehy’s ranch does not allow public hunting. The Republican candidate has also taken heat for suggesting that federal lands should be put under local control, which many people fear would lead to curtailing access.
“I usually vote Republican, but I’m planning to vote for Tester,” said Ms. Hanson. “Sheehy is one of those big millionaires who has come in, bought up a lot of land and closed it off.”
“Montanans are very proud of our open lands,” she told me. “A lot of Montanans go out to hunt to fill their freezers. Economically, this is a very poor state.”
All that is on top of the indignity of watching cowboy wannabes who have watched too many episodes of “Yellowstone” strut around in their unscuffed boots. It’s hard to miss the stickers and mugs emblazoned with not-so-welcoming messages such as “Montana is full” and “Not on vacation.”
Yet for all that, everyone around here thinks Mr. Tester is in trouble. He’s up against Trump-era Republicans’ go-to offense: Blaming voters’ troubles and anxieties on migrants, progressive economic policies (Bidenomics!) and “woke” elites. They’re also deluging the state with TV ads demonizing transgender people and tagging Mr. Tester as too liberal.
Team Tester is trying to turn that playbook upside down, blaming people’s pain on a very different villain: rich “rhinestone cowboys” like Mr. Sheehy — potentially a clever bit of political jujitsu. But as Mr. Tester worked the room in Great Falls, slapping backs and greeting old friends, I asked him if his natives vs. invaders messaging might not work so well considering how many of today’s Montanans are transplants. Just over half the population was born in the state, according to the latest census data.
“It’s an interesting question,” he told me. “I think that people are pissed about the out-of-staters that have come in buying two or three houses, jacking up prices, jacking up taxes,” he said. But those folks who have come here to “make an honest living” get what’s happening, he said, hopefully. “I think it works with them, too.”
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Barreling through a sparsely populated stretch between Missoula and Great Falls, mountains rising up in the distance, I passed a giant sunshine-yellow sign on the edge of someone’s property announcing that the landowners did not trust the government and had “Documentation available” for those interested. (If I hadn’t been running late, I would have stopped and rung the bell.)
Mr. Tester is pitching himself as a champion of that libertarian tradition in the state. “We don’t want the federal government telling us what the hell to do, right?” he prompted the crowd in Great Falls. “Especially when it comes to a woman’s right to make their own health care decisions.”
Which brings us to another change afoot in the American West: The most intriguing X factor in Montana, Arizona and Nevada politics this fall is reproductive rights. Those states are among 10 with abortion-related measures on the ballot. In Montana, Initiative 128 would explicitly enshrine reproductive rights in the state’s Constitution. And despite the state’s rightward tilt, the measure’s supporters are feeling pretty good about its chances.
“We did surveying last year on the right to abortion, and making those decisions without government intervention tested really well across partisan lines,” said Taryn Van Steeland, a reproductive-rights organizer with Forward Montana, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on increasing political engagement among young voters. “It’s somewhere like 60 percent of Montanans, regardless of partisan affiliation. Which makes sense. There’s a pretty strong privacy backbone in Montana.”
In Montana, the antigovernment argument is seen as the way to go. Mx. Van Steeland recalled having “a number of conversations with middle-aged men this summer” who told her they didn’t hold progressive views but would be voting for Initiative 128 “because it’s private. These decisions are just not for other people to be involved in.”
I heard similar reports from Beth Sirr, a nurse practitioner who has been focused on canvassing undecided voters. “Some of these people strike me as libertarians for sure,” she said. “Some of them say they won’t vote for any politician.” But when it comes to the ballot measure, she adds, “they say they’re open to thinking about it” because it speaks to their bone-deep distrust of government.
Deborah Hanson (no relation to Linda) is a dramatic example of this cross-partisan appeal. The 70-year-old Montana native is a self-identified conservative who says she consistently votes Republican. But she is so disgusted with her party’s position on abortion that she has thrown herself into the fight for the initiative, first gathering signatures and now working to turn out voters. “It’s abysmal that politicians think it is appropriate, that the courts think it is appropriate, for anyone to be involved in this kind of decision other than the woman,” she explained. “I’m an advocate of, ‘I’m gonna keep my nose out of your business.’”
Aware of the issue’s electoral power, Mr. Tester has become a major cheerleader for reproductive rights this election — much more than in previous ones. He talks about it on the stump. “It’s not that complicated,” he told the Great Falls audience. “Just reinstate Roe.” He has an ad focused on it. Last month, he held a rally in Bozeman with the head of Planned Parenthood.
Like the Initiative 128 organizers, Mr. Tester is all in on the antigovernment, mind-your-own-business angle — which he cites as a core Montana value.
“What I said there is absolutely correct,” he told me after his speech. “Ain’t nobody in Montana wants government at any level — federal, state — telling them how to live, especially on a difficult issue like this.”
Mr. Sheehy, by contrast, “wants to let politicians ban abortions even here in Montana,” warns a “lifelong Republican” woman featured in the Tester campaign’s ad “Personal Freedoms.” Twisting the knife, she declares, “I’m sure not voting for that rich out-of-stater.”
Do you think this libertarian line will drive voters to the polls for the initiative and for your candidacy as well? I asked Mr. Tester.
“You know, I hope so,” he said. “But we’re not counting on it.”
The senator is right to be cautious. Abortion rights is a mobilizing issue, but ballot measures on the subject must be handled delicately in red states. The math dictates that you cannot win with only Democratic support, so the groups spearheading such efforts work to keep things as politically neutral as possible in order to sweep in independents and Republicans who may have qualms about abortion but have even more qualms about the government meddling in people’s private lives. “Keeping it nonpartisan is kind of mission critical,” said Ashley All, the communications director for Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights and a veteran of these ballot battles. “When you identify partisan politics, people retreat to their respective political corners.”
I saw this caution when canvassing with abortion-rights activists in Kansas in 2022, when it was still unclear how the issue would play out in a post-Roe world. Similar messaging proved successful in states like Ohio and Kentucky. And this is certainly the way things are being approached in Montana. “We’re not mentioning party. We’re not talking about candidates,” said Kiersten Iwai, the executive director of Forward Montana, which is part of the coalition leading the charge for Initiative 128.
Deborah Hanson, who declined to talk about which candidates she was supporting, said: “I don’t bring up political parties. I don’t bring up anything other than Initiative 128.”
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Party aside, there is also a question about whether Montana’s young voters, even if they turn out for the initiative, will also pull the lever for Mr. Tester. “I do think that this ballot measure will absolutely turn out young voters who might not otherwise turn out,” said Ms. Iwai. “But whether or not that translates to boosting Democratic candidates, I don’t think anyone can answer that.”
For a range of reasons, it’s easier to mobilize young voters behind ballot measures than behind candidates. “People feel disillusioned by politicians,” said Emma Forster, one of several campus organizers for Forward Montana registering voters at Montana State University on a Monday afternoon.
Ballot measures are more straightforward, provide a more direct sense of action and are less compromised and disappointing than candidates. “I get folks all the time who are like: ‘I don’t care about candidates. I’m not voting. I don’t want to vote for candidates,’” said Kailey Forrey, another member of the Forward Montana crew. “I’m like, ‘I don’t want to vote for candidates. I’m with you.’”
Reproductive rights activists have been warning since Kansas that ballot initiatives can provide only so much of a boost for Democratic candidates. Such measures can help around the edges, they say, but are unlikely to overcome a major partisan gap. (Montana, keep in mind, went for Mr. Trump by 16 points in 2020.) That uneasy dynamic is why many Tester fans I spoke with thought the initiative’s chances were good while Mr. Tester’s … not so much.
As in much of the country, Montana politics have become more nationalized and polarized. Given the Republican TV ad buys, you might think trans issues were what everyone here was talking about. But it’s all about making Mr. Tester into a liberal rather than a Montanan. Mr. Sheehy is working diligently to chip away at the senator’s brand, arguing that 18 years in Washington have changed Mr. Tester from a Montana maverick into just another tool of his party’s leadership.
Waiting on the senator to arrive in Great Falls, I stood talking with Rick Tyler, who grew up with Mr. Tester and has been out knocking on doors for his campaign. And what was Mr. Tyler hearing from voters? “Nothing I like,” he said. Like multiple supporters at multiple events, he seemed frustrated and flummoxed by the state’s deepening redness. Then again, he added hopefully, “there were people who told me they would never vote for an out-of-stater.”
Change is hard. Managing the turmoil that attends it is even harder. And navigating the changing political-scape in this age of nationalized elections, hyperpolarization and Trumpian extremism may be the heaviest lift of all. This race will tell us whether Montana’s third-generation, dirt-farming senator still has a magic formula, or if his home state simply isn’t the home it once was.
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