June 8, 2024

There aren't many farmers in the Senate. In fact, among the chamber's 100 members, there's just one working farmer on the ballot this year: Montana's Jon Tester.

Farming is as integral a part of Tester's identity as his signature flat-top. Even if you weren't aware that he still farms property his family has worked for more than 100 years, and even if you didn't know that he lugs suitcases stuffed with 40 pounds of meat he's butchered himself whenever he returns to Washington, you've almost certainly seen the vivid evidence of his agricultural roots: the three fingers missing from his left hand, lost in a meat-grinder accident when he was just nine.

But Tester's newly minted Republican opponent in this fall's race doesn't even seem to know that much. At a recent campaign event, former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy decided that the smartest way to go after Tester was to try to crap on his credentials as a farmer.

So remind people when they try to give you the dirt farmer narrative—he's a nice old guy, you know he's really just a good farmer—remind them, first of all, it's a weed patch in Big Sandy. He hasn't been there in a year, and he probably won't be back for a year. So forget about him being a farmer.

Get a load of that 1,800-acre weed patch:

That Tester is definitely not working:

If there’s anyone who might not want to start questioning his opponent’s resume, it’s probably Sheehy. He’s a successful businessman whose company is collapsing. He’s the owner of an aerial firefighting firm who once crashed a plane. He’s a product of rural America who actually grew up in suburbia. And a bullet wound in his arm he said he sustained in Afghanistan may actually have been the result of an injury in the parking lot of a national park back home—and may not have been from a gunshot at all.

Jon Tester’s injury to his arm? We know that one’s legit—as legit as his reputation as a farmer.

Republished with permission from Daily Kos.

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