KALISPELL — The senator was running late, but that didn’t seem to matter much to the group of veterans gathered in the basement of a law firm here on a hot summer Friday evening. They had catching up and commiserating to do, and while somebody joked about finding a case of beer, it turns out there was an actual keg to be tapped.
The roughly two dozen men and women gathered to mark the launch of Veterans for Tester, representing a sliver of the 150 initial members of a group aiming to solidify support from one of incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester’s core constituencies.
The event was partly to rally the troops for what will undoubtedly be one of the hardest-fought elections anywhere in the country this year, as Tester squares off against Republican Tim Sheehy, the Belgrade CEO of an aerial firefighting company who has centered his campaign around his military service as a Navy SEAL. When all is said and done, political watchers expect a quarter of a billion dollars could be spent trying to persuade voters in an election that’s predicted to be as close as a tick on a dog.
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When Tester arrived, he spent the requisite amount of time reminding his supporters of bills he’s passed to fix problems they faced getting the benefits they are entitled to following their service. But the other segment of the evening was for the senator to get his marching orders — and he heard no shortage of frustrations over the problems facing vets trying to navigate the convoluted U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Military veterans are seen at a Veterans Day event at Bigfork High School in November 2023. Voters in the state will decide next year if Sen. Jon Tester gets a fourth term as he’s expected to face strong Republican opposition.
Over his three terms in the U.S. Senate, Tester has made veterans issues his main focus and he’s now the chair of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. In past campaign cycles he’s both highlighted his successes and told vets he’s the one to elect to go back to D.C. to continue working on what people from both sides of the political aisle agree is a dysfunctional VA. But this election he faces an opponent who himself is a veteran, able to speak authentically to the issues he, his family and friends of his face in getting care. Both candidates are running copious advertising highlighting veterans, with Tester’s featuring vets, some of which were in the room Friday, and Sheehy’s ads full of images of him from his time in the service and in uniform, as well as those he served with.
