- [Narrator] Montana PBS in conjunction with our media partners, Lee Enterprises, Montana Public Radio, and Yellowstone Public Radio presents "Debate Night, The Race for the US Senate".

(upbeat music) Production support was provided by the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.

Now from the Montana PBS studios in Missoula, John Twigs and Anna Rau.

- Good evening and welcome to tonight's Montana US Senate Debate, I'm Anna Rau.

- And I'm John Twigs.

We'd also like to welcome viewers joining us on our live stream through our YouTube and Facebook channels.

- We have the qualifying candidates in our You can read our inclusion criteria on our website at montanapbs.org.

The debate participants are three term incumbent US Senator Jon Tester, and the Republican primary winner, Tim Sheehy.

Thank you both for joining us tonight.

- [Tim] Pleasure to be here.

- We have a slightly different format tonight.

Each candidate will have an initial 90 seconds to answer the question.

Afterwards, there will be a follow up discussion period for that particular topic with a chance for rebuttals, follow up questions, and direct exchanges.

We'll finish the debate with a 90 second closing statement from each candidate.

- One other note, we're also partnering with the University of Montana School of Journalism.

They'll be fact checking tonight's debate, their work will be on our website shortly after the debate to provide additional context.

- So let's get started with tonight's first question.

We are going to begin with what's top of mind for Montanans and that's the economy.

Well, recent data does show some improvement there, but one aspect absolutely seems to remain out of reach for middle class Montanans and that's buying a home.

The market, that process just isn't working for most of our citizens.

So the question for the two of you to start tonight is what do you think is the root of the problem?

And should the federal government get more involved in the solution or will the market correct itself?

And based on the coin toss, we're gonna start with Mr. Sheehy.

- Well first of all, thank you for having us tonight.

Senator Tester, thank you for coming and thanks for your long years of service to the state and to the country.

Housing from coast to coast is a huge issue right now, especially for Montanans.

As we've seen a large influx of people, especially during the COVID years.

Housing is getting more and more outta reach for working class families.

And we hear a lot about the three I's, which is interest rates, inflation, and insurance.

And as we know in wildfire prone areas, insurance is becoming an increasingly hard thing to get for home coverage and that affects your mortgage.

'Cause oftentimes you can't get a mortgage if you can't insure the home.

But the fourth I we don't hear about much is immigration.

We've had 12 million people enter this country by some accounts in the last three to three and a half years.

That's a massive increase in demand in a very inelastic market.

to have a two to 3% increase in demand in a very short period of time, whether the low income or middle income folks, they need a roof over their head and they are stranding housing markets just as much as the other three Is are.

So securing the border does tie into housing, and of course, inflation and interest rates also tie into that.

Additionally, we have to find ways to have common sense insurance coverage as we're seeing the devastation in North Carolina and Georgia right now.

We've experienced similar devastation across the American West during wildfires.

That's important for Americans to be able to access affordable insurance for their homes and that plays into this as well.

I'd say finally, of course is the trades.

We need more people who are gonna work with their hands in this country.

We've gotta reward people who work with their hands.

And that means two year education, trade you can make a good honorable living and build financial security with a career in the trades.

- Thank you, Mr. Sheehy, Senator Tester.

- Well, John, I think home prices are way too high in Montana.

We've seen ordinary Montanans not be able to afford to get into a home.

And so it's caused by a number of things.

It's by people who have hundreds of millions of dollars coming to this state and buying home after home after home.

It's caused by hedge fund folks coming in, buying homes and kicking Montanans out.

But the bottom line is we gotta have solutions.

I've done some things.

I've got a bill right now as a matter of fact, that would offer a $15,000 tax credit to first time home buyers and they could use that tax credit for a down on the home, which would help them get into the home.

I've got another bill that would stop the hedge funds from buying up the homes and kicking Montanans out and jacking up the rents, which absolutely needs to be done.

And we'd be doing that through the tax code and then of course tax credits to be able to empower the private sector to be able to build more homes.

But in the end, as long as we got folks that wanna come to this state that have hundreds of million dollars in their bank account that wanna make Montana into a playground for the rich, we're gonna have a hard time having homes for working class people for those tradesmen that Tim talked about.

And for quite frankly businesses that wanna hire people to be able to afford to live here.

And so look, some of my solutions will help.

- Thank you, Senator Tester, let's dig a little deeper into this with some follow ups and rebuttals and we'll start back with Mr. Sheehy.

- Yeah, I think the federal government getting involved more in housing projects, as we see, if you want a problem to get worse, hand more of it to the federal government.

And I think having Congress come in and having the federal government try to or price fix housing or start turning the knobs on a market, usually that ends up making things worse.

And we've seen that in education where we started federally backed student loans that have driven the cost of education through the roof.

And folks are now realizing that taking on that amount of debt to get a college degree may not be the best path after all.

So building regulation has, has slowed a lot of building around this country.

And here in Montana, we've seen massive growth in only a handful of our communities across the state while other communities are suffering and they'd like to have economic growth.

So incentivizing folks to start businesses and grow their families in places that maybe are not Bozeman and Missoula.

Because as we know, those housing markets are running away from us so fast.

- [John] Thank you, Mr. Sheehy, Senator Tester?

- Well, I don't care if you're living in the biggest towns in Montana or the smallest ones.

Housing is a huge issue.

I'm not talking about regulation, I'm not talking about price fixing.

What I'm talking about is giving people a hand up.

Look, my grandparents moved here in 1910 because of policies that were put forth in the Lincoln Administration with the Homestead Act.

That allowed our family to be here for over 110 years and still going strong.

I'm asking for the federal government to do the same kind of thing for first time home buyers in our state, to be able to give them a hand up, to be able to afford that first home that they wouldn't normally be able to afford with the potential tax credit bill that I have.

But in the end, it's gonna take everybody working together to make this problem go away.

It's not gonna go by its own.

And if we can empower the private sector through tax credits, that's a good way of getting the problem solved.

- [John] Mr. Sheehy?

- Yeah, I mean, in continuing investment in our trades, we don't have enough electricians, we don't have enough carpenters, we don't have enough sheet metal workers.

And so many other important skills that are critical, not just to building homes, but also to have our manufacturing industry and re-industrialize America.

We've seen industrial jobs flee overseas.

We need to start bringing them back.

And whether it's our defense industrial establishment or whether it's food security, we need to bring skilled labor back here to America.

And that starts with educating them here in Montana as well as around the country.

That also starts with timber, I mean a lot of people don't always connect the dots, but we need timber to build homes.

And we used to have dozens of timber mills across the state of Montana.

Now, we're at about five or six of them.

And we're seeing that problem across the west where timber leases are being injuncted by extremist environmental lawsuits that are stopping common sense logging projects that aren't gonna clear cut these for us, but provide good paying jobs for some of these rural towns.

And also provide cheap, affordable timber for our communities.

As we saw during COVID, I mean timber was quadrupling in price sometimes making it unaffordable for people to even do DIY projects.

- [John] And final word, Mr. Tester.

- It's all circular and I can tell you it's been 10 years ago, and a lot has happened in the last 10 years.

And Montana's grown a lot in the last 10 years.

But even 10 years ago in a town like Havre, Montana, I was hearing from businesses that even when they could hire people, there was no place for 'em to live.

And so everything needs to work.

You're right, we need to have tradesmen.

That's why we need to support things like the Job Corps and our tech schools throughout the state of Montana.

And they do a great job and they do a great job of really moving where business needs them to move.

And we need to continue to support them at all levels of government.

But the bottom line is we've gotta have houses in the end.

And if we don't do things to incentivize more houses on the market and make sure that those houses are affordable for working families, for young families, then we'll never get it to a point where this problem is solved.

- Thank you both, we're going to move forward now and onto our next topic.

- All right, Montana has a ballot initiative this fall that would enshrine abortion rights in the state's constitution.

Nine other states have initiatives seeking to secure abortion access this fall, while one state has competing initiatives.

Across the nation, there's a patchwork of laws and limits.

Do you believe there should be a single national law on abortion in the United States?

Why or why not?

Senator Tester, you're.

- I believe women should be able to make their own healthcare decisions.

That's the bottom line.

It shouldn't be the federal government, it shouldn't be a bureaucrat, it shouldn't be a judge.

Women should be able to make their own healthcare decisions.

That's what Montanans like.

Se talk about Montanans and Republicans and Democrats, but the whole lot are Libertarian and they don't want the federal government or any government telling 'em how to live their lives.

And so I wanna see Roe reinstated and I think this initiative, this ballot initiative that's gonna be on the ballot will do exactly that.

It will enshrine it into the Constitution so that women can make their own healthcare decisions.

My opponent, on the other hand, feels exactly the opposite.

He feels he's more entitled to make that decision than the women are.

Look, these are complicated decisions.

And as I said before, a US Senator or a judge or a bureaucrat shouldn't be making these decisions.

The woman should be making their decisions.

In fact, Tim has went so far to say he doesn't even believe the ballot initiative should be on the ballot so that Montanans wouldn't be able to even vote on this.

Look, this is fundamental to democracy and this is fundamental to who we are as Montanans.

In my entire lifetime, I've never seen a freedom stripped away like the Supreme Court did with the Dobbs decision removing Roe.

We need to have Roe reinstated.

- Thank you Senator Tester, Mr. Sheehy.

- Well the ballot at issue will be, if it passes, will be the will of the people.

I'm a law and order candidate who believes in our Constitution, both of our state and our federal government.

And if the people in Montana vote for it and it passes, then it's the law of land.

But what the Democrats have been pushing is quite frankly, the most extreme abortion legislation in the world.

And I'll not apologize for wanting to protect the life of an onboard child.

My position on abortion has been common sense.

I support the exceptions, rape, incest, life of the mother.

I support the right of a mother to make those challenges.

An incredibly challenging, tumultuous time in their life.

Oftentimes without the support of their family, they're being forced to make these extremely challenging decisions.

And they ought to know they have the right to do that.

No question about that.

But at some point when there's a viable life, another viable life included, that life also has the right to protection.

And my wife and I have supported standing up the neo intensive care unit in Bozeman Health.

Part of the reason for that is all oftentimes, if you have a fetus that may have health complications, this gives the mother security to know that that child's gonna have the best possible chance at living.

And I'm proud of that, but at the end of the day, common sense life legislation is what I support.

That's what most of our party platform's supporting and this particular initiative should it pass, it's the law of land, so certainly I'll respect it.

But the reality is at some point, at some point, we have to protect the life of the child.

It could be the next Albert Einstein, the next Michael Jordan, the next Jon Tester for all we know.

That life also deserves to be protected and I'll do that.

- Thank you Mr. Sheehy, let's continue on with this topic 'cause we'll have follow ups and rebuttals and we'll go back to Senator Tester.

- Well, the bottom line is this, whose decision is it to be made?

Is it the federal government's decision?

The state government's decision?

Tim Sheehy's decision, Jon Tester's decision?

No, it's the woman's decision.

Tim Sheehy has called abortion terrible and murder.

That doesn't sound to me like he's supporting the woman to make that decision.

The fact of the matter is, is that this is fundamental to who we are as Montanans.

The most intimate decisions we have to make are decisions about our healthcare and this initiative needs to pass, which would reinstate Roe and quite frankly, reinstate the freedoms that women and families have had nearly my entire lifetime.

- [John] Mr. Sheehy?

- Again, common sense.

Absolutely that these young women are in a very challenging stage of their life.

They need to know we have their back.

But at some point, when you have a viable nother life included, I refuse to believe that as America, the greatest country in the world, the only path forward is to end that life.

The only path forward is to say that that child doesn't have the right to live and doesn't have the right to enjoy a life, to actually carry out its life.

We should protect that, we have an obligation to protect the most vulnerable people in our society as well.

So I support common sense legislation around the issue of abortion.

Again, three exceptions all the way through and early term abortions when they have to happen, absolutely.

But ultimately at some point we have a viable baby involved.

That child also has the right to protections.

And the Democrats have refused to even entertain a Born Alive Bill.

When a baby is born alive, they refuse to enshrine protection for that life.

Jon Tester has been part of that.

Abortion up to and including the moment of birth in the Women's Health Act of 2021 has been championed by Jon Tester and the Democrats.

That's also among the most extreme abortion legislation in the world.

And yes, I'm against that.

- [John] Thank you Mr. Sheehy, a follow up?

- [Anna] Well, yes.

- I'd like to follow up.

- [Anna] I was gonna say, I feel like.

- That Born Alive statement that Tim Sheehy just made this total bunk, it's a lie, it doesn't happen.

Those lies are already protected.

Tim, you know it, you're saying it to try to politicize this issue more than it already is.

The bottom line is this, if we want situations not to happen, like just happened in Georgia with a woman dying because doctors were afraid to treat her because she was afraid to go get help, then he's your man.

If you want somebody who's gonna make sure that women can make their own healthcare decisions, I'm your guy.

Because I think it's fundamental to who we are as Montanans.

We don't want the federal government dictating to us what medical decisions we can make.

- [John] Final word to Mr. Sheehy.

- I guess the exception to that is COVID when we were kicking people outta the military for not getting a shot, forcing them to repay their training cost to the military, kicking people out of the workforce 'cause they wouldn't get the shot.

Now all of a sudden medical liberty is the top of Libertarian Jon Tester's list.

The truth is, we do need to protect women in a very vulnerable place of life.

But at some point we also have an obligation to protect the other life involved.

And that's the life of a vulnerable, unborn child who also has the right to live.

And I'm proud to say I'll also protect that life.

- Thank you both, we're going to move on now to our next topic.

And it's one aspect of living here in Montana that all Montanans cherish.

And that's our access to public lands.

Almost 30% of Montana is federal land.

That's almost 27 million acres.

And there are competing theories about the best way to manage that land and who should do it.

So our question is, which group or groups do you think would be best suited for managing Montana's public lands while maintaining our access?

And we'll begin with Mr. Sheehy.

- Well, I'll start with public lands belong to the public.

That's you, the people of Montana.

Public lands belong to the people, especially those who live amongst them.

And I believe that if you're in Montana and you share a fence line with national forest property, if you're a rancher who has a BLM grazing lease, if you live next to state trust land, you should have more input into what happens on that land than bureaucrats 3000 miles away.

You should have more input at how that forest is managed, how those species are managed than environmental lawyers from Seattle or Europe or New York City.

And what's happened to our public lands in many cases has been devastating.

I see it every day in the wildfire crisis.

I put my life on the line to protect our public lands, to protect our farms and ranches.

It's a dangerous job.

We tragically saw a firefighting pilot be killed at the Horse Gulch fire this summer.

A lot of people go out on the line and put their lives on the line to protect our public lands.

But how they're managed has become a broken system.

We have bureaucrats making decisions oftentimes who've never been to those lands.

So public lands must always stay public.

Public lands should stay in public hands, no question about it.

But I believe in far more local input to make sure that those lands are managed in accordance with what's best for the local community.

And that takes into a lot of considerations.

But whether it's county input, state input, or local landlords, we need more local input into how those lands are managed.

Montanans see it and breathe it every summer with a wildfire crisis.

Instead of let it burn, we should manage it more effectively.

- Thank you Mr. Sheehy, Senator Tester.

- Public lands are one of the things that makes Montana the last best place.

Public lands make it so we don't have to be a millionaire to be able to go out and fish and hunt.

Public lands employ tens of thousands of people in this state and is worth over $6 billion a year to our economy.

The reason all this is true is because they're public lands and they need to stay in public hands.

Tim has made an incredible transformation on this issue because when he first started running, he said that public land should be turned over to either his rich buddies or the counties, remove protection.

Bad idea and it would change Montana in a way that is never make this state the last best place.

And in fact, Tim even served on a think tank on their board of directors, that job was to privatize our public lands.

Many of his donors are politicians that to privatize our public lands, either they don't understand the value of it or it's just wrong.

In Tim's case, his view of turning these lands over to counties or open 'em up for his rich friends to buy 'em is just the wrong direction to go for Montana.

And it would impact regular Montanans in a very negative way.

I've fought for public lands during my time in the US Senate, even going back to my time in the state legislature.

And I'll continue to fight for those public lands moving forward.

- Thank you, Senator Tester, let's follow up on this.

And back to Mr. Sheehy.

- Yeah, which donor are you talking about that wants to sell public lands?

- We can get you a list if you'd like, Tim, but I'm sure you know who they are.

- So the truth is, public lands belong to the public.

This summer, actually, I was risking my life flying a fire outside of Fresno protecting one of the oldest Sequoia groves in the nation.

Public lands belong to the public.

They don't belong to bureaucrats 3000 miles away.

They don't belong to environmental groups that are gonna tell us how to run 'em.

What Senator Tester just said was blatantly incorrect.

The organization he's talking about advocated for better private management of our public land services organizations.

Like you know at Yellowstone National Park, when you go down there and stay at a hotel or enjoy the amenities, you may know those are run by a private company.

So the policy paper he is talking about was actually taken and put into use by the National Park Service to enhance services on our national parks for the visitors.

No one, including myself and that organization has ever advocated for selling our public lands.

Never have and never will.

But I do, absolutely will every day advocate for more local control of those lands because I believe they belong to you, not the government.

- [John] Senator Tester?

- Tim, it's time to be honest with the people of Montana.

You are on a board of an organization that wants to privatize our public lands.

In fact, you even dulled out a badge on one of your ads of a shirt that you wore that was promoting that group.

When you found out that badge was on there, you said, "Hey, we can't be doing that because these guys, I served on our board and they wanna get rid of our public lands."

You also didn't even disclose to the public when you filed for this position that you belonged on that board.

Why?

It wasn't because they were a great organization doing great things for our public lands.

It was because they wanted to get rid of our public lands.

And you were a part of that organization and you didn't want anybody to know about it.

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.

And when you have people in federal government that believe that way, then those federal protections of keeping those lands in public hands gets removed.

- [John] Mr. Sheehy?

- Well Senator Tester knows all about backroom meetings.

He's been taking 'em for 20 years, the number one recipient of lobbyist cash.

(overlapping chatter) - The number one recipient of lobbyist cash in the whole country, of all candidates, number one.

So if you wanna talk about backroom meetings, while I was fighting in Afghanistan, he was eating lobbyist steak in DC.

The reason that organization has been criticized by Jon Tester simply 'cause I was affiliated with it, and this has been their plan his entire campaign.

If Tim Sheehy has affiliated with anything, attack it, tear it down, smear it, from our companies to non-profit organizations, even charities that we donate to that help people.

John Tester and his people have tried to tear it down.

Bottom line, public lands belong in public hands.

I fight to protect those public lands, literally fight.

I don't figuratively fight in lobbyist meetings.

I put my life on the line along with so many other brave, wild land firefighters who fight to protect our communities from the devastating effects of wildfire every summer.

I'm proud to do that, it's an honor to do it.

And I hope all our firefighters remain safe for the rest of this firefighting season.

- [John] Final word to Mr. Tester.

- Tim wants to bring it up lobbying.

Look, public lands have been debated here.

I've been a fighter for him, he wants to get rid of him.

Let's talk about lobbyists.

Tim Sheehy set up his own lobbying firm in Washington DC, why?

So he could try to influence elected officials, try to take 'em out and feed him those steaks he's talking about.

By the way, you won't find that happening with me, Tim, you just made it up.

So let's make it look good for the camera.

Bottom line is, I'm one of the most transparent Senators in the United States Senate.

I've got awards to prove that.

And the reason is, is because I tell people what I'm doing and I'm very transparent in the process.

- Thank you both, we're gonna stop right there and move on to our next topic.

- All right, Montana has a large senior population, population, excuse me.

Many of Montana's seniors utilize traditional Medicare administered by the federal government or Medicare Advantage plans, which are administered by private insurance companies.

There are pros and cons to either one of these options, but the Congressional budget office found the taxpayer costs for Medicare advantage plans have exploded, far surpassing the cost of traditional Medicare.

What do you believe is the best healthcare delivery system for our seniors?

And Senator Tester, you get the first response.

- The first thing we need to do is make sure that Medicare is there and solvent not only for this generation but for generations to come.

It's critically important.

So we need to look at things we can do to make sure that Medicare is solvent so that we can have a Medicare advantage plan, which I'll get to in a second.

What we need to do is things like negotiations for prescription drugs or capping the cost of insulin, by the way, which we've done this year or last year with the Inflation Reduction Act.

By the way, which I was the only one in the delegation to vote for.

And the reason was, it's the first time ever that Congress has taken on big pharma and said, "Hold it.

You can't have it your way all the time.

We're gonna let Medicare negotiate the and we're gonna cap insulin."

Why?

Because insulin hasn't changed in the last, whenever since it was built, tell you that.

I've got a good friend that's a diabetic and he told me when he was a diabetic in the late sixties, that insulin vial was pennies on the dollar for what it costs today.

There's no reason we can't have affordable insulin for everybody and it needs to be moved for everybody.

But in the end, we've gotta have Medicare to start out with.

Tim wants to purely privatize healthcare, not just privatize it, but purely privatize healthcare.

That means Medicare, which is a government program, would go away.

So there would not only not be any Medicare, there wouldn't be any Medicare advantage or anything else that would help seniors in times of difficulty.

- Thank you, Senator Tester, Mr. Sheehy.

- Well, healthcare, especially rural healthcare, is an absolutely critical issue for Montana.

And I've been proud to be one of the largest donors in our state to healthcare causes.

Helping stand up our trauma centers, our neo native intensive care units and pediatric care.

Rural communities, especially when they have two or three hours of drive to a major hospital, it can be a challenge to get access to care and we have to do everything we can to bridge that.

And the government plays a role in that, no question.

Medicare, Medicaid, and those programs have an important spot.

But the reality is those are government pricing exchanges that you end up getting your healthcare through a private organization.

And what's happened with, whether it's big pharma or a giant consolidated corporate healthcare especially during COVID, we've seen massive consolidation in the healthcare industry.

Costs have gone up, access has gone down, and it's getting harder and harder for all Americans, but especially rural Montanans to get access to the healthcare they need.

So as we saw that happen, we stepped in and helped with our own money to try to bridge that gap.

And what we can't do is hand our healthcare to the government.

The government has a role to play to ensure certain folks still get access to what they need.

But taking us to a single payer system like Jon Tester and the Democrats have continually advocated for, like Kamala Harris says she wants, single payer healthcare and government run healthcare for everybody.

One size fits all.

That's a pathway to a disastrous healthcare system that other people come here to get away from that.

So the truth is, the private sector still is the largest provider of the healthcare in our country.

Taking that and handing it to the government is not the right answer.

We've gotta continue to make sure Medicare and Medicaid are funded, but private healthcare is gonna be our answer to making sure we continue to provide those key services to rural Americans.

- Thank you Mr. Sheehy, let's follow up on this issue and we'll go back to Senator Tester.

- We're only allowed two people in the studio tonight.

One of 'em is my wife, God bless you, Charlotte of 47 years.

And the other one's a guy by the name of Henry.

Now Henry doesn't have a hundred million bucks, so he can't invest in healthcare around the state, by the way, which I applaud Tim, but not everybody's in your shoes, okay?

Henry's a veteran that had a hard time getting onto Medicare.

Our office helped him and now he has healthcare that he needs to be able to survive.

That's why we need to keep Medicare.

Tim never talked about his pure privatization comment.

And the reason is because he knows if he has it his way, not only will Medicare go away, Indian Health Service would go away, VA would go away.

That's not practical, it's not logical, and it's not what Montana needs.

Montana needs more healthcare, not less.

He actually campaigned in this state with folks who were trying to close down VA clinics.

The bottom line is this, the government plays an important role and they need to continue to play an important role, especially in Medicare, VA, and IHS.

- [John] Mr. Sheehy?

- Well he is referring to an organization called Concerned Veterans for America.

And all those people I was sitting with are also disabled veterans and wounded veterans like myself who come home and realize that the handoff from the military to the VA is a broken system.

The VA is an organization filled with a lot of great people who are unfortunately are failing within a sclerotic bureaucracy that is not meeting the needs of our veterans.

The IHS, the VA, two examples of totally government-run healthcare and guess what, we're seeing life expectancy go down.

We're the number one state for veteran suicide in the entire nation.

We're seeing veterans not get the care they need all over the country, but especially in So healthcare, I believe, is a moral obligation.

I've done that on the battlefield, carrying my friends through gunfire after they've been wounded, donating millions of dollars to help make our healthcare better.

But the private sector is gonna be able to do it better, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a government system that will not be able to handle the caseload, not be able to make the reimbursement payments needed to actually sustain those systems.

And we can't shift to a single payer system.

We cannot hand our healthcare to the government, that's a pathway to disaster.

- [John] Senator Tester?

- So in the end, what he's saying is, is that we need to shut down Medicare and the VA and IHS.

Look, IHS is in the situation it is for one reason.

It's underfunded, anybody that could tell you about Indian Health Service will tell you that.

It has its problem because it doesn't have the money.

VA, it's not perfect, but it's come a long ways over the time I've been in the United States Senate, take a look at the clinics that have been built around the state.

Take a look at the number of additional doctors we've got in the state and nurses.

Now, do we need to do more with mental health?

You're damn right, we need to do more for mental health for our veterans.

That's why we passed a bill called the John Scott Hannon bill, named after a veteran in Hannon, Montana that took his own life because of PTSD.

It offers alternate ways of mental health, yoga therapy, equine therapy, fishing on the river.

Some of this stuff is far, far better than laying on a couch, talking to a shrink.

So we're making advances, but to pull the government out of healthcare would totally destroy the healthcare system in this country.

- [John] Final word to Mr. Sheehy.

- Well, I'm tired of politicians use veterans as a political prop.

The truth is the VA's not doing very well.

I have plenty of friends combat wounded, one without any legs who's on his 119th surgery, I think.

And I don't know, I think 25 surgeries ago, he stopped dealing with the VA.

They took away his caregiver status for his family for a guy who lost half his body on the battlefield in Afghanistan.

Our veterans are not getting the care they need from the VA. That's been the case for a long time.

And as a member of the VA committee for many, many years, Senator Tester knows that.

We are not meeting the needs and building more VA clinics isn't the answer.

Building VA clinics we can't fill isn't the answer.

And he's resisted community care options in the VA.

When veterans groups have come in and tried to enhance community care to give veterans more control over their healthcare instead of having it controlled by the VA, he's worked against that because instead of caring for the veterans, it's about the federal employee unions at the VA.

It's about time we put veterans first in our VA management policies.

We gotta make sure they're getting the care they need when they come home from war.

And right now in Montana, we're failing.

- Gentlemen.

- We need to continue this conversation.

- We're gonna have to stop it there, I'm afraid.

- Because I'm telling you what he just said about community care was total horse.

- Noted.

We're gonna move on to our next topic.

- Okay, Montana, like the rest of the nation, has a growing fentanyl problem.

US customs and border protection officials say the vast majority of the drug is coming in at normal ports of entry carried by legal US citizens who are paid by the cartels as drug mules.

Given this, how do we keep fentanyl out of our country and out of our state?

First response on this question goes to Mr. Sheehy.

- Well, I think the flow of fentanyl across the border has something to do with legal immigration.

Also has a lot to do with illegal immigration.

The data we get from federal agencies, oftentimes we heard the Biden administration created 800,000 jobs.

We found out they didn't.

So also, when they're classified as asylum seekers, oftentimes they're called legal.

They're still coming across the border in droves in a fashion that would've formally been classified as illegal.

The fentanyl coming into this country is devastating our rural communities.

It's devastating our cities and our travel communities all across the nation, but especially here in Montana.

Illegal immigration and the drug trade is a core part of this.

We saw numbers just released recently that say upwards of 13,000 convicted homicide offenders from countries have come into our country crossing the border.

About half a million of of the last 10 or 11 million that have come in have been convicted of crimes in their home country.

So the mass migration that's happened in the last three and a half years that we've had the opportunity to stop many times is having devastating impacts on our communities, not just across Montana but across the state.

We need to secure the border.

We need to empower our joint inter-agency task forces to have a more aggressive approach to these drug cartels.

As well as, and I don't even like to call 'em cartels 'cause they're really multi-national, multi-billion dollar corporations.

They're massive organizations, very sophisticated with a lot of money and a lot of technology.

We need to up our game to oppose these organizations.

'cause right now they're running circles around us and they're killing 10, 20, 50, a hundred thousand Americans a year sometimes with terrible opioid, fentanyl related overdoses, it's time to put a stop to it.

- Thank you Mr. Sheehy, Senator Tester?

- Fentanyl's a huge problem in this country.

There's no doubt about it.

And government can play a role in stopping it.

Got a bill passed called the Fend off Fentanyl bill.

The precursor elements for fentanyl are coming from China and they're going into Mexico.

Mexico's making the fentanyl and shipping across the border and poisoning.

And it is poison, poisoning our people.

This puts serious trade restrictions, tariffs, everything we can on China to make 'em stop doing that.

They need to clean up their act and they're trying to destroy this country.

And it's not by accident.

The other thing is, is we need to secure the border.

We had a bill six, eight months ago, a bill that would have put 10,000 more troops on the southern border.

Some of those would also went to northern border, by the way, which we also need.

It would've put X-ray machines at their ports where these cars and trucks with the fentanyl coming through that you're talking about would, so we could stop the fentanyl right there before it got into this country.

It would tighten those asylum laws that Tim Sheehy was just talking about.

So you wouldn't have, you would just say three magic words and get across the border.

It would've made it so we could have shut down the border if they had become overwhelmed.

It was a good bill, it was a bipartisan bill, negotiated by a Conservative Republican, a Liberal Democrat, and an Independent.

The best legislation possible.

Tim Sheehy said he wouldn't vote for that bill even before it was out to be read.

We need solutions, not politics in Washington DC.

- Let's follow up on this and we'll go back to Mr. Sheehy.

- Well, Senate Democrats and White House Democrats created this border crisis.

We had a secure border four years ago.

Donald Trump handed a sealed border to the Biden Harris administration and Kamala Harris, the borders czar, with support from her friends on the hill like Senator Tester and Chuck Schumer opened the border wide open for three years, left it open.

She refused to even go there.

Democrats on the hill refused to hold the administration accountable for the largest mass migration in the history of this country.

We've never seen that many people come in in such a short period of time.

I'm a pro-immigration guy.

I've welcomed dozens of folks here to work for our companies and brought friends in this country, but coming the right way legal is the way to do it.

What we've seen happen the last three and a half years is a humanitarian disgrace.

It's a national security disgrace.

And the Democrats chose to let it happen.

You wanna talk about playing politics, watch what the Democrats have done with the border because they said nothing about it for three and a half years.

Kamala Harris wouldn't even go there.

Senator Tester couldn't be caught talking about the border.

And now six months for election day for the last few months, it's been top priority for Senator Tester and Kamala Harris to secure the border.

That's politics, folks.

- [John] Senator Tester.

- Well, look, I'll be the first to tell you that President Biden has not done a good job on the southern border.

I pushed him on Title 42, which was a stay in Mexico policy.

He removed it, I thought it was a bad decision.

And there are other decisions he made that I thought were bad for the border.

But the bottom line is this, Congress needs to do its job too.

And when you get a bipartisan effort moving forth and everybody's on board and then all of a sudden the party bosses say, "Nope, can't pass this.

We need to use this as a political tool And if you don't believe it's being used as a political tool, just turn on the TV.

We had a solution, it was there, it could still be passed.

Well, it won't be passed now 'til after the election, but it needs to be passed.

And it could have been passed six or eight months ago.

But the bottom line is Tim Sheehy, before it was even released to Reed, said, "Nope, not gonna support that."

Because his party bosses told him, "That's what you need to do."

That's not what Montana needs in Washington.

- [John] Mr. Sheehy.

- Well it's remarkable, according to Senator Tester, it's my fault a Senate bill didn't pass and I wasn't even a senator.

Apparently, I've also sold our public lands in the last week and closed our hospitals.

It's amazing how much influence I had for not being a senator.

- You're running for the office, Tim, your statements matter.

- Yeah, they do matter.

And the statement is secure the border.

You could have done it four years ago.

You were handed a secure border.

You guys have stood there and watched it happen for three and a half years.

It's led to murders across the country.

Fentanyl spiking all over the place.

Possibly 12, 13 million people.

The scary thing is we don't even know how many have come across and no one's saying no immigrants at all, but the Democrats in charge of both the Senate and the White House for the last three and a half years have manufactured this crisis.

They repealed all of Trump's executive orders and then they proposed a bill that would've legalized millions of asylum-seeking illegal immigrants still coming into this country.

The bill Senator Tester was talking about would've enshrined a massive level of continued illegal immigration.

They simply would've legalized it and called it legal.

It wouldn't have fixed the problem at all.

And that's why I opposed it because when it became apparent that it was gonna legalize millions of people still coming into the country a year under the faux asylum seeking regulations that they're abusing right now, I said no, absolutely and I'd say no again.

- [John] Final word.

- I did not vote once to repeal any executive order.

So that's flat wrong.

That was done by the White House and I didn't approve it when they did it.

Number two, you must have read the bill sometime because you didn't read it when you said you were gonna vote against it because it wasn't even out for me to read, much less you to read.

So now it's time to talk about what's in this bill.

And I'm gonna tell you it ain't about 10,000 people coming over or anybody getting amnesty 'cause I don't vote for amnesty.

What it would've done, it would have sealed the border, which is what this country needed.

Well, should it have been done three, four years ago?

Sure.

Should it have been done 10 years ago?

Sure.

But the bottom line is it could have been done.

The bill was on the floor, it was there for the taking and because the party bosses said to Tim Sheehy, "This isn't what we're gonna do."

And him and a lot of other Republicans in the Senate did too.

In fact, all but I think one or maybe three actually said, "Nope, we're not gonna vote for it."

That's what people hate about Washington DC.

That's not what people in Montana expect from their representatives.

- Gentlemen, we'll stop there on that issue.

We're gonna move on to our next topic and we're gonna talk some foreign policy.

And these are tense times around the globe.

And Montanans are concerned about our level of involvement, the spreading war in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine.

Congress has passed five bills total more than $175 billion to the Ukraine conflict alone.

And there will be more requests and unfortunately there will be more wars.

The question to both of you is where do you stand on the US level of involvement in these foreign conflicts?

And we'll start with Senator Tester.

- Yeah, thanks for the question, John.

I'm gonna tell you that United States of America has been the economic leader and the military leader my entire lifetime of the world.

And we need to maintain that position.

And part of that is making sure that our allies can count on us.

So that when they need help, we can be there to help 'em.

Part of that is, is to help promote democracy around the world.

So the bottom line is this, can we fight every war that's out there?

No, that would be silly.

But you need to make sure that when people like Putin are trying to take over a country for other than that they can, that they need to be stopped.

Especially when those people are fighting for democracy and fighting with their lives.

And so you're right John, we put a lot of money into Ukraine, but there is not one bone in my body that says when Putin gets done with Ukraine, he's not going into Poland and go right through Europe.

And that would be incredibly a disaster for the United States and for Europe and for the world.

In Israel's case, Israel's been one of our best friends in the world.

They've gotta be able to allow it to protect themselves.

They were attacked on October 7th, coming right up for no reason whatsoever.

And so they're responding.

Do I agree with everything that Bibi Netanyahu has done?

Absolutely not.

But the truth is, is Israel has to be able to protect themselves while the United States looks and helps the world look for a political solution for both of those conflicts.

- Thank you, Senator Tester, Mr. Sheehy.

- Well, America has a tremendous global security role that we've seen play out.

My wife and I both served overseas.

She as a Marine Corps officer, me as a Navy Seal team leader, I've been in about ninety three countries around the world, carried a gun in a lot of them.

I'm proud of America's role in the world.

But I also saw firsthand two wars I fought in.

I watched us walk away from 'em.

I watched us abandon the sacrifice of thousands of young Americans on the battlefield there without even so much as a blink in an eye.

Biden and Harris walked away from Afghanistan, dishonoring the sacrifice of thousands of Americans, 20 years of war, trillions of dollars of treasure, handed it back to the Taliban and walked away.

And to this day, no one's been held accountable.

That set off a domino chain of weakness that has led us to the path of chaos we are on today.

From Israel to Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific where we're seeing China make moves that were unthinkable just 20 years ago.

America has an important global role of leadership to maintain.

We also have an obligation to our people to not commit them to endless wars.

Having been a veteran of two of them, that we don't intend to win and that we don't have the resources to fight.

We can't build ships anymore, we can't build planes anymore.

Defense industrial complex is withering.

Russia can make artillery shells and bullets faster than we can.

So we have a role to play, I support Israel a thousand percent.

I hope Ukraine wins.

I'm proud of the fact that early on, we gave them the support, but now it's time for European nations to stand up.

They have strong economies, they should be handling security in their region.

Just like we see our allies in South Korea and Japan helping to handle security in their regions.

But we have massive global security responsibilities.

We're entering a very precarious period for foreign policy.

We need to be very deliberate about what we're gonna engage with and what we're not 'cause we can't fight all the wars in the world right now.

We don't have the capability.

- Thank you Mr. Sheehy, we'll follow up on this right now and go back to Senator Tester.

- Defense responsibilities are absolutely part of what we need to have and what we have had, my entire lifetime.

What we've seen China do over the last 20 years plus, trying to take over our position as the world's economic and military leader is incredibly threatening for us as a nation.

Whether that's on the water, the Army, Air Force, satellites, all the above.

They've been trying to be just like us.

And so we need to make sure that our alliances with other people throughout this country, throughout this world are top notch if we're gonna be able to push back on them.

It's apparent that North Korea and China and Iran and Russia have a pact going on and every one of these conflicts are connected, whether it's Ukraine, whether it's Israel, whether it's what's going on in the Indo-Pacific.

And so we need to make sure we're supporting our allies and that our allies are supporting us and pushing for freedom around the world, which is what we've always done.

- [John] Mr. Sheehy.

- Well these global responsibilities weigh heavy on our country, but first comes America and first comes our people.

And people are sick and tired of seeing us spend hundreds of billions of dollars, trillions of dollars securing other countries.

We have 20,000 troops in Germany.

We have 20,000 on the 38th parallel Korea.

Our Navy secures the entire global navigation security, the whole world, freedom of navigation of the seas rests upon the shoulders of the American Navy.

That Navy is under strain right now.

We're seeing recruiting goals not being met by almost any of our services.

Our ships are not meeting budget or schedule.

Our submarines are not.

Our aircraft are at too low readiness levels.

The military has been ignored for too long.

And when we talk about Russia, Obama, and Biden and Harris, they stood by and rubber stamped Putin invading Chechnya Crimea, Syria, using chemical weapons.

Red line, red line, and the biggest thing that Democrats did was send a red button over to Putin's house and press it with Hillary Clinton there.

Russia's been on the march for years.

We've let that weakness go too far.

After Afghanistan's collapsed, the world knew that America was no longer gonna protect its interests and they've been taken advantage of us ever since.

It's about time to put America first again and stand strong for our priorities on the world stage.

- [John] Senator Tester.

- I served as Chairman of the Defense Appropriations bill.

And the last two defense bills have been the largest defense bills ever passed by Congress.

The reason that's important is because we're able to invest in things like our industrial base to be able to build the things that we need to build to be successful, to protect ourselves and also help our friends around the world.

We're gonna see a project coming into the North Central Montana, the Sentinel Project, to rebuild our ICBMs.

That's a big deterrent that needs to be done.

That's why we fund it.

That's because it's to protect the United States and help our allies.

Those kind of things are being done over and over again around the country.

And the bottom line is, is we need to make sure we have the strongest military in the world and that China does not overtake us.

And that's why I've been pushing hard to make sure these investments are made.

- [John] Final word to Mr. Sheehy.

- Defense acquisition and defense funding is absolutely important.

But the most important thing as the Marine Corps says, every marine is a rifleman first.

We must be investing in combat lethality for our troops.

Their number one priority needs to be their ability to close with and kill the enemy.

And now we've seen, whether it's DEI initiatives or ESG initiatives or kicking navy seals and marines out of the military for not getting a COVID vaccine.

We've seen priorities change for our military in recent years and that's unfortunate because the people who pay the cost for that will be 17, 18, 19-year-old kids who deploy overseas.

We saw that in Kabul, when disastrous foreign policy decisions made by the Biden Harris administration cost 13 brave young servicemen their lives.

I was on my cell phone with interpreters and American citizens desperately trying to evacuate them out of Afghanistan before the Taliban will hunt them down and kill 'em.

This administration has exhibited more weakness on the world stage than any American administration in the generation.

And now we're paying for those with global conflicts from Israel being attacked by Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran directly, the Houthi rebels shutting down trade through the Red Sea, and of course Putin invading Ukraine and China on the march.

It's about time we reorient our military.

We stand strong and protect our interests on the world stage.

- Thank you both, we're going to move forward now to our next topic.

- All right.

Native Americans die much sooner than their white counterparts here in Montana.

In fact, across the nation, Native Americans have the shortest life expectancy of any minority group.

None of this is new, yet there never seems to be sustained federal commitment to improving these statistics.

Should the federal government be doing more to turn the tide on this issue?

And the first response to this question goes to Mr. Sheehy.

- Well, I've heard from all over the state.

The IHS is in challenging times, and I remind Montanans 'cause many folks don't remember this, but our native brothers and sisters serve at five times the regular rate of any other ethnic group in America.

American Indians join up with the Warrior Spirit and they fight more than any other ethnic group by a factor of five in this country.

Been proud to serve alongside many of them in both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Shared foxholes with 'em, shared spoons with 'em, spent a lot of time alongside them in the field of battle.

And when they come home, a lot of times, the only way they're able to get healthcare is through the VA. And although it's not perfect, that's their chosen path of healthcare because the IHS isn't meeting their needs.

So it's absolutely critical that we start rebuilding so much of the infrastructure that's key to our tribal communities.

They've been left out far too long of a lot of pieces of legislation that are not investing in basic public safety.

One of the issues that we all know, unfortunately, all too well is missing, murdered indigenous women and there's not enough law enforcement out at reservations to provide a basic level of public safety.

By one account, a tribal council member was talking to me on the Crow Res where they had sometimes as low as four or five full-time police officers covering an area, almost twice the size of Connecticut.

And it can be critically difficult for them to provide basic public safety and public services to folks, whether it's a traffic accident, domestic violence, or a drug overdose when they don't have enough people there to provide a basic level of public safety.

So healthcare is critical, but also public safety infrastructure that allows us to respond to those incidents is also critical.

- Thank you, Mr. Sheehy.

Senator Tester.

- Look, our Native Americans or first Americans are a big, big part of this country and certainly a big part of the state of Montana.

And we have trust responsibilities to those Native American people that are certain to them.

And we need to make sure we're living up to those trust responsibilities.

It's critically important.

When I first got elected, I sit down with a bunch of large land-based Indian tribes from throughout the west, including the seven tribes here in Montana.

And I asked 'em what their challenges were.

By the time they went through healthcare, law enforcement, water, housing, schools, I finally just said stop, because the list was too long.

I said, "We're gonna have to prioritize."

And their top priority at that time was healthcare.

Diabetes is killing them far too regularly.

Poverty runs rampant in Indian countries to a big extent.

And just like the housing situation we all this stuff is circular.

If you're gonna have good healthcare, you gotta have good schools, you gotta have good housing, you gotta have a safe community, you gotta have good water.

And so that's why I've worked to make sure we get water settlements done and make sure that VA and IHS has a partnership so that Native Americans have a choice, but in the end, it's funding.

And you can take a look at the amount of money that's spent in Indian country for healthcare, and it is impotence compared to what's spent in the private sector.

And you get what you pay for and we need to step up.

We need to let the Native Americans drive the bus here, but we need to make sure we're funding it in a way that makes sense for healthcare for Indian country.

- Let's follow up on this topic.

We'll go back to Mr. Sheehy.

- Well, I agree with Senator Tester.

I guess we found something we agree on, but it's critical We invest in our reservation communities.

One of the big issues I hear from them continuously, as we discussed earlier, was fentanyl.

The drug cartels have been taken advantage of our reservations.

They've taken advantage of the fact that there's limited public safety resources there and they have a free hand to do oftentimes whatever they want.

And it's deeply frustrating to many of our tribal elders and leaders on the reservations who don't have the ability, the funding to create that public safety net that's so critical.

And when it comes to the IHS, there's a long history there of almost a century now of a lot of challenges.

But a lot of it does come down to funding and access.

These reservations are by definition very remote areas and oftentimes they don't have the ability to access, especially our veteran travel members, to get easy access to the VA.

So for our veteran travel members, we have to ensure we can get them the VA care they need.

And for our non-veteran travel members, making sure the IHS is properly funded and resourced so they can get the healthcare they desperately need.

- [John] Senator Tester.

- Tim, if we'd have passed that bill that was up six to eight months ago, it would've made a huge difference in fentanyl across the United States, including Indian country.

We also need to plus up the FBI budget, something that quite frankly, your party has been trying to take money away from.

We need more FBI agents in this state, why?

Because it will help fight crime in Indian country.

The bottom line is this, though, Tim, if you really feel this way about Native Americans, you ought to apologize for the statements you made about them that were totally inaccurate.

But yet you won't and you're gonna say they were cut up or taken outta form.

Look, that's on tape once again.

And you didn't think anybody was listening, but believe people when they say stuff in the back room.

- [John] Mr. Sheehy, - Well, the back room was a gathering with about, I dunno, five dozen people there.

But the reality is, yeah, insensitive.

I come from the military, as many are tribal members do, we make insensitive jokes and probably off-color sometimes and I'm an adult, I'll take accountability for that.

But let's not distract from the issues that our tribal communities are suffering.

The border bill that I wasn't even available to vote on didn't pass.

And the border's been wide open on the Democrats watch.

Controlling the White House and the Senate, they've had an opportunity to close that border.

They have not closed the border.

They'll point to a bill that maybe would've done something that didn't pass and have yet another messaging opportunity to distract from the issue that they selectively and intentionally opened the border, stood by, and let it stay wide open for years.

And then when we actually try to close it and talk about closing it, they call it politics.

What I call politics is creating a massive issue that was already secure, creating the problem and then trying to scramble to have a solution right before election day to claim that you fixed the problem that you started.

The truth is, the Democrats opened the border, they kept it open for years, they have not been able to close it.

And this fall, when we win November 5th, we're gonna close the border day one.

- [John] Final word to Senator Tester.

- The reason we weren't able to close the border six to eight months ago is because the party bosses told Tim Sheehy and other folks several, which he's had in the state, by the way, of my colleagues to vote no on the bill.

And they did, in Tim's case, before he even read it.

He said no, but let's talk about our Native Americans here for a second, Tim.

The statement you made degrades Native Americans across this country.

And you can say, "Look, I'll take responsibility," but you know, apologies matter and how you treat people matter.

And if you treat 'em with disrespect, other people will disrespect them.

So, like I said to begin with, you're a big guy, just apologize.

- You apologize for opening the border?

- I didn't open the border.

I've been trying to get the border fixed from the get-go.

And in fact, when we had an opportunity to fix the border, you were the one that said, "Hey, we wanna play politics with this."

And if you don't believe me, turn the TV on, and see what you see.

- Yeah, blame me for a Senate bill, I wasn't even a Senator to vote on.

- No.

- It's pretty remarkable.

- But you're running for the Senate, Tim, and you came out and you said, well, (overlapping chatter) - And I voted for bill, I voted to close that border down.

- It took you three years to do it.

Three years of a wide open border.

- That's because that's the first time I had that bill to vote on.

- Gentlemen, we're gonna stop right there.

This hour has flown by, but we do have time now for closing statements from each of our candidates, a chance for them to summarize things and based on our coin toss, we we'll begin with Senator Tester.

- First of all, I wanna thank PBS and John and Anne, thank you for operating a very good debate.

I appreciate it.

We need to do more of these, unfortunately, I think this is the last one.

Nonetheless, the voters out there that are watching this show, and hopefully you'll talk to your fellow friends.

The decision here is stark.

You got an opportunity to vote for a guy who's come to this state a few years back, bought himself a 37,000 acre ranch, which we didn't even get into, locked everybody off it, and now is charging 12,500 bucks to go hunting on.

A guy that wants to purely privatize healthcare, which would destroy the healthcare system in this state.

A guy who's set on a board of an organization and advocated himself to take the protections away from our public lands, which is the only reason I believe Montana is truly the last best place.

And also a guy who wants to take away a woman's right to choose that thinks he's in a better position to make that decision than the woman is, which would end up in not only taking freedoms away from Montanans in a way that's never been taken before, but it would eliminate doctors from coming to this state, would eliminate our recruitment of medical professionals from coming to this state.

Or you got somebody like me, somebody who's been raised within 100 miles from where I was born, who will support public lands, support our healthcare system, support a woman's right to choose.

November's coming, I'd appreciate your vote.

- Thank you, Senator Tester.

And a final closing thought from Mr. Sheehy.

- Well, thank you PBS and thank you again, Senator Tester for coming and for your decades of service to the nation, to the state.

America's at a crossroads.

We're facing unprecedented challenges across the board, from record inflation to a wide open border to global security challenges that are threatening our very way of life.

It's time for a new generation of leadership.

It's time to actually solve these problems and stop talking about 'em.

I'm not gonna go through the list of inaccurate things the Senator just said.

I'll let the fact checkers speak for themselves.

Truth is, I wasn't lucky enough to be born in Montana.

I sure would've loved to have been, couldn't control where my mother's room was when I crawled out of it.

I couldn't control when the military sent me for a decade.

But I'm proud to say that when my wife and I left the service and we put down roots here, we started a company, created hundreds of jobs, and have tried to invest in the betterment of our community.

And I'm running for this office, not because I personally desire to be a politician.

I'd much rather be at home with my four kids or water bombing fires.

But the truth is, I'm concerned about where our country's heading.

And I think it's time for a new generation that needs to step up and try to start fixing some of these problems and stop talking about 'em.

We have some very serious issues to deal with and we need serious people to deal with 'em.

Senator Tester's been in office many years.

I thank him for his service.

He also voted to impeach Donald Trump twice.

Said on CNN, we should punch him in the face.

He voted with Biden and Harris every single time it mattered, voted against all Supreme Court Judge nominees that came from the Trump administration and has advocated to end the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court.

The very structure of our constitutional republic is at stake this November.

Control of the US Senate is at stake on November 5th.

Montanans have a tremendous responsibility on the shoulders to preserve our republic and take America back.

I humbly ask for your vote.

I've spent my life serving this country and I hope to do so for another six years, thank you.

- Thank you, Mr. Sheehy, I wanna thank both the candidates and your campaign staffs for making tonight possible.

- Yes and just a reminder, the University of Montana School of Journalism students are fact checking tonight's debate, and that will be available sometime on the web soon.

- From all of us here at Montana PBS, thank you for joining us and goodnight.

- Goodnight.

(triumphant music) - [Narrator] Montana PBS, in conjunction with our media partners, Lee Enterprises, Montana Public Radio, and Yellowstone Public Radio presents "Debate Night, The race for the US Senate".

(triumphant music) Production support was provided by the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.

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