Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy spoke to around 100 people in the St. Regis Senior Citizens Center last week.

The Bozeman resident shared why he is running for Congress, which he said was prompted by the chaotic and deadly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan that took place approximately three years to the day that he spoke in Mineral County. 13 U.S. service members died in the terrorist attack at the Kabul airport on Aug. 26, 2021.

Sheehy is a retired Navy SEAL, and his wife served in the Marines after graduation from the Naval Academy. 

Talking about the Middle East, Sheehy said, “To be clear, we won those wars, militarily. Both Iraq and Afghanistan. Then Joe Biden in both scenarios, 2011 in Iraq and 2021 in Afghanistan, decided for purely political purposes that he was going to wash that sacrifice down the drain leaving $86 billion in equipment, which the Taliban had a parade with it a couple of weeks ago. He abandoned 800-plus Americans and thousands and thousands of our allies. The sense of betrayal that those of us who served there was indescribable.”

Originally from Minnesota, Sheehy, 38, owns the aerial firefighting company Bridger Aerospace. He is visiting all 56 Montana counties during his campaign with his family accompanying him. 

“I’m actually a mail-order husband,” he laughed with the audience. 

Between deployments and Permanent Change of Stations, the courtship with his wife was long distance for many years being separated from each other. 

“Because we couldn’t physically get together and before we were Montanans, my wife found this old law in the books. There’s only one state in the nation where you can get married and be a double proxy and that’s here, Montana. It goes back to the frontier days and you don’t have to physically be in state to get married. Neither of you do. You notarize two forms, mail it to the Kalispell county courthouse and two people standing there that don’t even know each other get married.” 

They homeschool their four children, which his wife does full time because he said they both know that educating and raising their family is their most important job. 

“We want them to be educated in an environment of faith. It’s important to us. We say to them that they should have a relationship with their Lord. We also want them raised and educated to respect and love their country. I’ve been to 93 countries around the world. Fought in multiple wars. We are so lucky to be Americans. Our country is not perfect. We have a lot of problems but my wife and I would much rather be residents of this country than any other country in the world. There is no other county people risk their lives to come here for the opportunities we offer.” 

This is where Sheehy outlined where his opponent, Democrat Sen. Jon Tester, a farmer from Big Sandy.

“Jon Tester is the No. 1 recipient of out-of-state dark money in the whole country of all candidates," Sheehy claimed. "That’s why he has unlimited funds to carpet the airways with abject lies. The Tim Sheehy, or Shady Sheehy he refers to has a lot more money and land than I do and I might want to trade places with that guy,” he snickers. “And I believe that the public lands he  is saying that I want to open up, belongs to the public, which is you, the public. Not the bureaucrats in D.C."

"Not the environmental groups that want to pass ridiculous laws,” which was met with enthusiastic applause.  

He went on to talk about the drug crisis, especially fentanyl, acknowledging that Mineral County has I-90 working as a racetrack running through it. 

Prior to him taking the podium, he had a brief meeting outside the center with Mineral County Sheriff Ryan Funke and five of his uniformed deputies. 

This is the first time Sheehy has run for office. 

“I’ve not run for any political office before in my life. Not county commissioner or student council or anything else but I am now because our nation is at a crossroads,” he said.