Montana
Truth Be Told: PACs vs. candidate ads in Montana's U.S. Senate race
BILLINGS- With a month until the November, general election, Montanans are being inundated with political advertising.
“It’s constant. It’s every ad break on television,” said Paul Pope.
Pope, a professor at MSU Billings and political analyst, said voters can’t get a break from it.
“You need to protect your mental health,” he said.
But parties are in the end stretch of the election cycle with spending topping into the billions for Montana’s U.S. Senate race.
“We are seeing $3 billion election cycles now and a lot of it is buying ad time,” he said.
Pope says sometimes it’s hard for voters to know the difference between facts and untruths.
First, it’s important to know who is sponsoring the ad.
“A PAC or a political action committee is a group specifically formed for political advocacy,” explains Pope. “A candidate’s ad is something that comes from its campaign.”
Perhaps one of the most memorable PAC ads in recent weeks is one centering around a claim that white farmers in Montana didn’t receive crucial funding based on race.
The ad doesn’t come from Tester’s Republican opponent, Tim Sheehy, but instead comes from a Super PAC called the Senate Leadership Fund, whose goal is building a Republican senate majority.
Pope says PACs use the muscle of the First Amendment to toe an unethical line about their opponents.
“The PAC ads are often very exaggerating with the claims that they make, and in some cases, they are outright lies,” said Pope.
The claim made in the ad is false, according to Tester’s voting record and Walter Schweitzer with the Montana Farmer’s Union.
Schweitzer says the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program, which is referenced but not named in the ad, was born out of good intentions.
Initially it never went into effect, so no farmers were turned away from funding.
“For decades, disadvantaged farmers and ranchers have been denied financial assistance,” said Schweitzer.
Under the Inflation Reduction Act, the USDA gave money to 228 Montana farmers who reported discrimination.
Schweitzer says white farmers were never denied funding and received thousands of dollars in aid from the agency through the years.
“I am sure there were some women farmers who used this funding, I am sure there were some Native American farmers who received funds from this,” he said.
In 2022, Tester voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, which replaced an earlier version of the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program with one that doesn’t discriminate based on race.
The program is currently in effect today with recipients reporting discrimination including age, gender, and religion.
The attack ads go both ways.
In 2023, the Last Best Place Super PAC was found to violate finance reporting requirements for ads calling Sheehy, “Shady Sheehy”. The complaint alleges the PAC failed to file required pre-election independent expenditure reports.
“The voter has to use more than these campaign ads to figure out what they want from a candidate,” said Pope.
He says voters must look beyond the salacious language and follow the money.
“They have to go to the candidate’s web page. They have to look at the candidate’s history,” he said.
WASHINGTON ― Montana Republican Senate nominee Kurt Alme, who previously served as his state’s U.S. attorney, cut a plea deal in 2020 that allowed a tribal police officer who sexually abused a 6-year-old girl to serve less than a year in prison and avoid being registered as a sex offender.
Alme, who has President Donald Trump’s backing in his bid for Senate, served as Montana’s U.S. attorney in two stints. Trump appointed him both times; Alme served in the role from September 2017 through December 2020, and then again from March 2025 through March 2026.
Alme oversaw the case of Mychal Thomas Damon, who was indicted in June 2019 by a grand jury on one count of abusive sexual contact with an individual under 12, which carries a maximum punishment of a lifetime in prison, a $250,000 fine and no less than five years to a lifetime of supervised release. The average sentence for this crime is less severe, but still significant: 62 months in prison, no fine and 143 months of supervised release, based on an analysis of 2025 data provided by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Damon, 28, had admitted he touched the 6-year-old’s genitals. But in February 2020, Alme’s office filed a plea deal in his case that reduced his charge to felony child abuse.
The changes in the plea deal raised the alleged age of the victim from below 12 to below 14, stripped out the language of sexual intent and moved the offense out of the federal sex crime framework, meaning Damon would no longer be required to register as a sex offender. It jointly recommended Damon be sentenced to the time he’d already served of 324 days, and required only a sex offender evaluation. Alme’s name appears on the bottom of the document, along with a signature by his assistant U.S. attorney, Cassady Adams.
In June, Alme filed a sentencing memorandum that described Damon’s conduct, which included details of him touching the child’s vagina with skin-to-skin contact, and the adverse effect it had on her mental health. Local reporting at the time said the victim had told a therapist “Mychal touched me” and hurt her by putting his fingers in her “hoo hoo.”
Ten days later, Alme announced Damon was being sentenced to time served of 324 days and two years of supervised release. As of June 2026, Damon is not listed in the national sex offender registry or in Montana’s Sexual or Violent Offender Registry.
It’s not clear why Alme reduced the charges against Damon as significantly as he did. During part of his tenure as U.S. attorney, his office declined 64% of sexual assault cases. He conceded in a 2019 interview that this “is something that has to be worked on,” and noted that a lot of these cases are declined due to “weak or insufficient evidence.”
Asked what happened in Damon’s case, an Alme campaign spokesman on Thursday lashed out at unnamed Democrats for trying to make him look bad.
“Kurt’s liberal opponents are twisting the facts to manufacture a fake narrative that exploits crimes against women and children,” said Alme’s spokesperson. “Department of Justice policy required defendants to plead to the most serious charge readily provable from the evidence. Kurt strongly supported the Multi-Disciplinary Teams on our Native American reservations, led by his office, to support investigations of crimes against children and to support victims.”
His spokesperson also pushed back on the idea that Alme unreasonably declined a large number of sexual assault cases during his tenure as U.S. attorney.
“Kurt’s office prosecuted every viable sexual abuse felony referred to it and pursued the most serious charge readily provable from the evidence,” the spokesperson said. “Many ‘declined’ cases were to allow more appropriate tribal prosecutions ― they were not dropped. Kurt will bring his years of experience prosecuting criminals and working with the Sexual Assault Response Teams on our Native American reservations to the U.S. Senate to strengthen investigations, support victims, and better protect women and children.”
The campaign pointed HuffPost to a 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office that found the most common reason for U.S. attorney’s offices to decline sexual abuse cases referred in from Indian country was “weak or insufficient admissible evidence.” It also highlighted statements of support for Alme in an October 2025 press release by Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), when he celebrated Alme being confirmed as U.S. attorney.
Alme is currently running for Daines’ Senate seat, and Daines went out of his way to clear the path for him. In a stunning and orchestrated maneuver, the two-term senator in March abruptly withdrew from reelection as Alme filed to run for his seat, minutes before the state’s filing period closed. Daines’ last-minute change-up was an effort to block potential Democrats or any major Republican challenger from jumping into an open Senate race.
Alme is taking on Democrat Alani Bankhead and independent candidate Seth Bodnar in the November election. Bankhead and Bodner have been duking it out for weeks, with each appealing to different factions of the Democratic party and calling on the other to drop out.
Bankhead, a retired Air Force officer, unexpectedly won the Democratic primary earlier this month, boosted by grassroots supporters and more than $2.5 million in outside money from a progressive veterans’ PAC. But Bodnar, a former University of Montana president who did not appear on the primary ballot, has bipartisan endorsements from prominent establishment figures, including former Democratic Sen. Jon Tester and former Republican Gov. Marc Racicot. He’s also significantly outraised Bankhead and Alme.
This Senate seat is rated “solid Republican” by the nonpartisan Cook’s Political Report, meaning Alme is well-positioned to win the general election. But this race would be more competitive if Bodner and Alme were going head to head, without Bankhead in the running.
Where Khloe Kardashian Stands With Ex French Montana More Than 10 Years After Breakup
French Montana is done keeping up with reality TV.
In fact, he only agreed to appear on Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Kourtney & Khloé Take the Hamptons over a decade ago as a favor to then-girlfriend Khloe Kardashian.
“She said to get on the show,” he exclusively told E! News at the BET Awards on June 28. “And I got on the show. Shout out to Khloe.”
The “Ever Since U Left Me” rapper, who split with Kardashian in December 2014 after eight months of dating, said the experience was “fun” because her family kept it real.
“They filmed their real life,” he continued. “And we were part of something together that one time. So it felt great. It didn’t feel like work because they film what they do everyday.”
As for his future in reality TV, the 41-year-old said those days are over, shutting down any prospective offers with a simple, “Negative.”
Although the “Unforgettable” artist—whose real name is Karim Kharbouch—may not be returning to television anytime soon, he has no problem hanging out with his ex-girlfriend these days.
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