Racicot, Brown expound on reasons endorsing Democrats

When prominent former Montana Republican elected officials Marc Racicot and Bob Brown and other members of Republicans for Tester recently endorsed Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont, in the 2024 election, they drew a scathing rejoinder from the campaign of his opponent.

"'Republicans for Tester' makes about as much sense as a jumbo shrimp - 'Two-Faced Tester' has made a career of serving at the pleasure of New York's Chuck Schumer to advance their 'Montana Last' agenda while pretending to be somebody he's not," Sheehy campaign spokesperson  Jackie O'Brien told Havre Weekly Chronicle. "The truth is, Jon Tester is far-left, loyal Democrat who votes for the Biden-Harris agenda 95% of the time, loves Kamala Harris, hates President Trump, and actively works against everything the America First movement believes in. A vote for Sheehy is a vote for President Trump's commonsense America First agenda; a vote for Tester is a vote for four more years of the failed Biden-Harris disaster."

Racicot, a former Republican Montana attorney general, lietenant governor and governor and chair of the Republican National Committee, and Brown, a long-serving Republican state senator and senate president, Montana secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate, said otherwise.

"I've known (Tester) for 30 years," Brown said. "He is the genuine article. There's nobody more fundamentally a Montanan than Jon Tester. You can talk directly to him, he understands what you're talking about. If it's a Montana problem, he can respond to me and the way that a Montanan can do, and that's important in our little state to have a senator That's really tuned into us, to completely understands us."

He went on to say he can't say he feels the same about Sheehy.

"I don't think Tim Sheehy even comes close to that," Brown said, adding that Sheehy grew up in the Minnesota suburbs and had a good stake to help him establish his business in Montana, which works primarily by government contracts.

"And yet he's gonna be the guy that's gonna bring the federal government into better fiscal responsilbilthy," Brown said. "I just find that a contradiction and I find most things about him a contradiction ... It's hard for me to understand why Montana people, accustomed as we are t othe genuineness of Jon Tester would consider trading him in to the guy that I don't think has any interest in representing the state of Montana."

Racicot, who also endorsed Havre Democratic state Rep. Paul Tuss, who is running in a rematch of the 2022 election in which he defeated the incumbent Rep. Ed Hill, R-Havre, said he endorsed both for similar reasons, although they are very different people.

"I know both of them very well," Racicot said. "I deeply admire both of them."

Racicot said he understands both Tuss and Tester are Democrats, and he doesn't always agree with them on issues, but but he has admired the character and courage of both.

"Jon has a lot of courage to exist in a way that's loyal to the state of Montana in Washington DC," Racicot said. "And, you know, he has his his loyalties he will not compromise, oone of them including veterans, because he thinks there's a code of conduct that should be observed.

"Paul is very bright," Racicot added. "He gets along exceptionally well with people, he's courageous."

Both also said part of their decision was the Republican Party backing Donald Trump in the last three elections.

Racicot, former chair of the Republican National Committee, said he tried to persuade party members in 2016 to come up with another choice.

"I just felt he was devoid of any character or capacity to lead the country," Racicot said.

He said he went through a personal recollection of his political values, and decided the most important value for him is that the goal of a candidate had to be a loyalty to the public good, that being the good of the state and the good of the nation.

"So, from that point on it became pretty easy," he said. "I mean, it was, I would confess, it was a difficult emotional journey. But at the end of the day, I believe that it was right.

"When Trump became candidate, I became someone who advocated for something different," he added. "... And ... it was difficult to separate yourself from from the people you hung out with for 30 years.

"... So I in 2020, I grappled with it and said, look I'm not voting for Donald Trump again, ever. And if that leaves me with the only choice, Joe Biden, who I disagree with, on a number of issues, but nonetheless, I didn't feel like he would undermine the best interest and the security of the country. He may be wrong on the issues. But he wasn't going to denigrate the Constitution, talk about, you know, terminating the Constitution, talk about dispatching the justice department to investigate everything from employees, state or federal employees, to people that, you have a contest with people you don't agree with politically. So That's how I end up where I am. And, I'm comfortable with it. I know that I have not been given the unanimous blessing of all concerns, but I, I can't do it any other way."

Brown went further in his comments.

He said in his decades as a Republican elected official, he chaired a state Republican convention, was elected by his peers as chair of the Senate Republican Caucus and the Joint Republican Caucus, and was elected Senate president.

"Let's just declare my independence in the Republican party," he told the Chronicle. "It's clearer and clearer that, overwhelmingly, the Republicans back Donald Trump. And ... I have never been able to see the connection between Donald Trump and a conservative. Let me put it a different way ... I don't belong in the same party with Donald Trump. And the Republicans overwhelmingly believe that they are supporting with Donald Trump. And I don't I don't belong in the same party with them."