Montana
Montana Senate Candidates Spent 7 Minutes Sparring Over 1 Issue
Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester and Republican challenger Tim Sheehy spent a full seven minutes of Monday night’s one-hour debate sparring over the issue of federal public lands.
Tester, who is running for a fourth term in a pivotal race that could ultimately decide which party controls the Senate next year, repeatedly painted Sheehy as a threat to America’s public lands and the Montana way of life.
He referred multiple times to HuffPost’s reporting that first revealed Sheehy called for federal lands to be “turned over” to states or counties; failed to disclose his post on the board of the Property and Environment Research Center, a Bozeman-based property rights and environmental research nonprofit with a history of advocating for privatizing federal lands; and appeared to doctor a recent TV ad to remove PERC’s logo from the shirt he was wearing.
Sheehy largely avoided engaging in the specifics of Tester’s attacks, instead continuing a muddled effort to rewrite his record on the issue and accusing Tester of trying to tear down any organization he has been affiliated with.
The extensive back-and-forth came after Montana PBS journalist John Twiggs asked the candidates which entities are best equipped to manage the approximately 27 million acres of federal lands in Montana while maintaining public access.
“Bottom line: Public lands belong in public hands,” Sheehy said.
Tester marveled at what he described as Sheehy’s “incredible transformation on this issue” while warning voters to “watch out what people say in back rooms.”
“What they say in back rooms, when they don’t think the recorder is going or the camera is running, is usually what they think,” he said. “And Tim said we need to turn our lands over to either his rich buddies or county government. That’s not protecting public lands.”
William Campbell via Getty Images
Tester was referring to comments Sheehy made to a ranching podcast last October, shortly after launching his Senate bid. As HuffPost first reported, Sheehy told the “Working Ranch Radio Show” that “local control has to be returned, whether that means, you know, some of these public lands get turned over to state agencies, or even counties, or whether those decisions are made by a local landlord instead of by, you know, federal fiat a few thousand miles away.”
While Sheehy has spent the past year doing damage control on this issue, claiming he opposes the sale or transfer of federal lands despite his own words to the contrary, his comments Monday make clear that when he says “public hands,” he means the hands of Montanans only.
“Public lands belong to the public, that’s you — the people of Montana,” Sheehy said. “Public lands belong to the people, especially those who live amongst them. And I believe that if you’re a Montanan and you share a fence line with National Forest property, if you’re a rancher who has a [Bureau of Land Management] grazing lease, if you live next to state trust land, you should have more input into what happens on that land than bureaucrats 3,000 miles away.”
Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and multimillionaire businessman, owns a sprawling ranch in Martinsdale, Montana, that, notably, shares a fence line with Forest Service land and once offered high-dollar hunting excursions with what it called “private access to over 500,000 acres of National Forest.”
Sheehy’s position — that federal agencies are poor stewards of the federal estate and that locals know best how to manage federal lands — disregards the fact that federal lands, in Montana and everywhere else, are held in trust for all Americans, regardless of where they live, not just those who happen to live next door.
“I, absolutely, will every day advocate for more local control of those lands, because I believe they belong to you, not the government,” Sheehy said.
Michael Ciaglo via Getty Images
Sheehy is walking the same fine line as many members of the GOP. Republicans in Western states have spent decades working to wrest control of federal lands from the federal government. But broad public support for protecting public lands has forced them to largely abandon calls for outright transfer and sale and instead advocate for giving states broad management authority — a move that would ultimately allow them to achieve many of the same industry-friendly goals that would come with stripping lands from federal control.
Again and again, Tester brought the conversation back to Sheehy’s record.
“Tim even served on a think tank, on their board of directors, that’s job was to privatize our public lands,” Tester said. “In Tim’s case, his view of turning these lands over to counties or opening ’em up for his rich friends to buy them, is just the wrong direction to go for Montana.”
Sheehy defended himself with a false claim about PERC: “No one, including myself, in that organization has ever advocated for selling our public lands — never have, never will.”
In fact, in a 1999 policy paper titled “How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands,” PERC’s then-director, Terry Anderson, and others laid out what they called “a blueprint for auctioning off all public lands over 20 to 40 years.” (PERC previously told HuffPost that that paper “is not representative of PERC’s current thinking.”)
“Tim, it’s time to be honest with the people of Montana,” Tester fired back. “You were on a board of an organization that wanted to privatize our public lands. In fact, you even dulled out a badge on one of your ads of a shirt that you wore that was promoting that group. When you found out that badge was on there you said, ‘Hey we can’t be doing that because these guys, I served on their board and they want to get rid of our public lands.’”
“You also didn’t even disclose to the public when you filed for this position that you belonged on that board,” Tester added. “Why? It wasn’t because they were a great organization doing great things for our public lands. It was because they wanted to get rid of our public lands and you were a part of that organization and you didn’t want anybody to know about it.”
As HuffPost first reported, Sheehy failed to include his post on PERC’s board in his Senate financial disclosure — a violation of Senate rules that Sheehy’s campaign chalked up to an “oversight.” Since its founding in 1980, PERC has called for privatizing federal lands, including national parks, and been a staunch opponent of Montana’s unique stream access laws, which provide anglers and recreationists virtually unlimited access to the state’s rivers and streams, including those that flow through private property.
Sheehy’s pro-transfer comments and ties to PERC have been a consistent thorn in the side of his campaign, which over the past year has run a damage-control effort aimed at recasting Sheehy as a champion of public lands. Sheehy’s campaign recently aired a public lands-focused TV ad that featured a current PERC board member, and last month sent out public land mailers to Montana voters that included a picture of Sheehy wearing a flannel shirt with the PERC logo clearly visible on one sleeve. More recently, Sheehy’s team doctored a TV advertisement to remove PERC’s logo from the shirt he was wearing.
At Monday’s debate, Sheehy said Tester’s attacks against PERC are part of a pattern.
“The reason that organization has been criticized by Jon Tester is simply because I was affiliated with it,” he said. “And this has been their plan this entire campaign. If Tim Sheehy is affiliated with anything, attack it, tear it down, smear it.”
If Monday’s debate shined light on anything, it’s that Sheehy has gotten an earful from Montana voters who support protecting and preserving federal public lands. But unlike Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), who credited voters with changing his mind on transferring federal lands to states when he ran against Tester in 2018, Sheehy is refusing to acknowledge the reason for having walked back, or disguised, his anti-federal land views.
Whether Sheehy’s newfound opposition to pawning off public lands would survive a six-year Senate term remains to be seen — if he manages to defeat Tester in November.
During the debate, the Montana Republican Party took to X, formerly Twitter, to defend their candidate against Tester’s repeated swings.
“@SheehyforMT will work to preserve and expand public access to your public lands and he will KEEP PUBLIC LANDS IN PUBLIC HANDS!” the party wrote.
Support Free Journalism
Support HuffPost
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
Just three months ago, the Montana GOP — the party Sheehy is seeking a leadership role in — adopted a party platform that explicitly calls for the “granting of federally managed public lands to the state, and development of a transition plan for the timely and orderly transfer.”
Support Free Journalism
Support HuffPost
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
Montana
Montana State doctoral student awarded national research service grant for gut microbiome, arsenic research
MISSOULA — Four out of five members of Montana’s Public Service Commission were in a federal courtroom in Missoula Thursday morning, as the PSC’s former president challenges the disciplinary action taken against him earlier this year. Now, newly released documents are shedding more light on to what led up to this point.
(Watch the video for a closer look at the case.)
New documents shed light Montana PSC dispute
Commissioner Brad Molnar has sued President Jeff Welborn, Vice President Jennifer Fielder and Commissioner Annie Bukacek – the three PSC members who voted in May to require him to work remotely, after an investigation into complaints about his workplace conduct. Molnar has claimed he is being unfairly punished for constitutionally protected speech, and he asked Senior U.S District Judge Donald Molloy to allow him to return to the PSC offices.
Matthew Monforton, Molnar’s attorney, told the judge that barring Molnar from the building was limiting his ability to do his job.
“He has not been officially kicked out of office, but his voice has clearly been diminished,” said Monforton.
But Natasha Jones, an attorney representing the other three commissioners, said the findings were about behavior, not just speech, and that the PSC’s action was a reasonable response.
“These are serious concerns about a pattern of conduct that has made employees quit,” she said.
Jonathon Ambarian
On Tuesday, Molloy ordered the release of redacted versions of two full investigative reports into Molnar’s conduct – more than 100 pages of documents. Monforton had moved for the full reports to be made public, and Molloy ruled attorneys for the other PSC members hadn’t shown a compelling reason to keep the documents under seal as long as the names of people involved in the investigation were obscured.
While the names remained redacted in the investigation reports, the attorneys for Welborn, Fielder and Bukacek also filed additional documents – including a public declaration from Bukacek and from former PSC executive director Alana Lake, providing information about their allegations against Molnar.
The two reports, from an outside investigator, cover Molnar’s alleged actions over two periods: the first from February to August 2025, and the second from August to October 2025. The investigation began after the first formal complaint, filed by Bukacek in May 2025 – though the reports say employees had been bringing up concerns about Molnar’s behavior informally for several months prior.
Bukacek’s complaint claimed Molnar had repeatedly made what she called “sexualized and demeaning comments.” The examples she cited included saying the PSC should replace “Taco Tuesdays” with “Topless Tuesdays,” reminiscing about watching girls in bikinis as a teenager, and commenting about the beauty of women in areas of China who didn’t get “old and wrinkly.”
In her declaration, Bukacek also claimed Molnar had “maliciously disseminated false information” about her and “engaged in behavior that was dismissive, derisive and otherwise abusive.”
“My primary concern now is not for my safety nor my feelings, but for the rest of the staff who may not have the temperament to speak up or may feel too intimidated to speak up given concerns over job security,” Bukacek said in her declaration.
MTN News
The investigators determined Molnar had violated the PSC’s code of conduct by making comments of a sexual nature, and that it appeared his behavior had continued for some time after he was warned about it. They also found he had behaved unprofessionally and in a belittling manner toward Bukacek, though they said Bukacek herself had at times used “language that could be considered inappropriate” in emails to staff or other commissioners. Bukacek told MTN she “readily self corrected” any behaviors that were brought to her attention.
The investigation also found a violation in connection with a complaint from a PSC staff member, who said he “felt bullied” by Molnar when the commissioner sent an email complaining about his team not being “people with competence.”
However, much of the first report and the entire second report was focused on conduct after the initial complaints, when Molnar was accused of retaliating against people who participated in the investigation. Lake said in her declaration that she saw “an immediate and significant change in his behavior toward staff involved in the process.” She claimed he said he would use an attorney and private investigator to go after people who filed complaints, and she accused him of publicly criticizing her in interviews and removing her job responsibilities because of her handling of the investigation.
Lake said Molnar’s actions led to “declining morale within the agency,” undermined staff members’ ability to do their jobs and damaged her reputation. She said that led her to resign as executive director.
“I believe no employee should be forced to choose between reporting misconduct and protecting their career, reputation, or personal well-being,” she said in her declaration.
Lake has since become Helena city manager.
Jonathon Ambarian
The report said there was evidence to show Molnar had retaliated, including by “making disparaging statements about investigation participants” including Lake, by sending an email warning he could file complaints of his own against people involved, and by taking other actions investigators said could dissuade employees from reporting behavior in the future.
Monforton said during Thursday’s hearing that the initial comments Bukacek complained about were jokes Molnar had admitted were inappropriate, that he regretted saying them, and that he hasn’t made any similar comments in about a year. But he argued the vast majority of the findings against Molnar were about retaliation – and that those were primarily based on speech that the other commissioners don’t have the right to interfere with.
Monforton said it’s unreasonable to punish Molnar for what he said in the July news conference where he announced he was under investigation, in interviews with the media or in commission meetings. He said Molnar’s conduct doesn’t rise to the level of actual retaliation.
“This is an elected official, engaging in speech in his forum,” Monforton said.
He said Molnar may have made harsh comments toward staff, but that he had the right to raise objections about the way the agency does business.
Jonathon Ambarian
Monforton also argued the retaliation claims no longer justify keeping Molnar out of the office, since Welborn, Fielder and Bukacek voted to remove him as president in October and he no longer has the authority he’s accused of misusing. He said there haven’t been further complaints about his behavior since that time.
“We’re not asking for the moon and stars, we’re asking for the status quo as it existed for the last seven months,” he said.
Jones said there is enough evidence to show Molnar would have been punished regardless of whether any protected speech was excluded.
“This is not about a couple of jokes,” she said.
Jones said Molnar made maliciously false statements about people like Lake, and that type of statement isn’t covered by free speech protections.
She also said Molnar’s exclusion from the PSC offices is temporary, and that the PSC will reconsider whether to let him return if he apologizes for his actions, accepts the agency’s code of conduct and undergoes training.
Molloy indicated he saw indications that there was “acrimony” on both sides of the situation, and said he was skeptical it would be resolved easily.
“It would be nice if instead of juvenile behavior, there was professional behavior,” he said.
However, the judge said there was an avenue for Molnar to pursue if he wanted to reach a resolution.
Molloy took no immediate action Thursday. He told the parties he would rule as quickly as he could.
-
Iowa4 minutes agoReynolds orders flags lowered for funeral of Iowa Sen. Julian Garrett
-
Kentucky14 minutes ago
Louisville celebrates Juneteenth with parade honoring history and culture
-
Louisiana19 minutes agoFrom ‘not pageant people’ to Miss Louisiana stage: Addison J…
-
Maine26 minutes agoMaine gubernatorial candidates trade barbs on first day of general campaign
-
Maryland29 minutes agoMaryland governor celebrates Juneteenth in historically-Black Montgomery County community – WTOP News
-
Michigan35 minutes agoWest Michigan celebrates Juneteenth
-
Massachusetts41 minutes agoMassachusetts gas prices finally hit reverse, falling back toward $4
-
Mississippi44 minutes agoPolice shooting of a 1-year-old Mississippi boy ignites tension between police and residents – WXXV News 25
