- Source: Tim Sheehy (American politician)
Timothy Patrick Sheehy (born November 18, 1985) is an American politician, businessman, aerial firefighter, and former Navy SEAL who is a United States Senator-elect for Montana. Sheehy founded Bridger Aerospace, an aerial firefighting and wildfire management company.
Sheehy ran in the 2024 United States Senate election in Montana as a Republican. He won the party's nomination on June 3, and defeated three-term Democratic incumbent Jon Tester in the general election.
Early life
Sheehy was born in Ramsey County, Minnesota, in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area, and grew up in a lake house in Shoreview about 10 miles (16 km) from where he was born. He attended St. Paul Academy, graduating in 2004.
Military career
After high school, Sheehy was appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 2008. He was a Navy SEAL. He later attended Army Ranger School.
Sheehy has said a bullet lodged in his arm during a 2012 Afghanistan firefight and that, suspecting it was from friendly fire, he did not report the incident at the time to protect his unit's members. In 2015, when seeking medical care in a Kalispell hospital, he said the injury was from an accidental discharge of a firearm in Glacier National Park that day. A park ranger cited Sheehy and fined him $525 for discharging his gun. Sheehy told The Washington Post that he "made up the story about the gun going off to protect himself and his former platoonmates from facing a potential military investigation into an old bullet wound that he said he got in Afghanistan in 2012." He has said that questioning whether he was shot in Afghanistan is "tantamount to falsely accusing him of stolen valor".
Sheehy left active duty in 2014 and was discharged from the military in 2019.
In 2015, Sheehy was awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, presented by Congressman Ryan Zinke.
Book
In 2023, Sheehy published a memoir, Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting. The Daily Montanan accused him of plagiarism in the book, giving four examples, the briefest a 27-word passage from Wikipedia. The memoir was not vetted by the U.S. Department of Defense Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR) as required.
Business career
In 2014, Sheehy founded the company Bridger Aerospace. Headquartered in Belgrade, Montana, it has provided aerial firefighting services in 24 states and two Canadian provinces. Upon founding the company, Sheehy was its only pilot, operating one plane and assisting ranchers with tracking cattle. In 2024, Sheehy resigned as Bridger's CEO to focus on his Senate campaign. The company was facing a dire financial situation: it had lost $77.4 million in 2023 and $20.1 million in the first four months of 2024.
In 2020, Sheehy co-founded the Little Belt Cattle Company with Greg Putnam, another former Navy SEAL, who runs the day-to-day operations of the nearly 20,000-acre working cattle ranch, which borders over 500,000 acres of national forest. The company manages its own supply chain of sustainably raised Montana beef.
United States Senate
= 2024 election
=In June 2023, Sheehy announced he would run as a Republican against three-term Democratic incumbent Jon Tester in the 2024 United States Senate election in Montana. He was among the wealthiest candidates running for Senate. Republicans targeted the Montana election to gain a majority in the Senate.
During the campaign, Sheehy said his top three priorities were immigration, education, and the crisis at the U.S. southern border. He said that young women had been "indoctrinated" on the issue of abortion. He called himself "strongly pro-life" and also "in strong support of IVF." He was critical of 2024 Montana Initiative 128, a ballot initiative to establish a right to abortion up to fetal viability in the Montana constitution.
In an August 2023 town hall, Sheehy called for a border wall and blamed China for facilitating fentanyl trafficking.
Sheehy has said, "We have a Department of Education, which I don't think we need anymore." He proposes eliminating the department, which he says will save $30 billion.
Sheehy has said "public lands belong in public hands" to protect rights to hunt, fish, and recreate, and that more local collaboration and input is needed since "Montanans know best how to manage our lands, not the Washington bureaucrats". He was on the board of the Bozeman-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), a nonprofit free market environmentalism think tank.
Recordings first reported by The Char-Koosta News in August 2024 of Sheehy at a 2023 closed-door fundraiser led to accusations that he had racially stereotyped Montana's Crow people. In one statement about how he ropes and brands cattle with Crow tribe members, he said it is "a great way to bond with all the Indians while they're drunk at 8 a.m." Sheehy said the tapes had been "chopped up". Tribal leaders requested an apology, but Sheehy declined.
Personal life
Sheehy was involved in a 2019 plane crash in which he was a student pilot and there was a flight instructor. The plane crashed into a house, killing the instructor and injuring a person in the house. Sheehy sustained minor injuries. After inspecting the plane and interviewing Sheehy, who said he was not piloting it, the National Transportation Safety Board determined the instructor's actions led to the crash.
Sheehy lives with his wife, Carmen, a former Marine Corps officer, and their four children, who are home-schooled, on a ranch outside Bozeman.
References
External links
"Tim Sheehy for U.S. Senate". Archived from the original on November 5, 2024. Retrieved November 20, 2024.
Appearances on C-SPAN