The Democrat and Republican in the U.S. Senate race met on the debate stage in Missoula Monday.
It was the second and likely final match-up for Republican Tim Sheehy and Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, hosted by Montana PBS. Tester, a three-term Senator and farmer, and Sheehy, a former Navy Seal turned business owner, sparred over who best represents Montana.
One of the most direct clashes came when moderators asked how the government should address shorter life expectancy in Native American communities.
Tester called on Sheehy to apologize for racist comments he made about Crow tribal members in audio published by Char-Koosta News.
“You know, apologies matter. And how you treat people matter[s]. And if you treat them with disrespect. Other people will disrespect them,” Tester said.
Sheehy said his comments were insensitive.
“I come from the military, as many of our tribal members do. You know, we make insensitive jokes and probably off-color sometimes. And you know, I’m an adult, I’ll take accountability for that, but let’s not distract from the issues that tribal communities are suffering.”
Sheehy did not apologize or explain further. He said Tester is to blame for fentanyl coming into reservations.
Sheehy said Tester and the Biden Administration have failed to secure the southern border. Illegal border crossings peaked last December. He says illegal immigration is contributing to the problem.
“We need to secure the border. We need to empower our joint, interagency task forces to have a more aggressive approach to these drug cartels.”
According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, fentanyl is mostly smuggled into the country by U.S. citizens.
Tester said he agrees that the Biden Administration should do more. He pointed to bipartisan legislation he supported that would have tightened immigration laws, allowed for border closures and added 1,500 new border protection agents. He said the Republican Party killed the bill.
“You get a bipartisan effort moving forth and everybody’s on board and then all of a sudden the party bosses say, ‘nope, we can’t pass this. We need to use this as a political tool in this election.’"
Sheehy said Democrats politicized the issue by introducing the policy the same year as the election. He said the bill would have granted too many migrants asylum.
The candidates also argued over how to manage public lands. Tester criticized Sheehy for failing to disclose that he previously served on the board for PERC, a Bozeman think tank that advocates for “free market environmentalism.”
“Watch out what people say in back rooms, folks. Because what they say in back rooms when they don’t think the recorder’s going or the camera’s running is usually what they think. And Tim said we need to turn our lands over to either his rich buddies or county government. That’s not protecting public lands,” Tester said.
Sheehy said that’s false and that public lands should remain public. He said local landowners and officials should have more say in public land management than the federal government.
He returned Tester’s criticism, and lambasted the incumbent for being the top recipient of lobbyist cash in Congress.
“So if you want to talk about back room meetings – while I was fighting in Afghanistan, he was eating lobbyist steak in D.C.”
The candidates are also at odds over managing public health care programs.
Sheehy said government health care plays an important role for those in need. He opposes adopting a single payer health coverage system.
“The private sector is going to be able to do it better, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a government system that’s not going to be able to handle the case load, not be able to make the reimbursement payments needed to sustain those systems and we can’t shift to a single-payer system,” Sheehy said.
Tester said government health care programs need more funding. He said the U.S. can’t risk losing public health care options.
“That’s not practical, that’s not logical and it’s not what Montana needs. Montana needs more health care not less.”
Tester said government services aren’t perfect, but are improving.
Tester and Sheehy are not scheduled for another debate before the election on November 5.
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