Montana
U.S. Senate Dems will prioritize Montana and Ohio seats, campaign chief says • Daily Montanan
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said Tuesday his top priority this November is defending incumbents in tough races — placing Montana’s Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown at the top of the list for resources.
Gary Peters, who is also the U.S. senator from Michigan, said he sees several opportunities for Democrats to pick up seats as well, though he stressed that those campaigns are too close to predict just yet.
“To be candid, my number one priority is to bring back all of the incumbents,” Peters said. “But we also want to go on the offense, and offense is going to be very important. And right now our focus is Texas and Florida.”
Peters said that during the last few weeks Democrats have seen positive trends in polling in those two states that could increase the odds they flip from red to blue.
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is facing a challenge from Democratic Rep. Colin Allred and Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott is running against former Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
Democratic support continuing to rise in those two states could have an impact on how much money Democrats dedicate to those campaigns, Peters said.
“As we make our decisions on resources, we play to win,” he said. “And when we see opportunities like we see in Texas, we’re going to invest accordingly.”
The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rates the Senate campaigns in Michigan, Montana and Ohio as “toss up” races, while it places Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the “lean Democrat” category.
All seven of those seats are currently held by Democrats, making the map especially challenging for Peters.
Florida and Texas fall into the “likely Republican” category, signaling the odds are somewhat long for Democrats, though not completely out of reach.
Peters said during the panel interview with the Regional Reporters Association at the DSCC headquarters in Washington, D.C., that he believes GOP Senate candidates rank on a spectrum from “flawed to very flawed,” potentially boosting Democrats chances.
In Montana, defending Tester
Peters argued that in Montana, Republican candidate Tim Sheehy’s character is one of the reasons Tester remains within the margin of error in the vast majority of polls, despite the fact that voters favor Republican presidential candidates by double-digit margins.
“The list of flaws of Sheehy are long,” Peters said. “And that’s why folks in Montana are rejecting him, even in a state that’s going to be voting heavily for Donald Trump.”
Peters said some of Sheehy’s problems stem from calling himself a rancher despite living on a “dude ranch” and owning a company that is “hemorrhaging money.”
Montana’s relatively small population, Peters said, means that face-to-face conversations with voters and a candidate’s reputation can have a significant impact on a campaign’s outcome.
“Retail politics can make a huge difference,” Peter said. “Just think of Maine with Susan Collins when she won. It’s because it’s a small state. Retail politics matter. People knew Susan Collins.”
Collins, a Republican, in 2020 defeated her Democratic challenger, despite being considered one of the year’s most vulnerable senators.
Tester has a similar connection with voters in Montana, potentially edging him out over Sheehy, who is a more recent transplant to the state, he said.
“People know Jon Tester in Montana,” Peters said. “He is a long time Montana person, third generation dirt farmer. His roots are there. He’s had opportunities to get to know a lot of folks in Montana in a personal way. He can do that in a lot more effective way than I can in Michigan with 10 million people.”
Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines, who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said this summer during a panel interview with journalists in the RRA that his home state represented the best pickup opportunity for the GOP.
And just last week, Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, moved Montana from the toss up category to “Leans Republican.”
“The upshot of this rating change is that there are now 51 Senate seats rated as Safe, Likely, or Leaning Republican, so this move solidifies the Republicans as clear favorites to flip control of the Senate this November,” wrote Kyle Kondik, the publication’s managing editor.
Kondik later stressed that “Montana is a challenging state to poll, and both sides remain very heavily invested there.”
NRSC Spokeswoman Maggie Abboud released a written statement shortly after that ratings change, criticizing Tester as the wrong person to represent Montana in the Senate.
“Jon Tester is a diehard liberal who hates Donald Trump and votes for the Harris-Biden agenda 95% of the time,” Abboud wrote. “That’s why poll after poll shows him losing ground rapidly against Tim Sheehy. Montanans aren’t buying Tester’s moderate shtick anymore.”
‘Candidate quality’ in Ohio
In Ohio, where Brown is hoping to secure reelection against GOP candidate Bernie Moreno, the DSCC hopes to outrun a shift toward Republicans based on “candidate quality.”
“Sherrod has been able to win statewide because of who he is as a person, and that’s a big deal,” Peters said, noting that Senate races are often viewed differently by voters than the presidential race.
Moreno is a flawed candidate and a fraud, Peters said.
“The stories that he has, stories of coming to Ohio and starting a business as an immigrant with no resources, have been shown not to be true. That he actually comes from a family, one of the wealthiest families in Columbia,” Peters said, referring to a New York Times article that Moreno has refuted.
Moreno was also sued by employees at his car dealership for not paying overtime, setting up “a pretty clear contrast” with Brown, who has supported labor unions throughout his career, Peters said.
The DSCC is putting “substantial resources into Ohio” to help Brown win, he said.
Around the battlegrounds
Other battleground states have Senate races that will run down to the wire, with many of the Democrats expected to remain neck-and-neck with the GOP challengers until the polls close.
Peters said that should come as no surprise to anyone who has paid attention to the last few election cycles.
“Just because you have a really good candidate doesn’t mean that you win,” he said. “You also have to run a really good campaign in order to win, and particularly on the ground.”
That is one of the reasons why the DSCC is putting considerable resources into ensuring that voters can actually get to the polls this fall.
“Last cycle, for the first time in history, we spent more money on the ground than we did on the air, turning out voters,” Peters said. “It was something that I thought was incredibly important.“
The DSCC is planning to follow that same strategy again this year, ensuring that Democratic supporters in swing states are able to cast their ballots.
Montana
Montana Lottery Mega Millions, Big Sky Bonus results for May 8, 2026
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at May 8, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Mega Millions numbers from May 8 drawing
37-47-49-51-58, Mega Ball: 16
Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from May 8 drawing
09-14-18-20, Bonus: 16
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from May 8 drawing
14-16-21-43-51, Bonus: 03
Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
- Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
- Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.
Montana
“It’s Life Alert or rent”: Montana trailer park tenants are on rent strike
Mobile home residents in Bozeman, Montana, say they’re being forced to choose between paying rent and paying medical costs.Courtesy of Jered McCafferty
35-year-old Benjamin Moore has lived in Mountain Meadows Mobile Home Park, outside Bozeman, Montana, since he was 17. This month, for the first time, he’s withholding his rent.
On May 1, Moore received a rent bill for $947, up 11 percent from the month before, and the second hike in nine months—the product of the park’s sale to an undisclosed buyer.
Moore hung a sign on his trailer that says “RENT STRIKE.” He and his neighbors in Mountain Meadows and nearby King Arthur Park, organized with the citywide group Bozeman Tenants United, are collectively withholding over $50,000 a month from their landlord.
Historically, trailer parks have been a relatively affordable housing option—a third of trailer park residents in America live below the poverty line. But on average, their cost of living has risen 45 percent over the past decade. By unionizing, the Bozeman trailer park tenants believe they might be able to fight the most recent rent hike—especially given the state of their housing.
For years, tenants say, the maintenance hasn’t been attended to: tree limbs hang perilously over trailers, and water shutoffs are a regular occurrence. “I cannot recall a time in the past 20 years where we had three straight months of water and power working all day, every day,” Moore said.
Shauna Thompson, another resident, calls the water “atrocious…like a Milky Way, like you’re drinking skim milk. It’s very nasty and turned off all the time, without any notice.” And tenants allege that they’ve experienced retribution for maintenance requests, punitive eviction attempts, and unsafe conditions.
“It’s really hard on people here,” Moore said. Some residents are “already paying their entire Social Security check for rent. It’s a very poor neighborhood. We’ve got old folks. We’ve got young families. We’ve got working-class people who can’t afford anything else.”
For the past four decades, a group called Oakland Properties has owned both trailer parks. When they learned about the sale, tenants were scared that their parks would be bulldozed, or that their rent would be increased even further, forcing them to move.
The tenants attempted to buy the parks themselves, but were decisively outbid. The winning bidder demanded an NDA. The transaction should be finalized next month, park owner Gary Oakland said, but residents still don’t know who’s going to own the land they live on.
This month’s rent hike, Oakland acknowledged, was “part and parcel” of the sale. But for tenants, it’s a catastrophe. On top of the $947 lot rent—more than double the national average—many residents also pay off home loans on their trailers, as well as insurance and utilities costs.
Oakland calls claims of broken utilities “nonsense”: “If it was such a bad place to live, why would the homes be selling for such high dollars?” he said. The rent strike, Oakland points out, is “just a group of people not paying their rent.”
Some people are rationing their medication to make ends meet, Moore said. “There’s one person who canceled Life Alert. It’s either Life Alert or rent, and if you don’t pay rent, they evict you and throw you in the streets.”
Tenant organizers across the nation have found a foothold in recent years organizing against individual landlords, and Bozeman’s tenant union, situated in one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, is no exception. Tenant unions from Los Angeles to Kansas City to New York have organized to win rent freezes, maintenance, and security in their homes.
Mobile home parks—increasingly private-equity-owned and uniquely at-risk in the face of climate disasters—are organizing, too: a group of trailer park residents in Columbia, Missouri, unionized in February. In Montana, as Rebecca Burns recently wrote for In These Times, mobile homes were already once a site of tenant organizing: buoyed by the state’s miners unions, the first Bozeman-area mobile home tenants’ union won an agreement with their landlord in 1978.
Oakland says park residents “have been terrorized by the union,” and plans to evict the strikers. The strikers say they’ve retained a lawyer and will fight to stay in their homes.
“I wish none of this was happening,” Moore said. “Your utilities should work. Your place should be safe. You should be able to get in and out of it. These are the absolute basics, and they just haven’t kept them up. And if you call them on it, they threaten you.”
Montana
Montana’s fastest man who started as a walk on
MISSOULA, Mt. — Karsen Beitz arrived at Montana with no scholarship offers, one remaining walk-on spot and no guarantee that his track career would last.
Now, the former Sentinel High School standout is one of the fastest athletes in Montana history.
Beitz, a Missoula native and junior sprinter for the Grizzlies, has turned an unlikely college opportunity into a record-setting career. He owns Montana’s 100-meter and 200-meter program records and enters next week’s Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships as one of the top sprinters in the league.
Coming out of high school, Beitz was a football and track athlete without a Division I offer.
“I was upset about it,” Beitz said. “But at the same time, I was fine with just going to college and living a normal college life.”
That changed after conversations between Sentinel coach Dylan Reynolds and Montana coach Doug Fraley.
“You may not think he’s a D-I prospect based on his times,” Reynolds told Fraley, “but I’m just telling you, if he gets in the right program, he’s going to be a D-I runner.”
Fraley had one walk-on spot left on his roster. He brought Beitz into his office, talked with him and decided to take a chance.
“I liked him. We had a good conversation, so I decided to give him the last walk-on spot,” Fraley said. “I’m sure glad I did.”
Beitz became a Division I athlete in his hometown, but his first goal was modest. He wanted to prove he belonged and earn a scholarship.
He did that quickly.
As a freshman, Beitz placed at the Big Sky Outdoor Championships and helped Montana’s 4×100-meter relay reach the podium with a school-record performance.
“There was no doubt he earned that scholarship,” Fraley said.
Beitz continued to climb in 2025. He placed second in the 200 meters at the Big Sky indoor meet, but a hamstring injury kept him out of the outdoor championships.
“It sucked to deal with,” Beitz said. “But I’m young and still had two years left, so I shifted my mindset to how I could come out these next two years.”
He has not looked back.
Beitz won the 200 meters at the 2026 Big Sky indoor championships, the first individual conference title of his track career. His time of 21.09 seconds edged Idaho State’s Alex Conner by one-hundredth of a second.
“I think the best part about it was seeing how happy Doug was,” Beitz said. “He was jumping up and down, gave me a big hug. After last year, I knew what I was capable of, so to go out there and do it was amazing.”
Then came the outdoor season.
In April, Beitz broke Montana’s 58-year-old 200-meter record, running 20.55 seconds at the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate in Long Beach, California. The previous record had stood since 1968.
Two weeks later, he added the school’s wind-legal 100-meter record, running 10.25 seconds at the Bengal Invitational in Pocatello, Idaho. Which broke a 44-year-old program record and gave Beitz both sprint marks.
“He’s a really competitive guy, and he wants to be the best in the Big Sky,” Fraley said.
The records have not left Beitz satisfied. They have made him hungrier.
“You have all these goals and numbers in your mind,” Beitz said. “Then once you hit those numbers, you’re not satisfied. There’s just more numbers to chase.”
The next chase begins at the Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships, scheduled for May 13-16 in Portland, Oregon.
After college, Beitz hopes to follow his mother’s footsteps and become a pharmacist. Maybe even the world’s fastest pharmacist.
“If I’m running around the hospital talking to doctors,” Beitz said, “I’ll do it pretty fast.”
From a walk-on few people noticed to a conference champion and school-record holder, Beitz has become Montana’s fastest man — and he is not done running.
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