If you don’t live in Montana, you can be forgiven for thinking that “Shady Sheehy” is a mixed drink popular in the old-time Irish saloons of Butte.
But it’s not. “Shady Sheehy” is the disparaging nickname hung on his election opponent by U.S. Sen. Jon Tester. Long before Montana’s June primary, Tester and his super PAC surrogates had dominated the airwaves with ads targeting Montana businessman Tim Sheehy as the worst possible candidate – an out-of-state millionaire who was seemingly shady because he had too much money!
Those ads mostly complained about how Sheehy had glitzy mansions and a ranch where he charged other “out-of-staters” to come and hunt on his wildlife-rich property. If you didn’t know any better, you would think that Jon Tester was running as a far-left anti-capitalist liberal whose campaign was based on class envy. But no. Tester is a candidate who assures us he is a “moderate” “Blue Dog” Democrat who supports down-home Montana values.
As soon as I heard one of those nasty ads, I predicted that they would backfire on Tester. The Blue Dog was a dead dog. Hearing Tester proclaim, “I’m Jon Tester, and I approve this ad,” with all its lies and innuendo, was a slap in the face of every Montanan who believes in fair play and the American dream.
Fortunately, Sheehy also realized that Tester was insulting the common sense of Montanans, and he launched several ads that featured complaints from voters saying that Tester should be ashamed of his attempt to assassinate the character of his opponent and to distort Sheehy’s policy positions such as claiming that he wanted to sell off public lands.
In a recent appearance in small-town St. Regis in Western Montana, Sheehy went after Tester for the nonstop onslaught of negative ads, noting that many of........