In the business world, CEOs have to answer to their shareholders about the successes and failures of their company. You can’t dodge questions you don’t like in the boardroom, and you can’t hide from the people you were hired to serve. 

Running for elected office shouldn’t be any different. Any individual seeking to represent Montana has an obligation to, at the very least, show up and answer basic questions from voters about who they are and who they claim to be. 

But Tim Sheehy thinks he can play by a different set of rules in his campaign for Montana’s U.S. Senate seat. I’m a Montana voter who recently tried to attend one of Sheehy’s public events to ask him simple questions about his failing business and his financial obligations to Gallatin County. Instead of looking me in the eyes and answering my questions like a man, Sheehy ordered his political attack-dogs to forcibly remove me from the venue. 

JUST NOW: Gallatin County-based financial expert Marc Cohodes, who has highlighted the issues with Sheehy’s company in op-eds and interviews, engaged with Tim Sheehy and tries asking questions. Sheehy shouts back at him as Marc gets thrown out #mtpol #mtsen pic.twitter.com/6ZFEB7AEqG

— Hannah Rehm (@HannahRehm_) September 30, 2024

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Sheehy’s cowardly move to dodge questions from the Montana constituents he is running to represent is part of a larger, well-documented effort to avoid having to answer for his shady business record and lengthy list of lies. CNN recently reported that Sheehy “rarely grants interviews to local or national press, while his campaign doesn’t discuss his schedule or provide information about his events, which tend to be closed affairs.” Sheehy is running scared from both the press and the people. 

This all begs the question: what is Sheehy trying to hide? 

Well, as a financial expert who has spent my career taking on scammers and crooks, it is obvious to me that Sheehy is afraid to answer questions because he knows he will be exposed as the fraud that he is. The simple fact is that Sheehy’s company has more than $200 million in debt all because of his failed leadership. So here are three questions that I would have asked Sheehy in person had he given me the chance: 

1. How could Bridger possibly pay back its enormous debt – especially when the company has lost more than $150 million under your leadership in the past four years? 
2. What is the risk to Gallatin County if your company defaults on its bond, and how do we know taxpayers won’t be strapped with the bill? 
3. Why won’t you take accountability for running Bridger into the financial red? If you won’t tell the truth about your failing business, and you won’t answer questions from voters, how can Montanans trust you to represent us in the Senate?

These three questions should be easy for Sheehy to answer. And if we were in the boardroom, he would have nowhere to hide. But Sheehy is trying to run out the clock on the campaign trail and fool Montana voters into buying what he’s selling. 

If Montana voters want to vote for a candidate who has run his business straight into the ground, wants to sell off our public lands to his wealthy out-of-state friends, attacks a woman’s right to choose while saying slimy things about crawling out of his “mother’s womb,” and continues to tell lies to the press and the public, that is their choice to make. But until Tim Sheehy answers basic questions from Montana voters, he is not fit to serve our great state. 

The simple fact is that just like company shareholders, Montana should be asking about Tim Sheehy’s deeply flawed business record and his refusal to answer questions. 

BOZEMAN — Last week, Montana State picked up a big victory in a top-10 matchup against Idaho. The No. 3-ranked Bobcats hammered then-No. 7 Idaho 38-7 on Saturday night to improve to 7-0 overall and 3-0 in the Big Sky Conference. MSU is 7-0 for the first time since 1978.

On this week’s edition of the Bobcat Insider show, MTN Sports’ Grace Lawrence and MSU play-by-play announcer Keaton Gillogly are joined by head coach Brent Vigen to revisit the Idaho win and look ahead to this week’s road matchup against Big Sky opponent Portland State. The Vikings are 1-5 overall and 1-2 in the league.

Vigen also discusses the season-ending knee injury linebacker Danny Uluilakepa suffered last week and how it might affect Montana State’s defense, which has been among the best in the Big Sky to this point in the season.

On that note, linebacker and Bozeman native McCade O’Reilly also joins this week’s show for an interview to talk about Uluilakepa’s impact on the position group and how O’Reilly’s role may be impacted in the wake of the injury.

Montana State’s game at Portland State is scheduled to kick off at 2 p.m. Mountain time, and will be broadcast by Scripps Sports and air on the MTN channel across Montana. For information on how to watch, click here. To watch this week’s Bobcat Insider show, see the video player above.

It’s a scenario Ryan Busse, the Democratic nominee challenging Gov. Greg Gianforte (R-MT), doesn’t want to give much thought to.

“I don’t spend any time thinking about that right now,” Busse told the Washington Examiner. “I think people who care about this state, if that comes to pass, are going to have to buckle down and figure out what’s next. It’ll be a tough battle if that happens.”

Not since more than a century ago — in 1896, just seven years after Montana became the 41st state — has the GOP concurrently held both Montana Senate seats, the governorship, and both legislative chambers.

A loss by Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) to Republican rival Tim Sheehy, an outcome that would likely foreshadow other races for down-ballot Democrats like Busse, would almost certainly allow a sea of red to once again crash across the Great Plains State. The race is also on track to be the majority-maker for which party takes the U.S. Senate, a chamber currently held by Democrats by a one-seat margin.

The prospects of Montana Democrats avoiding a repeat of history, albeit for only the second time since the state joined the Union, looks increasingly dim.

Polling and nonpartisan election forecasters give an edge to Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and Montana businessman, over Tester, a third-generation dirt farmer who’s served in the Senate since 2006 and is seeking a fourth consecutive term. Montana’s other senator is Republican Steve Daines, who is not up for reelection.

The race between Busse, an ex-firearms executive, and Gianforte, a former tech executive and congressman, is rated far less competitive and is considered a “solid” Republican seat.

Voters head to the polls for the contests in just a few weeks’ time against the backdrop of a legislature already held by Republicans with a super majority, although the party expects to lose some seats this year.

“That’s not healthy to have one party have extreme control over a state, be it Democratic or Republican, and that’s the case in Montana,” said Lou Hanebury of Billings, a retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee who backs Busse and Tester. “I scratch my head. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Busse’s lieutenant governor running mate, Raph Graybill, pitched voters during a Tuesday night town hall on why they should embrace “divided government” by electing more Democrats like them.

“In my experience, when you have divided government, the legislators realize that their dumb ideas, the ideas that are just about phoning the other side or making a statement, it is going to waste people’s time,” said Graybill, who served as chief legal counsel to former Gov. Steve Bullock (D-MT). “They sink to the bottom because people know they’ll get weaker, and these good ideas percolate to the top.”

Sheehy certainly doesn’t see it that way, at least not at the national level. He makes the case that Tester is trying to deflect from the national importance of his election by projecting a more centrist image that leans into his Montana roots. He and other Republicans say that Tester would hand Democrats power in Washington even if he breaks with his party on occasion.

“He can’t be affiliated with the Democrats’ national platform,” Sheehy told rallygoers on Monday in Glendive, a small east Montana town near the North Dakota border that’s home to barely 4,000 residents. “He tries to make the election local and say, ‘Well, I’m a dirt farmer. I got a flat-top hairdo, and I got my fingers cut off in a meat grinder,’ and all those other things. ‘I’m a local guy, forget about what’s going on national.’”

Montana is no doubt a Republican stronghold for president; former President Donald Trump won by more than 16 points in 2020 and 20 points in 2016. But its ruby-red status at the state level is a newer feature that has eclipsed the once purple reputation that existed for down-ballot races throughout the more than 125 years since a Republican takeover of its state offices.

“There are cycles to all this stuff. But I think ultimately, Montana will always give a candidate a fair shake, and they’re not crazy about one party being in charge of anything,” said Eric Stern, an ex-senior adviser to Bullock and former Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT). “There’s always going to be a place for Democrats in Montana, and there will be good years and bad years and good eras and bad eras.”

Montana Democratic state Rep. Paul Tuss placed the onus on state and local Democrats to better “focus on the core issues that are central to their families,” including affordable housing, infrastructure, and simply embracing a style of “government that works.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Tuss is a longtime friend of Tester, whose R+8 district overlaps with the state Senate district Tester once held before being elected to Congress.

“I think that sometimes we get wrapped up with regard to the cultural wars that seem to dominate national politics, and we sometimes lose the argument when those things occur,” Tuss said. “Rather than discussing these meat and potato issues that really are the issues that are so central to our party, sometimes we get lost in those culture war issues.”