Tester, Sheehy make closing arguments at Missoula debate

Montana's major party candidates for U.S. Senate exchanged parting shots Monday in a final debate before in-person voting begins Oct 8.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester characterized Republican Sheehy as a rich out-of-stater who would privatize health care while limiting abortion access.

Sheehy said he wasn't lucky enough to be born in Montana because he "couldn't control where my mother's womb was when I crawled out of it." He repeatedly portrayed Tester as someone who has been in the office "for decades," the largest recipient of campaign donations from lobbyists, and someone who votes in line with Democratic leadership.

The three-term senator's $502,591 in contributions this election from people registered as lobbyists with the Senate Office of Public Records, or lobbyist family members, was at June's end tops among incumbents, as reported by OpenSecrets.

Sheehy accused Tester of supporting "the most extreme abortion legislation in the world."

The televised debate, hosted by Montana PBS in a Missoula studio without an audience, was the second time the two candidates have appeared on stage together. The debate lasted about an hour. Libertarian Sid Daoud and Green candidate Robert Barb were not included in the event.

Absentee ballots in Montana will be mailed Oct. 11.

With Sheehy leading in the polls for the last two months, each candidate worked to define the other unfavorably on major issues, trying to appeal to a small group of split-ticket voters.

"I believe women should be able to make their own health care 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," Tester said when asked if there should be a national abortion law in the United States. "Women should be able to make their own health care decisions."

"My opponent, on the other hand, feels the exact opposite," Tester said, adding that he supports a state constitutional initiative on this ballot this fall to create a specific protection for abortion.

Sheehy said he would observe the law if Constitutional Initiative 128 passes, but defended "life legislation" supported by most Republicans.

"I'm not apologizing for wanting to protect the life of an unborn child. You know, my position on abortion has been common sense. I support the exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother," Sheehy said. "I support the right of a mother to make those [choices] in an incredibly challenging, you know, 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, that life also has the right to protection."

Tester accused Sheehy of being more opposed to abortion than the Republican was revealing.

"Tim Sheehy has called abortion 'terrible' and 'murder.' That doesn't sound to me like he's supporting a woman to make that decision," Tester said. "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 health care, 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."

Sheehy then accused Tester of voting not to shield born children from being aborted. Tester called his opponent's rhetoric "total bunk. It's a lie. It doesn't happen."

The candidates got argumentative again over whether Medicare for seniors should be privatized.

Sheehy said government involvement in health care has caused the price of coverage to increase. He accused Tester of advocating for a "single payer" system in which the government covers a patient's entire bill, which Tester said he hasn't supported.

"Medicare, Medicaid and those programs have an important spot, but the reality is, those are government pricing exchanges where you end up getting your health care through a private organization," Sheehy said. "And what's happened with, whether it's big pharma, a giant consolidated corporate health care conglomerate, especially during COVID, we see massive consolidation in the health care 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 health care they need."

Sheehy was responding to pro-Tester ads suggesting the Republican wants to end Medicare and Medicaid to the detriment of rural hospitals. Early in his campaign, Sheehy said "our hospitals have been built around federal subsidies. In my opinion, we need to return health care to pure privatization." He emphasized in ads this fall that he doesn't support eliminating Medicaid or Medicare, the primary means of federal subsidies to patients.

"Tim never talked about his 'pure privatization' comment. The reason is because he knows if he has it his way, not only will Medicare go away, but Indian Health Service would also go away. VA would go away. That's not practical. It's not logical, and it's not what Montana needs," Tester said. "Montana needs more health care, not less. He campaigned in this state with folks who were trying to close down VA clinics."

Sheehy said the people he campaigned with about health care were veterans, like him, who "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," he said.

Tester said the Indian Health Service is under-serving Indigenous Americans because it is underfunded. The Democrat is the current chairman of the Senate's Veterans Affairs Committee and Indian Affairs Committee. Tester said VA health care is getting better, but still has a long way to go.

"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, Sen. Tester knows that we are not meeting the needs and building more VA clinics isn't the answer," Sheehy said. "Building VA clinics we can't [staff] isn't the answer, and he's resistant to 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 health care, instead of having control by the VA. He's worked against that, because instead of caring for the veterans, it's about the federal employee duties at the VA. It's about time we put veterans first in our VA management policies."

Tester started to say that Sheehy's comment about community care was "total horse..." but the moderator cut him off before he could finish.

When the conversation pivoted to the U.S. border with Mexico, Sheehy characterized the incumbent as supporting the policies of President Joe Biden that resulted in a flood of illegal immigration into the United States.

"You guys have stood there and watched it happen for three and a half years. It's led to murders across the country. Fentanyl is spiking all over the place, possibly 12, 13 million people," Sheehy said. "Scary thing is, we don't even know how many come across, and no one's saying 'no' in principle, but the Democrats in charge of both the half of 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 have legalized millions of asylum-seeking illegal immigrants still coming in this country."

Tester said he never voted to repeal former President Donald Trump's executive orders on immigration. And he defended voting early this year for a bipartisan immigration bill that would have increased the number of border security workers, while also increasing the size of the workforce processing asylum seekers and fortifying vehicle inspections at ports of entry to the south and north of the United States.

"President Biden has not done a good job on the southern border," Tester said. "I pushed him on Title 42, which was a stay-in-Mexico policy. He removed it. I thought it was a bad decision. There are other decisions he made I thought were bad for the border," Tester said. "But the bottom line is this: Tim needs to do his 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 in this election.' 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."

Sheehy shot back that he isn't a member of Congress and couldn't be held responsible for the bill's failure, though he opposed it as Tester described, and did say it would have made matters worse.

The conversation pivoted to foreign policy and the candidates gave varying degrees of support to Israel in its expanding war against Palestine and Hezbollah.

Sheehy, a Navy combat veteran, said that Israel has been "one of our best friends in the world" and has to be able to protect itself. The United States needs to support Israel, Sheehy said.

Israel's response to an Oct 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed roughly 1,400 Israelis has left at least 42,000 people dead in Gaza. The war has expanded to neighboring Lebanon, a country of more than 6 million people.

Tester said he doesn't agree with everything Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done, but supports Israel's right to defend itself. He suggested that the United States is working with other countries to find a solution to the war.

Similarly, on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Tester said the United States needs to show leadership.

"I'm going to 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 them," Tester said.

Tester said, "There is not one bone in my body that says when Putin gets done with Ukraine, he's not going into Poland and going right through Europe."

Sheehy said it is time for Europe to assume leadership in the Ukraine conflict. "I hope Ukraine wins. I'm proud of the fact that early on we gave them support. But now it's time for European nations to stand up," he said. "They have strong economies. They should be handling security in their region, just like we see our allies in South Korea, Japan, helping handle security in their regions.

"I want to be very deliberate about what we're going to engage with and what we're not, because we can't fight all the wars in the world right now. We don't have the capability," Sheehy said.

More than once during the debate, Tester demanded that Sheehy apologize for a repeatedly shared anecdote referring to the members of the Crow Tribe as "drunk at 8 a.m." during a calf roping event in which Sheehy said he participated. Leaders from every Montana tribe have demanded an apology.

"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 matters," Tester said. "And if you treat them with disrespect, other people will disrespect them. So like I said to begin with, you're a big guy. Just apologize."

Sheehy acknowledged making the statement, which he had earlier suggested was edited into a mischaracterization. He did not apologize.

"I come from the military, as many of our tribal members do. You know we make insensitive jokes and probably off-color ones sometimes, and I'll take accountability for that," Sheehy said. "Let's not distract from the issues that our tribal communities are suffering from. The border bill that I wasn't even available to vote on didn't pass, and the border has been wide open on the Democrats' watch."