Montana GOP Senate Hopeful Peddles Racist Trope About ‘Drunk’ Native Americans

In August 2023, shortly after launching his bid for the U.S. Senate, Tim Sheehy took to social media to post a picture of two horses, each with one of his campaign signs strapped to its saddle, at the annual Crow Fair.

“Proud to be at the Crow fair today!” the businessman and former Navy SEAL wrote of the annual event at the Crow Reservation in southeast Montana.

At a pair of private fundraising events a few months later, in November, Sheehy disparaged the Crow Tribe by peddling a longstanding racist trope about Native Americans and alcoholism, according to audio recordings of the events first obtained by Char-Koosta News, the official publication of the Flathead Indian Reservation, and reviewed by HuffPost.

In one recording, Sheehy, a multimillionaire businessman who has listed “cowboy” or “rancher” as his occupation in several past political contributions, talks about having helped rope and brand cattle on the Crow Reservation.

“My ranching partner and one of my really good friends, Turk Stovall, he’s a Crow Indian. We ranch together on the Crow [reservation],” Sheehy told a crowd in Shelby, Montana. “I rope and brand with them every year down there — great way to bond with all the Indians out there, while they’re drunk at 8 a.m.”

“Every heel shot you miss you get a Coors Light can upside the head,” Sheehy added.

Stovall, the ranching partner Sheey mentioned, is a fifth-generation Montana rancher, a board vice chairman of the Montana Stockgrowers Association and operates a ranch on the Crow Reservation. He is the son of the late Jay Omer Stovall, Jr., a former Montana legislator and “proud enrolled member of the Crow Tribe.” The senior Stovall’s obituary notes that he was “appointed by President George H. Bush to