Tim Sheehy, the novice Republican candidate in perhaps the most important Senate race in the country, was not downplaying his lack of a political pedigree when he stepped in front of a welcoming audience at the American Legion hall in downtown Big Timber, Mont.
“I’ve never been involved in politics,” he told the crowd of about 75 gathered for a recent stop in this ranching and mining community at the foot of the Crazy Mountains in sparsely populated Sweet Grass County. “It’s my first time running for anything. I’ve never run for student council.”
He is starting at the top in this crucial showdown with Senator Jon Tester, the three-term Democrat who finds himself the underdog in his changing home state in a contest that could decide which party holds the Senate majority no matter who wins the presidency.
“This race is not just an everyday Senate race,” Mr. Sheehy told his listeners, most of them older, with the men sporting Stetsons and trucker hats, their horse trailers and cattle trucks lined up outside. “This is not just whether you like old dirt farmer Jon Tester or not. This race determines control of the U.S. Senate. It’s that simple.”
It is true that given Democrats’ 51-to-49 majority and the almost certain Republican pickup of a West Virginia seat after Senator Joe Manchin III’s retirement, a win in Montana could very well hand the G.O.P. control of the chamber. But Montana’s Senate race has been anything but simple.
On paper, Mr. Sheehy must have seemed like a dream candidate to the Senate Republicans who eagerly recruited him to finally unseat Mr. Tester, a third-generation Montana farmer and Democrat with proven crossover appeal. Mr. Sheehy is a telegenic, decorated Navy SEAL married to a former Marine officer with whom he shares four children being home-schooled outside Bozeman. He has assembled a sprawling ranch in central Montana.
An entrepreneur and pilot, he started an aerial firefighting business to help extinguish the wildfires that increasingly plague Montana and other Western states. His chief drawback seemed to be the fact that he does not have deep roots in a state that prizes them, having moved to Montana just 10 years ago.
Plenty of newcomers can be found these days in Montana, where wealthy transplants from other states, many of them conservative, have shifted the political landscape. Senator Steve Daines, the Montana Republican who chairs the Senate campaign arm, was hungry for a home-state win and urged Mr. Sheehy to run. With an endorsement boost from former President Donald J. Trump, the party cleared the field for him.
But their golden boy has accumulated considerable tarnish as the campaign has progressed and Mr. Sheehy’s background has undergone a more penetrating look. He has been dogged by questions surrounding the financing of his business with government bonds, his affiliation with an organization that has backed privatizing public lands and racist comments made about Native Americans — an important voting bloc in Montana. And he has faced perhaps the most intense scrutiny over the circumstances of a gunshot wound in his right forearm.
Mr. Sheehy, a combat veteran with a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, has said during his campaign that he was hit by a bullet during a firefight in Afghanistan, an injury he did not report at the time. But in 2015, three years after his deployment, he told a park ranger at Glacier National Park that he had accidentally shot himself in the arm. His lawyers now say that was a lie told to spare his comrades an investigation of what had happened during combat years earlier, which Mr. Sheehy suspected might have been a result of friendly fire.
Either way, Mr. Sheehy was not honest about the shooting, and his shifting accounts, first reported by The Washington Post, have come under increasing suspicion in the closing days of the campaign. Both the park ranger and a fellow SEAL have accused him of fabricating the story of a wartime injury, charges that have been featured in some of the torrent of political ads washing over Montana’s media.
Mr. Tester and his allies say the changing stories should diminish voter trust in Mr. Sheehy. They also threaten to undermine the “American Warrior” message emblazoned on Mr. Sheehy’s red, white and blue signs around Montana, including on the main highway through Big Sandy, Mr. Tester’s tiny hometown in the northern part of the state.
The question is whether any of it will matter in a state that has grown increasingly red after a long tradition of ticket splitting and backing Democrats for office. Mr. Sheehy has led in polls for weeks.
“He has done things that, in a previous cycle, would have been disqualifying on their own,” Mr. Tester said after a rally for Democratic candidates in Havre in the state’s Hi-Line region along the Canadian border. “But we’re in a different time now and we’ll see. I still think Montanans are going to react to this in a way that won’t be good for him.”
Republican allies and representatives of Mr. Sheehy insist that the scrutiny over his bullet wound story is a scurrilous effort to disparage a veteran. At the event in Big Timber, Mr. Sheehy said he was the victim of unfounded accusations by those determined to prevent another Republican in the Senate.
“The amount of lies, smears and disgusting falsehoods they have spread,” Mr. Sheehy told his audience. “They have no obligation to the truth. They will say anything.”
Mr. Sheehy has run a cloistered campaign, steering clear of the media and avoiding questions about the shooting and other issues surrounding him. His events are not widely publicized; a reporter for The New York Times learned of the rally in Big Timber from other sources and attended.
Inside, Mr. Sheehy told voters that when he initially offered to help Republicans with money and time, it was never his intention to run for the Senate himself.
“The only reason I got in this race was not because I wanted to be a senator,” he said. “Flying a water bomber and roping cows is way more fun. The reality is we have to save this country.”
Democratic strategists say Republicans have bubble-wrapped Mr. Sheehy in an attempt to ride out the controversies, counting on the increasing rightward tilt of the state and the huge advantage Mr. Trump enjoys there to pull Mr. Sheehy to victory.
In his appearances, the candidate is sometimes accompanied by sitting Republican senators who help to lend a bit of gravitas and make the case against their colleague.
“You are not dealing with a moderate,” Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican of Mississippi, said of Mr. Tester when she appeared with Mr. Sheehy recently. She noted that Mr. Tester regularly votes with Democratic leaders.
Despite his widespread name recognition, Mr. Tester is combating rising Republican strength in Montana. He is facing the dual challenge of winning over an influx of Republicans not accustomed to voting for him while also holding on to those who may have supported him in the past but now want to go in another direction.
“I don’t dislike the guy,” JV Moody, a retired state trooper and Sweet Grass County commissioner who attended the Big Timber event, said of Mr. Tester. “But it is desperately time for a change.”
That thinking perplexes Democrats who say Mr. Sheehy has already shown he cannot be trusted and is not one of them.
“Why would you trade in your work tractor for an unproven Cybertruck?” Lindsey Ratliff of Havre, the chairwoman of the Hill County Democrats, asked of Mr. Sheehy. “He has no real understanding of regular Montanans.”
While Mr. Sheehy has held a steady advantage in polls, Mr. Tester has had financial superiority in a race that could cost $250 million, raising a remarkable $32 million in the last quarter alone. He emphasizes his Montana roots and deep knowledge of state issues as well as his work on behalf of veterans as chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee compared to his opponent’s blank slate.
“I spent eight years in the state legislature, and we worked hard and had a good tenure and then ran for the U.S. Senate,” said Mr. Tester, who dismissed Mr. Sheehy’s contention that “people are picking on me.”
“If you are in public office, you are under public scrutiny, and if there are any ticks on you, they’re going to find them,” Mr. Tester said. “I think we’ve got a great chance of winning this because I’ve got a great record of accomplishment — and he’s got a lot of ticks on him.”
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