What They’re Saying: Tim Sheehy Running “Rocky,” “Scandal-Plagued” Campaign with “Many Inconsistencies” and “Several Damaging Reports”
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Friday, September 6, 2024
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rehm@mtdems.org
Tim Sheehy battered with a slew of damaging headlines and scandals
Helena, MT – New reporting from the Washington Post, Flathead Beacon, and HuffPost is highlighting Tim Sheehy’s “scandal-plagued” campaign for U.S. Senate.
In just the past week, Tim Sheehy has faced a slew of damaging headlines about his company’s shady practices, his offensive comments about Native Americans, and his lies about his military record – but those are just the latest in the many questions raised that Sheehy will have to answer over the next 60 days.
Read more about Sheehy’s “rocky,” “scandal-plagued” campaign here:
Washington Post: Who is Tim Sheehy?
By Leigh Ann Caldwell and Theodoric Meyer
September 5, 2024
Most recently, Sheehy was caught on tape making derogatory statements at private fundraisers last year about Native Americans, who make up about 6 percent of Montana’s population.
Sheehy recounted roping and branding cattle on the Crow Reservation, saying it was “a great way to bond with all the Indians out there, while they’re drunk at 8 a.m.,” according to a recording first reportedby the Char-Koosta News, the paper of the Flathead Indian Reservation, and then by the New York Times.
The caught-on-tape remarks are just the latest of several damaging reports about Sheehy over the past several months that raise questions about his biography.
The stories keep rolling out:
Sheehy said he has parachuted into Glacier National Park as part of his military training.
But the Daily Montanan reported last week that Glacier does not allow for parachuting, hang gliding or base jumping into the park and that the park does not make exceptions for military.
“There is no way to get permission,” a Glacier spokesperson told the local outlet. A Naval Special Warfare spokesperson told the outlet they have no record of such training in the park. Sheehy’s campaign did not respond to the Daily Montanan’s questions, according to the outlet.
Sheehy has said on the campaign trail and wrote in his book that a bullet lodged in his arm was from his time serving in Afghanistan. But our colleague Liz Goodwin reported in April that he told a U.S. National Park Service ranger during a 2015 family visit to Glacier that he accidentally shot himself, according to a police report filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Montana.
Sheehy told Liz he lied to the park ranger to protect his platoon mates from a potential investigation for the gunshot wound he said he got in 2012 in Afghanistan. He told her he didn’t know if the bullet was from friendly fire or the enemy and he never reported the alleged incident to his superiors. (Sheehy provides multiple accounts of how he received the gunshot wound in his 2023 book “Mudslingers.” The National Park incident is not one of them.)
Sheehy has not released medical records of his visit to the hospital after the Glacier incident.
Questions have also arisen about Sheehy’s company, Bridger Aerospace, an aerial firefighting company that he founded a decade ago and led until this summer.
On the campaign trail, Sheehy has talked about the success of the company he built out of his barn. But Bridger Aerospace is facing a cash crunch so dire that there is “substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue,” according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings our colleagues Beth Reinhard and Jonathan O’Connell reported on last month.
The company lost $77.4 million last year and $20.1 million in the first three months of 2024, Beth and Jonathan reported. Several directors have left, including one who flagged concerns about internal auditing as an unusually slow wildfire season in 2023 put the company at risk of defaulting on its debt.
Amid Bridger’s significant losses, Sheehy has received millions of dollars in compensation. He received a $2.3 million bonus on top of a $149,000 base salary in 2023, according to SEC filings, and a bonus of $4.4 million and a $450,000 base salary in 2022, as the company lost $42.1 million, our colleagues write.
Sheehy says on the campaign trail that he started his company with a small nest egg and a lot of grit and hard work, a “bootstrap” story. What he doesn’t say, according to the Daily Beast, is that his father and brother, a New York financier, loaned him $600,000.
NBC News reported last month that one Bridger unit classified itself as a socially and economically disadvantaged company, citing records with the Small Business Administration, a classification that helps to win government contracts. A Bridger spokesperson said that the four-year-long classification was due to an employee error and that the company unit did not receive any government contracts under the classification.
Flathead Beacon: Tribal Leaders Push for Apology Following Racially Charged Comments by Sheehy
By Denali Sagner
September 4, 2024
The comments by Sheehy have made national headlines, reflecting the latest development in the candidate’s rocky campaign to unseat longtime Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. The Washington Post in April reported that Sheehy lied to a ranger at Glacier National Park about the origin of a gunshot wound in his arm. The campaign has faced criticisms over the financial failures of Sheehy’s company, Bridger Aerospace; questions over Sheehy’s alleged “rural” upbringing; and the candidate’s perpetuation of debunked claims about abortion.
HuffPost: Montana GOP Senate Hopeful Peddles Racist Trope About ‘Drunk’ Native Americans
By Chris D’Angelo
September 4, 2024
The recordings are the latest in a campaign that has been plagued by scandal, from Sheehy admitting he lied to a national park ranger about how he received a gunshot wound to questions about the viabilityof what he has repeatedly described as his “successful” aerial firefighting company. As HuffPost recently reported, Sheehy has been doing damage control after previously advocating for federal public lands to be “turned over” to states — an effort that bizarrely included tapping a pro-transfer advocate for a TV ad in which he casts himself as a champion of public lands.
The Guardian: Trump-backed Senate candidate’s Navy Seal stories not cleared by Pentagon
September 6, 2024
Martin Pengelly
Sheehy [...] has attracted a stream of controversies, with subjects including his claims about his Minnesota childhood; his business affairs; his characterizations of his military career and wounds; rightwing thinktank links; misogynistic and racist social media posts; and derogatory remarks about Native Americans. Even his book has attracted controversy, over how its proceeds are divided.
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