For much of his life, Randy Gray knew his hometown in northern Montana, Great Falls, as a stronghold for Democrats.
On the banks of the cascading Missouri River, a local smelter purified the copper wire that electrified America, produced by union laborers who were reliable Democrats. So too were the Catholics, committed to issues of social justice, who had followed early missionaries to the area. Even the farmers who tilled the fertile wheat fields of the northern Great Plains often supported the Montana-style Democrats who applied the principle of conservation to both tax dollars and nature.
Mr. Gray served three terms as a Democratic mayor, up through 2005. Barack Obama won the area in the 2008 presidential election, and Democrats cornered a vast majority of the county’s legislative seats. Jon Tester, the Democrat who has long represented the state in the U.S. Senate and farms in the same northern plains region, holds his election-night celebrations in Great Falls.
But the political landscape in Great Falls is not what it was when Mr. Tester first won his seat in 2006. With the old Democratic coalition frayed by economic upheaval, a flood of wealthy newcomers and increasing tension over delicate social issues, Republicans have captured one office after another in this part of the state. They now control every seat on the local county commission and all 12 legislative seats for the area — a political sweep that once seemed unimaginable.
“It’s like a meteor landing in your backyard,” Mr. Gray said.
The transition is part of a broader trend in Montana, where a proud tradition of ticket splitting is barely a memory. For Democrats nationally, the switch could not come at a worse time: Mr. Tester is now not only the last Democrat standing in statewide office in Montana, he may also be the last Democrat standing in the way of Republican control of the U.S. Senate.
Mr. Tester has defied the odds before, thanks to his broad appeal as a moderate, old-school Democrat and third-generation farmer who still cultivates wheat and peas when away from Washington. He continues to cast himself as a Democrat willing to reject his party’s leadership, declaring in one ad this year that he has “worked with Republicans” and “fought to stop President Biden from letting migrants stay in America.”
He has declined to endorse Kamala Harris, and he is not alone in that. The windows at Democratic Party headquarters in Great Falls display campaign signs for candidates up and down the ticket, but none for the vice president.
Many voters say they are torn. Jenny Watson, who was born in Great Falls, said she has always backed Mr. Tester while voting for a mix of Democrats and Republicans, and does not believe he has done a bad job representing Montana. But with the cost of living surging, she has grown more focused on economic issues and believes it is time for Republicans to take charge, especially in Washington D.C. She plans to back Mr. Tester’s challenger, Tim Sheehy, a wealthy Republican businessman who was previously a Navy SEAL who she said would also support other things she cares about: freedom and family.
“I want someone who is for sure going to stand up for my values,” Ms. Watson said. She was making a stop with two of her children at the local library, which could lose some of its funding as new conservative city leaders seek to redirect money toward public safety.
Steve Fitzpatrick, a Republican from Great Falls who is the majority leader in the State Senate, said the voters he talks to believe the Democrats focus too much on gay rights and climate change and not enough on the economic issues that concern working people.
Still, not everyone is abandoning the Democrats, and particularly not Mr. Tester. Lyle Thomas, an 84-year-old rancher who describes himself as an independent, said he has long voted blue and has concerns about the honesty of Republican leaders, including former President Donald J. Trump and Mr. Sheehy, who has acknowledged lying about how he ended up with a bullet in his arm.
Mr. Thomas has been wary about the wealthy, mostly Republican newcomers who have flooded into the area in recent years, saying they have scooped up land and charged hefty fees for people to hunt.
“It’s changed our state so much — and not for the better,” he said as he moved a truckload of cattle fencing posts. “It’s going to take a real severe winter to keep them all out of here for a while.”
Tami Healy, who lives at a senior center, said she disliked the current White House and was uncomfortable with abortion, but she has been alarmed by how far Republicans have gone to prohibit it when the issue deserves more nuance. She trusts Mr. Tester to understand how Montanans think about things.
The forces at work in this part of Montana have been varied.
The old copper refinery that once anchored the economy and shaped the city’s politics closed in 1980, beginning a decline of union jobs. Catholics broke with the Democrats over the issue of abortion. Gun groups battled Democrats, including Mr. Tester, in a larger struggle over gun rights.
The picture is even more complex across the rest of Montana, which has attracted a range of newcomers in recent years. Democrats have seen growth in Missoula and Bozeman, both college towns, while Republicans have benefited from wealthy new residents in scenic mountain lake communities in the northwest part of the state.
The depletion of local newspapers has left many residents turning to talk radio and cable TV outlets for news, with their polarized focus on national politics. Some candidates in the state say that in a state where campaigns once succeeded based on door-knocking and local name recognition, party identification has become an increasingly powerful factor.
“In the last cycle here at the state level, I saw that there were people who had no name recognition: They had that R in front of their name on the ballot and they won. They were unknowns and they beat knowns that had a D in front of their name,” said Rick Tryon, a longtime Republican who serves as a nonpartisan city commissioner in Great Falls. He was among those Republicans who campaigned in past decades with little success but won in 2020.
Mr. Tryon said that even with the declining power of unions in the area, Great Falls continues to be a city of hard-working people who are more often socially conservative. This year, the new mayor, Cory Reeves, declined to issue a proclamation to recognize June as Pride Month. One of the region’s large employers continues to be Malmstrom Air Force Base.
Mr. Sheehy, who has the backing of Mr. Trump, has campaigned on issues such as gun rights, border security and inflation. He has urged Montanans to think about the national implications of the race.
“It’s time for a change in leadership: America’s not heading in the right direction,” he said in a recent debate. “Montana has a chance to do it.”
It was almost the opposite of Mr. Tester’s more inward-looking message at the same debate: “Montana’s values are on the line,” he said.
A recent poll shows Mr. Sheehy with an advantage over Mr. Tester, and this month, the Cook Political Report shifted its forecast for the seat from “tossup” to “leans Republican.” It is one of seven races across the country that will most likely determine whether Democrats retain their slim majority in the Senate.
Mr. Sheehy has had a tumultuous campaign, including the questions raised after he told a national park ranger in 2015 that he had accidentally fired his gun and struck himself in the arm in a national park. He later said the story was a lie to hide details about an injury in Afghanistan that he feared might have been the result of friendly fire. In another controversy, audio emerged of him using racist stereotypes about Native Americans, including a comment about how he had bonded with them “while they’re drunk at 8 a.m.”
Questions have also emerged about the viability of the business he created, and Democrats have portrayed Mr. Sheehy as just another rich outsider.
Money has flooded into the campaign on both sides. The two candidates and their outside political committees have so far spent more than $100 million in a state with a population that only recently surpassed 1 million.
Outside of television ads, though, little of that fever has been seen in Great Falls. Inge Buchholz, who has run a clothing store downtown for four decades, said things have grown so contentious that most people steer clear of even discussing politics.
“You’ve got to be careful, somebody might just shoot you if you say something wrong,” she said. As she began to talk about her own political views, her daughter, at the cash register, shouted over to her that she should not share those opinions publicly. She left it at saying that her business had been struggling as of late with the cost of living going up so much.
Local Democratic leaders are busy reorganizing and expressing optimism about the future. But there is a divide about how to win back voters. Some contend that Democrats have focused so much on racing to the middle that they have lost their ability to show voters a clear contrast to Republican candidates. Others say that progressive messaging drove voters away when some Democrats supported defunding the police or fought against projects that would provide Montana jobs, such as the Keystone-XL oil pipeline.
There is hope among Democrats that the worst may have passed; forecasts suggest that the party could reclaim some legislative seats and end the Republican supermajority in the state Legislature. Many Democrats were heartened when voters rejected a Republican-sponsored abortion referendum last year.
Brad Hamlett, a former Democratic state lawmaker from the Great Falls area, said he was still hopeful that Mr. Tester can maintain his seat and help win voters back. But it will take a lot of work in the Great Falls area, he said, because the party has lost some of the powerful connection to voters it once had.
“They were the party of the people that took showers at the end of the day, not the beginning of the day,” he said. “That’s changed.”
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