Politico reports:

Vulnerable Democratic Sen. Jon Tester trails his GOP opponent by 8 points in a new independent poll of Montana’s Senate race — a result that could very well tip control of the Senate to Republicans.

Republican Tim Sheehy took 49 percent of the vote, compared to Tester’s 41 percent, on a four-way ballot, according to the late-August survey of 600 likely voters in the state commissioned by AARP. The Libertarian candidate received 4 percent of the vote, while the Green Party candidate took 1 percent. (In a head-to-head contest, Sheehy leads Tester by 6 points, 51 to 45 percent.)

Propelling Sheehy’s lead is the popularity of former President Donald Trump, who leads Vice President Kamala Harris in the state, 56 to 41 percent. Trump leads among independent voters by 9 points. Tester holds a narrow lead with independent voters in the Senate match up. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports:

A Republican candidate in a race that could decide control of the US Senate made disparaging comments about Native Americans at campaign fundraising events, according to recordings disclosed in local media.

Tim Sheehy, a wealthy cattle rancher who has been endorsed by Donald Trump in his bid to become senator for Montana, made the remarks repeatedly at a series of gatherings where he boasted of cultivating ties and bonding with members of the Crow Reservation, the official home of the Indigenous Crow tribe.

In one clip, Sheehy says he ropes and brands cattle with Crow members and calls it “a great way to bond with all the Indians while they’re drunk at 8am”. [Continue reading…]

In May, Politico reported:

Native Americans are always an important voting bloc in Montana, where they make up 6.5 percent of the population, per U.S. Census data. But this November, their involvement could potentially impact the entire nation.

Control of the Senate may hang on the outcome of the Montana Senate race, where Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is up for reelection in this reliably red state, likely facing off against Republican Tim Sheehy, whom former President Donald Trump has endorsed. Trump won Montana by nearly 17 percentage points in 2020, and Tester won by 3.5 percentage points — or nearly 18,000 votes — in 2018. Montana’s tribes comprise about five percent of the voting bloc, nearly twice the margin by which Tester won his last race. [Continue reading…]