It was a gorgeous summer weekend in the mountain-ringed town of Ennis, Mont., but Main Street was lined with casualties of Montana’s affordability crisis.
Kalena’s tea shop had shut for good because its owner could not find workers able to afford rent anywhere near Ennis. Staff shortages had similarly closed for the weekend a soda fountain catering to tourists bound for Yellowstone National Park. The Burnt Tree brewery was open only because its owners had turned a cluster of cabins and apartments into employee housing.
For the past two election cycles, Democrats in Montana have tried to harness anger over wealthy out-of-staters driving up prices and squeezing out residents, only to fall short. In the Senate and governor’s races of 2024, the Republican candidates were wealthy transplants, yet the Democratic brand proved to be the bigger liability. Senator Jon Tester, who lost his race for re-election that year, deemed his party’s brand electoral “poison.”
But this year, Democrats insist the cost of housing, health care and everything else has gotten so out of control that they might just flip a House seat in Montana’s western congressional district, which is less conservative. That race that could help tip control of Congress.
Their candidate is Sam Forstag, a telegenic firefighter and union leader running as an unapologetic progressive who could barely afford Montana when he was earning $19 an hour jumping out of planes to fight wildfires.
“No one can afford a damn roof over their head,” Mr. Forstag said in an interview.
The race in one of the country’s most sprawling congressional districts will test whether Democrats can unwind years of losses in rural areas, or whether once-purple places like Montana are gone for good.
Mr. Forstag is facing Aaron Flint, a conservative radio host, to fill the seat being vacated by the retirement of Representative Ryan Zinke, a Republican, in a state has become one of the least affordable places in America. That is doubly true for the scenic western district and towns like Whitefish, Bozeman and Missoula.
Mr. Flint is also talking up affordability, campaigning on a Trump-inspired slogan to “Make Montana Affordable Again” while deriding Mr. Forstag as a socialist tied to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Mr. Flint’s campaign declined an interview request.
Most polls have put Mr. Flint ahead, but a Democratic-sponsored survey in June found the race was tied. There have been no recent public polls, and many voters said in interviews that they were only just starting to tune in. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee officially put the race onto its target list on July 28.
With voters across the political spectrum sour on high prices and the direction of the country, the race may come down to which is worse to Montanans: $4.70-a-gallon gasoline, or voting Democrat.
Scott Kelley, who runs the Burnt Tree brewery, plans to vote for Mr. Forstag, but he was skeptical about his chances.
“Democrats have abandoned rural America for too long,” he said. “If you say, ‘I’m running as a Democrat,’ boom, their ears get plugged up, the wall drops down. It’s a dirty word.”
Mr. Forstag, who shows up to campaign events in T-shirts and leather work boots, has plenty of fans in blue islands like the liberal college town of Missoula and the fast-growing tech hub of Bozeman.
Elisabeth Suzuki, a social worker in Bozeman, said Montana’s multimillionaire Republican leaders like Gov. Greg Gianforte, who made his millions in New Jersey, and Senator Tim Sheehy, who grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis, had no clue how hard it was to make it on a middle-class salary. She is supporting Mr. Forstag.
“Things are just so overpriced, and our wages aren’t matching,” said Ms. Suzuki, 35, who pays $1,800 a month in rent. “They don’t understand. And I don’t think they want to understand.”
But much of the district outside the cities is overwhelmingly Republican, and voters there worried that Democrats would make things worse by passing new taxes. Republican voters also still blamed former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for persistently high costs.
“It was this way before President Trump got into office,” said Mike Emery, a contractor in the conservative outskirts of Bozeman. He has resorted to living in his shop to save on rent, but he didn’t blame the president. “I wouldn’t say it’s his fault,” he said. “You can’t stop it.”
One late-summer weekend, Mr. Forstag made his pitch for a working-class uprising in Montana to a few dozen enthusiastic supporters at the Lions Club park in Ennis, the largest town in Madison County, which voted for Mr. Trump in 2024 by a 45-point margin.
Health care costs were up 25 percent, and Montana’s rural hospitals were on life support, Mr. Forstag told the crowd of retired forestry workers and longtime Democrats. Housing costs had soared as wealthy newcomers arrived to trout-fish the Madison River and hike in the Tobacco Root Mountains. Food and gas prices in small towns were off the charts.
Average home prices around Ennis have risen from about $400,000 before the Covid pandemic to about $650,000, according to Zillow.
It is still cheap there compared with the ski resort of Big Sky or the billionaire-stocked Yellowstone Club, about a 90-minute drive from Ennis, making it an alluring destination for retirees and remote workers in search of mountain views and $1.2 million ranchette homes. The trend has been brought to life in the TV series “The Madison,” which chronicles a wealthy Manhattan family who moves to the area.
In interviews across western Montana, voters on the left and right said that prices were their biggest concern this election. But in the next breath, right-leaning voters recoiled from supporting a Democrat.
One of them was Kalena Wise, who was busy cleaning out her shuttered cafe in Ennis on a Sunday afternoon while Mr. Forstag spoke to supporters a couple blocks away. She was desperate to see the government build more affordable housing to help keep towns like hers alive.
“Everybody’s cut back their hours, cut back their days,” Ms. Wise said of the struggle to find workers who could afford to live in towns like Ennis.
But she said she still supported Mr. Trump and would probably end up voting Republican this November.
“I don’t always agree with the things Trump’s doing, and he’s an idiot sometimes,” she said. “But I do believe he loves this country.”
She did not say the same about Democrats.
Jason Bean, who runs an excavation business in Ennis, voted for Mr. Trump, but he said his dissatisfaction grows every time he pulls out his credit card.
Inflation had seemed to ease early in Mr. Trump’s second term, he said, but then came the war in Iran, and fuel costs soared, pulling up other prices. Now, he spends $600 a day on diesel for his rigs. Groceries are more expensive in a remote town like Ennis, and one night, he spent $37 on two frozen pizzas and beef sticks to feed his two sons, he said.
Mr. Bean hasn’t decided how to vote in November, but said it may come down to which candidate can accomplish one thing: “Bring down prices.”
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