NEW: Transplant Tim Sheehy Calls to Transfer Public Lands

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, October 18, 2023

CONTACT
monica@mtdems.org

Sheehy “embraces a toxic position on public lands” that is deeply out of step with Montanans 

Helena, MT – Montana newcomer Tim Sheehy believes we should transfer control of public lands to states and counties, a move that is widely known to make it easier to sell off land to private interests, and in states like Montana is a “third rail” policy position that even many Republicans have attempted to distance themselves from. 

New reporting from HuffPost revealed that in a recent interview Sheehy said “local control [of public lands] has to be returned.” Sheehy’s statement is out of step with the vast majority of Montanans who oppose transferring our state’s treasured public lands, and instead seeks to make it easier for multimillionaires like him to buy up land. 

Matt Rosendale made this same error during his 2018 Senate bid when he learned that his support for land transfer was an “appallingly unpopular position” in Montana. Regardless of his attempts to walk back his support, Montana voters did not forget his mistake, and they will not forget Sheehy’s comments either. 

Huffington Post: Montana GOP Senate Candidate Embraces A Toxic Position On Public Lands
By Chris D’Angelo
October 18, 2023

• If GOP Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy wanted to know how advocating for transferring control of federal lands to states goes over in a place like Montana, all he had to do was look at the last Republican to take a run at Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) found out during his 2018 bid for Senate that it is an appallingly unpopular position.
   

• Rosendale embraced federal land transfer as a candidate for the House in 2014, going as far as to call for a Montana takeover of all Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands within Montana’s borders [...] But by the time Rosendale ran for Senate four years later, he’d clearly heard an earful from his constituents.
   

• Montana is 35% federally owned. Poll after poll shows that voters in Western states, including Montana, overwhelmingly oppose transferring control or selling off federal lands.
   

• “Local control has to be returned,” Sheehy told the Working Ranch Radio Show earlier this month. “Whether that means, you know, some of these public lands get turned over to state agencies, or even counties, or whether those decisions are made by a local landlord instead of by, you know, federal fiat a few thousand miles away. Local control will almost always produce better results than a federal mandate from bureaucrats who are unaccountable to the people that are ultimately subject to these regulations.”
   

• When HuffPost contacted Sheehy’s campaign about the radio interview, spokesperson Katie Martin tried to walk back what sounded like a full embrace of federal land transfer.
   

• Sheehy’s attempt to walk the line here mirrors a yearslong shift within the pro-transfer movement. As HuffPost previously reported, conservatives have largely been forced to abandon brazen calls for outright transfer and sale ― at least publicly — instead embracing savvier tactics aimed at achieving many of the same industry-friendly goals that would come with stripping lands from federal control.
   

• Western voters have made their views on pawning off public lands abundantly clear. Released in 2017, a poll by the Center for American Progress found that 64% of Donald Trump voters opposed privatizing or selling off public lands. A survey by Colorado College in 2016 found that 60% of voters in seven Western states, including 59% of Montanans, opposed selling off significant federal land holdings.
   

• Aaron Weiss, deputy director at the Center for Western Priorities, told HuffPost that the issue became “such a third rail that candidates across the West generally stopped going there” — and pollsters largely quit posing such direct questions. “It’s incredibly consistent over the years and not even close,” he said of public opposition. “This is not like an issue that is on the margin for Montana voters. They are very clearly against transferring or selling off public lands.”
   

• Sheehy may simply be towing the party line — something he has gotten quite good at since launching his campaign in June. But he is likely to soon find out just how problematic his recent comments can be for someone seeking political office in Big Sky Country.

###