On the surface, Montana Senate candidate Tim Sheehy appears like most other far-right politicians–dedicated to pro-life, pro-gun and pro-American values. But Sheehy has distanced himself from certain details about his background. For example, few outside his high school classmates and former teachers know that he graduated from SPA in 2004.

Sheehy is running as a Republican to replace incumbent Democrat Jon Tester, who has been in office since 2006. The race is an important one–if Sheehy wins, it could flip the Senate to be under Republican control. Sheehy has led in the polls for weeks; a New York Times/Siena College poll on Monday noted an eight-point margin in his favor.

Mike Brunnquell graduated the same year as Sheehy and described their relationship as friendly but not close. “He always struck me as a good guy, an upstanding student, and I remember having some political discussions with him back in the day,” he said. “We were even at that time probably on pretty different sides of the political spectrum, but he always struck me as a thoughtful guy.”

After graduating, Sheehy attended the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a Navy SEAL. His choice of college was not a surprise to many people who knew him; Brunnquell remembered Sheehy’s interest in the military and Sheehy wrote his senior speech about his childhood love for digging trenches and constructing a fort in his backyard.

His military service, self-proclaimed rural upbringing and affinity for traditional values have spurred his popularity, though he has never held public office before and only moved to Montana in 2014. The main obstacle in his path to victory is not a lack of political experience or Montana roots, but rather his tendency to bend the truth.

First of all, while Sheehy has previously said he grew up in “rural Minnesota,” and described the area as “surrounded by farmland,” Sheehy grew up in Shoreview, Minnesota–a Saint Paul suburb with a population of 26,000 people.

Aside from those comments, Googling “Tim Sheehy” will provide few results about his connection with Minnesota and even fewer about SPA; most mainstream coverage of his campaign has focused on a gunshot wound in his arm that occurred under unclear circumstances. Sheehy claims that he was shot during his service in Afghanistan, but three years later, he told a Park Ranger that he had shot himself in the arm by accident. A former Navy SEAL who served alongside Sheehy, as well as the Park Ranger who Sheehy talked to in 2015, both allege that Sheehy fabricated the story of his combat injury. The uncertainty around the incident has made headlines and thrown a wrench in one of his main campaign promises–protecting and providing work opportunities for veterans.

Sheehy was also quoted in the New York Times as telling a group of voters in October, “I’ve never been involved in politics. It’s my first time running for anything. I’ve never run for student council.” That comment prompted laughs from a few of his former teachers. On the contrary, as a junior and senior at SPA, Sheehy was the president of the Discipline Committee–which would later become C3 and now Honor Council–which required him to win a school wide election, twice. Several teachers pointed out the rarity for a junior to serve as president of the committee; one of his former teachers recalled Sheehy’s incredible dedication to upholding the school’s values and holding his peers accountable.

Outside of the Discipline Committee, Sheehy’s teachers remember him as a kind, considerate, and fair student. It was known that he held conservative beliefs, which was out of the ordinary at SPA, but he was respectful and generally well-liked–evident from his two successful elections. He attended a school trip to Cuba. He was a swimmer. He was voted “World Traveler” in the yearbook’s senior poll. He was, by all accounts, a pretty regular kid.

Somewhere in between his time at SPA and now, Sheehy’s politics grew more extreme. His website names the economy, border security, gun rights, education, and public lands as key issues of his campaign, but the brief descriptions do little to illuminate his plans if elected. Although he did not respond to a request for an interview, we can infer his beliefs from some of his recent comments.

In an interview on Nov. 3, 2023 about the Israel-Hamas war, Sheehy told Fox News that the widespread student protests on college campuses were due to “the indoctrination of America’s youth.” Sheehy also received backlash for comments that he made about the Crow Reservation in Nov. 2023 at a campaign fundraiser, in which he mentioned going to the annual rodeo as a “great way to bond with all the Indians while they’re drunk at 8 A.M.” Furthermore, Sheehy’s office published a statement in the Montana Free Press on Friday that explained his vision for Montana: “Secure border, safe streets, cheap gas, cops are good and criminals are bad, boys are boys and girls are girls.”

Sheehy’s race will have implications for Montana, the nation and the SPA community. His candidacy raises questions about how a politician’s background influences their views–how could a student educated in such a progressive school espouse such extreme views and earn an endorsement from former President Donald Trump? Nevertheless, Sheehy is upholding the school’s current mission statement — “Shaping the minds and hearts of the people who will change the world”– perhaps in ways no one predicted.

Part II: The day after Election Day

Early Wednesday morning, the Associated Press declared Sheehy Montana’s next Senator. Sheehy received 53.3% of the vote, an eight-point margin of victory over Tester. In his acceptance speech, Sheehy told a crowd of supporters, “We are gonna dedicate our time and our energies to make sure we get this country back on the right track and we make Montana and America work for all Americans.”

With Sheehy’s win and two other flipped seats in Ohio and West Virginia, Republicans now control a majority in the Senate. In the House of Representatives, 38 races still have yet to be called, but Republicans are currently in the lead, with 206 seats to the Democrats’ 191.