Democratic Sen. Jon Tester lost his 2024 reelection bid in Montana by roughly seven points to Republican Tim Sheehy. A former campaign intern says the effort leaned too heavily on out-of-state staff and stale playbooks, underscoring Democrats’ broader challenges in red-leaning rural states.
In the Nov. 5, 2024 general election, Republican Tim Sheehy defeated three-term Democratic incumbent Jon Tester, 52.6% to 45.5%, flipping Montana’s Senate seat to the GOP. Official state canvass results show Sheehy ahead by about 43,000 votes, a margin of just over seven percentage points. The Associated Press and other major outlets called the race the next day. (sosmt.gov)
Tester, a third-generation farmer from the small town of Big Sandy, first won the seat in 2006 after narrowly unseating Republican Sen. Conrad Burns. He secured reelection in 2012 and 2018 with a brand built around rural authenticity and bipartisan dealmaking, often contrasting himself with rivals he cast as out-of-state transplants—most memorably branding 2018 opponent Matt Rosendale “Maryland Matt,” a theme echoed by allied groups. (en.wikipedia.org)
But the 2024 effort stumbled, according to Nick Perkins, an intern on the Tester campaign who wrote about his experience in The Nation. Perkins describes a June 2024 protest along I‑90 in Billings against Sheehy that drew about 30 people—only “around five” of them local residents—while the rest were staff and interns from elsewhere. He says the episode typified a reliance on out-of-state staffing and messaging that failed to connect with voters facing rising housing costs and other local concerns. (thenation.com)
Perkins argues Democrats misread the lessons of the mid‑2000s: even as Tester ran on a folksy, down-to-earth image—sometimes touting himself as the Senate’s only working farmer—the party defaulted to consultant-driven ads and nationalized tactics. In 2018, for example, Tester bought newspaper ads thanking then‑President Donald Trump for signing several of his bills into law, including measures aimed at accountability and cutting government waste—an appeal to crossover voters that did not carry him in 2024. Separately, an AP fact-check during the 2018 race found Tester at one point led all members of Congress in lobbyist contributions, a data point Republicans used to undercut his populist image. (wunc.org)
Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and businessman who aligned closely with Donald Trump, benefited from Montana’s Republican lean and from framing Tester as tied to national Democrats, especially on immigration and energy issues. His victory extended the GOP’s control across Montana’s statewide offices and contributed to Republicans’ Senate gains in 2024. (reuters.com)
Perkins concludes that Democrats need fresher, locally rooted strategies rather than rerunning 2006 playbooks. As examples, he points to New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani’s insurgent mayoral bid—Mamdani went on to win the 2025 Democratic nomination in New York City—and to Dan Osborn, an independent labor-aligned candidate in Nebraska’s 2026 U.S. Senate race. (Those comparisons are Perkins’s, not universally shared among party strategists.) (reuters.com)