r/MontanaPolitics • u/IndividualStep9314 • 21d ago
Election 2026 The Wildfire-Fighting Union Leader Who Could Change Montana Politics
Sam Forstag made a career of parachuting into forest fires. As Democrats fight to win races in solidly red districts, could a man who has dedicated his life to the most dangerous kind of public service signal a new way forward?
By Cassidy RandallPublished: May 12, 2026 7:00 AM EDT
Part One: The Jump
The plane was high in the air, just outside Fairbanks, Alaska. Its twin engines roared as the wind howled and barreled through the yawning door. It was June 2025. A sprawling sea of black spruce was licked in flame three thousand feet below, adding to the midsummer heat. Though the blaze spanned thirty acres, it wasn’t as big as the others that Sam Forstag had seen that benighted the sky with billowing smoke.
He, like the five others in the plane, was outfitted in a Kevlar jumpsuit, tall leather boots, a full parachute system, and a helmet. He would soon launch himself into the burning forest below, as he’d done dozens of times, to fight the flames before they reached a small development of houses just three miles away.
He turned and knelt in the cabin, examining the fire through the windows. From here, he could tell how hot it might be, how fast it was ripping through the spindly trees. He scanned the forest for where to land. The crew decided on a spot a quarter mile from the fire with shorter trees that wouldn’t hang up the parachutes. It was farther than they would have liked—the crew usually landed right on the edge of the fire—but it would have to do.
As Forstag maneuvered toward the open door, he focused on the ground far below. He touched each piece of equipment on his parachute system as he mentally recited the familiar four-point checklist of the release mechanism: drogue release, reserve, cutaway, lower reserve static line. Then he stepped into the thin air of the burning morning.
As he hurtled through the sky, he didn’t know that this was the fire that would nearly kill him. The one that would add weight to everything to come.
On a cold night in early January 2026, Forstag entered a packed bar in downtown Missoula, Montana. The Union Club had long been the gritty workers’ pub in town, the de facto Democratic headquarters for both launching campaigns and tracking polls. The thirty-one-year-old, compact and muscled with a thick mop of red hair, was dressed in his usual worn Carhartt work jacket, jeans, and work boots.
The crowd inside was astonishingly young. The twenty-something woman next to me had been a wildland firefighter and recognized other Forest Service workers in the room. Forstag seemed to know everyone. He hugged several people as he made his way past the pool tables and shook hands as he crossed the dimly lit dance floor.
Two months before, Forstag had driven his 1984 Toyota van, with its temperamental spark plugs and homemade bed, to a lake tucked into a valley outside town. Underneath blazing-gold larch trees that would soon drop their needles, he spent the night alone, thinking, writing. Crying.
Friends, colleagues, and local political players had been begging him to run for the seat of Montana’s First Congressional District. It was a heavy ask. He wasn’t a politician. He was a smokejumper, the most elite level of wildland firefighter. It was a seasonal job that paid just twenty dollars an hour—and it was dangerous. He had to parachute from planes into forests across the western U.S. to extinguish wildfires. He pictured himself jumping until his body gave out.
The journey to this point had been winding, his life hard-won. He’d had a poor childhood in Oregon. Worked multiple jobs to get himself through the University of Montana. Became a wildland firefighter to help pay for law school. Then he fell in love with smokejumping and became a union leader. As his statewide profile grew, bolstered by public appearances in which he spoke out against the Trump administration’s cuts to public lands and their workers, he wondered whether he really should run for office. Could he make a bigger difference by shaping law rather than learning to practice it?
That night in the valley, he finally asked himself, Why not me? By morning, he’d decided to run for Congress. There was no going back. Smokejumpers are federal employees, and federal employees can’t run in partisan races. He also suspected that, even if he lost the election, the Trump administration could find a way to ensure he wouldn’t get his job back.
A week later, Forstag wrote a resignation letter to the Missoula Smokejumper Base. “I wouldn’t be writing this letter if it weren’t for the chaos we’ve all lived through over the past year,” he wrote. “Seeing our colleagues be illegally fired, intimidated into silence, insulted in official emails ... it’s been hard to feel anything but embattled and abandoned by the people who were supposed to lead us.”
Forstag would be entering a crowded Democratic primary, challenging a former firearms executive, a rancher and former Black Hawk pilot, and a Navy veteran turned start-up founder. But in the Union Club it felt like a one-man race. When Forstag stepped onto the low stage, the wall behind him papered in “Sam for Montana” signs, the crowd went crazy.
“They don’t take care of us; we take care of us,” he said, referring to Republican incumbent Ryan Zinke and other wealthy Congress members. “We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. No one else is coming. And they are going to be against all of us.” The crowd thrust drinks and fists into the air. With that speech, he had officially launched his campaign.
Why was the crowd so excited about Forstag? I’m told he doesn’t point fingers. He invites everyone in, including Trump voters. He doesn’t use the inflammatory rhetoric so many folks are sick of. He’s approachable. Working-class. Connects with everyday people. He’s authentic, he listens, and he speaks directly to people’s experiences—not just about them.
Forstag’s supporters and volunteers marching in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Butte, Montana, in March this year.
Willis Curdy—legislator, retired smokejumper, and the self-proclaimed “oldest codger in the room” that night—was impressed by the support. As the victor in five consecutive elections, from state representative to state senator, he saw Forstag as the candidate willing to put in the groundwork to win a tight race. If he can win the primary, Curdy said, he has a realistic shot to become the first Democratic House representative from Montana since 1997.
Forstag has aimed his campaign at reclaiming voters lost by the Democratic party: moderates, young people, rural Americans, the working class. In every town he visits, he stops in at local meetings of pipe fitters, nurses, and carpenters. The Montana AFL-CIO, which represents five hundred union locals, recently threw its support behind him.
With only two House seats for the entire state, the stakes are high for every election. But even if Forstag were to win the Democratic primary, national polls believed Zinke’s seat to be a foregone conclusion. Few House seats are considered truly competitive; the Cook Political Report listed only eighteen out of 435 as toss-ups, none of which was in Montana.
But Forstag earned key endorsements that turned him into a challenger. Bernie Sanders shared Forstag’s campaign-launch video to his 8.8 million Instagram followers. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, made up of nearly one hundred progressive members of the House and Senate, also backed him. The New York Times, The Guardian, and Outside all ran stories on his campaign. And on February 10, the national Democratic party added Montana’s First Congressional District to its list of forty targeted seats on the party’s battleground map.
Then, on March 2, Zinke suddenly announced he wouldn’t seek reelection, citing old Navy SEAL injuries that required surgery. He was the latest in a wave of more than thirty House Republicans who were vacating their seats.
Within days, four candidates launched themselves into the Republican primary. The foregone conclusion was now a heated competition. The national spotlight shone upon Montana, a state emblematic of the fast-changing rural West.
Thanks to the runaway success of the TV show Yellowstone, pandemic migrations, and a tech boom in Bozeman, Montana morphed into an exorbitant hot spot. Millionaires and billionaires bought up land in search of, as Town & Country reported in 2022, “five-star living dressed up as American frontiersmanship.” Ultra-luxe “Western” resorts privatized public land, even entire mountain ranges, to cater to the rich. As if the resulting affordability crisis weren’t enough, the Trump administration continued to gut funding to public lands and the workers who steward them. On March 31, it announced a reorganization of the Forest Service. All nine regional offices and more than fifty research and science facilities are being shuttered. The headquarters is moving from Washington, D.C., to Utah, which has a history of selling off public land. For Montana, where support for public lands is a nonpartisan issue, the matter is more pressing than ever. Nearly one-third of the state is federal land, which drives $5.5 billion to Montana’s tourism industry, thereby supporting nearly forty thousand jobs in addition to government employees.
At a March campaign event in an old Bozeman music venue, I spoke to Mary and Frank Erickson, a retired couple who had both been Forest Service employees, about why they thought Forstag stood a chance.
“So many young women say they’d vote for him just because he’s a smokejumper,” Mary said.
Frank just smiled. “Well, a smokejumper is a hero,” he said. “And we like heroes.”
Part Two: The Smoke
Forstag and his crew landed safely. A column of smoke surged and rippled in the stiff wind. He stripped off his jumpsuit and put on a mosquito net to keep the bugs at bay. He then packed his parachute up and set to work helping the others gather the gear that floated down to them: two pump-and-hose kits, sleeping bags, chainsaws and cans of gasoline to power them, ax-hoe hybrids called Pulaskis, three days’ worth of dry food, five-gallon jugs of water—everything they might need for a few days of unsupported work on the ground. He loaded eighty pounds of it onto his back and trudged toward the fire. Moving through the Alaskan tundra felt like walking on furry deflated basketballs; with every step, his foot sank into the squishy ground.
The crew then prepared their exit. Forstag revved up his chainsaw to help cut a pocket out of the stubby trees broad enough for a helicopter to land. Next they would normally create a break zone by felling trees, cutting brush, and digging trenches to prevent the fire from spreading any further. Then they’d pump water from nearby streams or ponds to soak the ground. But before they could do any of that, Forstag heard the radio crackle. Air Attack, which coordinates aerial resources over wildland fires, called down from the small plane circling overhead.
“We’ve got four new starts near Fairbanks proper,” the Air Attack supervisor said. “This burn is no longer the priority.”
The air tanker, which carried thousands of gallons of retardant and water to aid the ground crew, was yanked away to focus on the new fires. Air Attack was also getting pulled. The crew effectively lost their eyes in the sky.
The jumper-in-charge—a democratic position given to the first one to parachute out of the plane on any given job—palmed his radio to reply. “We cannot hook this thing with just six guys, without air support,” he said. “It’s already thirty acres and running. We’re going to need transport to those subdivisions. We’ll go do structure protection.”
Air Attack signed off and buzzed away over the horizon. The JIC pulled out a satellite phone—radio communications over long distances can be spotty in Alaska—and called dispatch in Fairbanks. The man on the other end promised a helicopter in thirty to forty minutes.
The crew finished cutting out the landing spot. They readied their gear for transport when dispatch called back.
“That heli was diverted to a new burn. We’re sending another.”
That helicopter ended up diverted too.
Forstag watched the column expand. Every hour they waited, the bigger the fire grew and the less time they had to protect those cabins. After losing faith in the third helicopter, the crew pulled out maps and conferred. Highway 2 was three miles due west. Could they get out on foot? In the thick, black spruce of the tundra, weighed down by heavy packs and equipment, that meant several hours of bushwhacking.
The wind swung 180 degrees and blew in Forstag’s face at thirty miles an hour. The chatter stopped.
Oh shit, Forstag thought. This is bad.
Sam Forstag sits on his van outside of his home in Missoula, Montana.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
Sam Forstag grew up in Portland, Oregon. His parents split when he was young. His mother, an ICU nurse, worked nights for better pay and picked up extra shifts to make ends meet. She raised him and his little sister mostly on her own, but the kids would spend time with their father every other weekend. While trying to earn a teaching degree, the man relied on food stamps to feed them. Forstag remembers going to the store with him to carefully pick certain groceries from the shelves.
With the help of financial aid, Forstag attended the local Jesuit high school alongside much wealthier kids. Although he was a three-sport athlete in cross-country, track, and swimming, he was small and not very good. He preferred outdoor activities that weren’t athletic, like camping, hiking, and even chopping wood at his grandparents’ place in central Oregon.
Maybe because Forstag was the butt of jokes about size and social class, he demonstrated “uncommon concern for those on the margins,” says high school friend and fellow smokejumper Conor Hogan. Forstag volunteered to coordinate his homeroom’s Christmas canned-food drive. He invited everyone and anyone to parties. He stepped in if someone was being bullied.
After high school, Forstag and Hogan both enrolled at the University of Montana in Missoula. Forstag took a year off to get state residency in Montana, which allowed him to qualify for in-state tuition, which was less expensive—a solid draw, given Forstag was paying his own way. He studied political science and philosophy, all while working two or three jobs at a time to support himself. During senior year, he won student-body president and organized students to testify at the state capitol against massive budget cuts to education. He interned for USAID in Washington, D.C., one semester.
After graduating in 2017, he took a job the following spring as a wildland firefighter to pay down student-loan debt before applying to law school. Forstag started on a ground crew based in Lincoln, the thickly forested district of Unabomber infamy. He spent another few years as a sawyer and squad leader to gain experience. Finally, he was picked up by a rookie smokejumper crew in 2022.
The occupation’s roots date back to the early 20th century. After World War I, the U.S. Forest Service began to use aircraft for fire detection in the West. Once a fire was spotted, wildland firefighters would then hike twenty or more miles into the burn, arriving tired. By then, the fire would have scorched enough to meet them halfway anyway. In 1934, T.V. Pearson, a Forest Service leader based in Utah, proposed the idea of dropping self-sufficient firefighters directly into the blaze. Another forester with the agency, headquartered in Missoula, disagreed: “The best information I could get from experienced fliers is that all parachute jumpers are more or less crazy,” the man wrote. And yet, in 1940, two men made the first jump into a fire in the Nez Perce forest in Idaho.
While fighting a fire near Fairbanks, Alaska, in June 2025, Forstag was forced to leave his kit behind. A charred rip-cord handle, pictured, and the mask from his helmet were all that remained.
Smokejumpers are so uniquely skilled that in 1951, as the U.S. government was beginning clandestine operations in Asia, the CIA sent two agents to the smokejumper base outside Missoula to learn to parachute into isolated mountainous areas. Once the agents returned, they reported that there was no need to send anyone else. The smokejumpers were willing to take on missions themselves, which they did during the 1950s and ’60s.
David Stadler, a friend of Forstag’s, explained to me what makes smokejumpers special. On the first big fire he ever fought, Stadler watched a load of jumpers fall out of the sky to aid the crews already on the ground. It was hot, hard work, and after they quieted the fire, they collapsed onto their sleeping pads, exhausted. Stadler woke at 1:00 a.m. to a glow on the other side of the ridge. The fire had rekindled. Would it blaze down into camp? Should he wake the crew? Then he saw headlights cutting up the mountain. Two smokejumpers were hiking up the ridge to keep an eye on it so the rest of them could get some sleep.
Rookie smokejumper training is famously brutal, however. About 60 percent of trainees make it through. Hopefuls run the equivalent of marathons over rugged terrain in the heat while toting heavy packs. They dig fire lines for twenty-four hours straight. And they participate in endless rounds of sit-ups and push-ups. All of it with experienced smokejumpers yelling at them and haranguing them.
In his third week of training, Forstag boarded a small plane for his first-ever jump. He’d already learned to suit up and hook up his parachute harness—a thirty-two-step process—in under two minutes without error. He could recite the four-point checklist in his sleep. Yet still his nerves twanged like guitar strings ready to snap. Eventually the rookies would learn to parachute into a clearing the size of a basketball court in tall timber, but for now the plane rose over an open field. Rookies sat shoulder to shoulder in the rear, side door open to the churning air. The man across from Forstag prayed with his eyes closed, which unsettled him even more. He preferred poetry to prayer and began to whisper lines from Rudyard Kipling’s “If—” to relax:
If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs...
Soon the spotter called him to the plane door. Forstag performed the four-point checklist: drogue release, reserve, cutaway, lower reserve static line. Distanced himself enough from fear. And jumped into the violent chaos of 30-knot winds, thousands of feet in the air.
When he landed, he felt a wave of relief. But before he could be too satisfied, the instructors got in his face about all the ways he’d messed up, how terrible the jump was. He got back in the plane to do it again.
Part Three: The Fire
“We need that helicopter right fucking now,” the JIC said into the satellite phone. Smoke now darkened the sky.
“It was diverted too,” the man on dispatch replied. “We’ll send another.”
“We don’t have time to wait. There’s been a wind switch. We are now in the path of the fire.”
This was the perfect storm of circumstances that appeared in every fatality report on a wildfire that Forstag had ever read: Wind shift. No mode of transportation. No rapid exit route. There was no need to mention the Mann Gulch fire in Montana that had consumed thirteen trapped smokejumpers in 1949 or the 2013 Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona that overran and killed all but one member of an entire crew. This was just as dire. Everyone knew it.
He and the others knew they wouldn’t make it to the highway. But their maps showed a grove of hardwood, which typically doesn’t burn as fast or hot as spruce, a mile and a half northeast up a drainage ditch. If they were forced to set up their shelters, forced to face being burned over, that was their safest bet.
The crew left most of their gear, shouldered their packs, and took off as fast as the tangled forest allowed. Forstag did his best not to think about what would happen if they couldn’t outrun the flames. The six of them tried to stay close, but the trees were so dense they had to spread out in search of the best path.
“Take the contour on the right,” one crewmember said over radio. “It’s thinner; the walking’s better.”
They heard blasts from behind. The gas cans for the chainsaws must have exploded in flames, destroying the gear they left behind. The fire, it seemed, was chasing them.
Forstag realized that he hadn’t caught a glimpse of a particular crewmember, the oldest man on the job that day, for a few minutes. “Has anyone seen him?” he said.
The missing crewmember’s voice crackled on the radio. He was behind.
“I’ll stay back and wait,” Forstag said.
Because summer and fall are the peak seasons for wildfires, smokejumpers tend to find other jobs in the winter, often at ski resorts. Forstag did one stint at Alta in Utah, but the next winter he convinced Hogan to backpack through the Sonoran Desert. Over that month and a half, he read the Bible cover to cover—with some Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry thrown in too. He came to a greater understanding of the New Testament as a progressive document about helping the poor. It’s a real shame the Left has ceded that whole space to Republicans for so long, he thought.
From then on, Forstag spent his offseasons working for nonprofits like the ACLU, Montana Library Association, and Montana Innocence Project. He’d already had his eyes on a career in civil liberties and social justice. Public policy, he says, became his love language. By 2023, he would claim one of his first major political victories.
As a leader of the Montana Coalition to Solve Homelessness, Forstag helped convince lawmakers from both parties to allocate half a million dollars from the state’s enormous budget surplus to build a homeless shelter in Bozeman. As the city gentrified, the number of people without stable housing shot up more than 500 percent from 2020 to 2025. Housing costs skyrocketed, wrenching homeownership out of reach. Rent for a one-bedroom apartment—the ones that survived being turned into vacation rentals, that is—tripled from $500 in 2017 to $1,500 today.
The boom wasn’t unique to Bozeman. Forstag himself could barely afford the mortgage on his 980-square-foot house over in Missoula, even after working hundreds of hours of overtime. During one fire season, he leased it out to a veteran who needed help getting back on his feet. When Forstag returned from a smokejumping job, he discovered that the tenant had squatters over. They had used drugs, trashed the place. He could’ve cursed at the man, chased him out, called the police. Instead, Forstag bought him a hotel room for the night and gave him money for addiction treatment.
Forstag joined the local chapter of the National Federation of Federal Employees, NFFE Local 60, in 2024. The union was founded in 1917 as part of the first unionized national forest in the country, Lolo, where the Missoula Smokejumper Base is located. NFFE Local 60 represented eight hundred workers across all the national forests in western Montana. By January 2025, Forstag had risen to vice president.
Around the same time, the newly founded Department of Government Efficiency, led by billionaire Elon Musk, began cutting what it considered wasteful government spending. On January 28, 2025, the infamous Fork in the Road email was sent to all federal employees, including Forest Service workers like Forstag, encouraging them to leave their “lower productivity jobs in the public sector” for “higher productivity jobs in the private sector.” The ax fell just weeks later.
On February 14, 2025, approximately twenty-three hundred workers were terminated from the agencies that manage America’s 640 million acres of public lands. Montana’s all-Republican congressional delegation did almost nothing to stop it, despite the fact that the state has a high proportion of both public lands and the people who work on them. Many of those fired made less than nineteen dollars an hour.
Forstag and the other union leaders hosted an emergency virtual meeting. The call was crowded with tiny thumbnails of people who’d lost their livelihoods with no warning. One terminated worker, a Forest Service employee for fifteen years, had just been diagnosed with cancer. Another received his termination notice at the airport on the way to his mother’s funeral. Those who survived the first round received emails that they were to report on their productivity with five bullet points once per week. Some spoke out and were fired for it. Others feared retaliation if they did so themselves.
After what was dubbed the “Valentine’s Day Massacre,” Forstag requested multiple meetings with Representative Zinke to discuss the cuts. None were granted. Not that Zinke would have understood. In 2021, financial disclosures showed he owned assets worth up to $32.5 million. And although Zinke styled himself a public-lands champion through his connection to congressional groups like the Public Lands Caucus, he supported the cuts.
Two months later, on April 16, 2025, Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stopped in Missoula for their Fighting Oligarchy rally tour. The organizers reached out to Local 60 to find someone to speak on behalf of those who had lost their jobs. But the union was still in litigation hoping to get those roles reinstated, and those affected were afraid that speaking publicly would endanger their chances. Meanwhile, those who were still employed feared placing a target on their back.
“I guess I’m the only one who wants to speak,” Forstag told a fellow Local 60 leader. “And this story needs to be told.”
A crowd of three thousand had been expected for the rally, held at the Adams Center arena at the University of Montana. Over nine thousand showed up, the crowd spilling out into the parking lot. As Forstag waited backstage for his turn to speak, he repeated a familiar calming ritual—drogue release, reserve, cutaway, lower reserve static line—and stepped out to applause.
“What we’re facing today isn’t a wildfire, but it’s damn sure an emergency,” he boomed into the mic in his confident baritone. “What we’re facing today is greed burning out of control. Somewhere I read that hope is a state of mind, not a state of the world. And when I see the thousands of us who are here today to say that we’ve had enough, I’m starting to feel the kind of hope it’s going to take to fight this thing.”
The crowd stood and clapped. Out of all the speakers so far, Forstag incited the strongest reaction. The words were on everyone’s lips: That guy needs to run for office.
After the rally, the secretary of agriculture’s office—which oversees the U.S. Forest Service—called the Missoula Smokejumper Base to have him fired.
“[Secretary] Brooke Rollins herself came for his head,” Curdy, the legislator and former smokejumper, told me. “The vindictiveness is just beyond belief. I’ve never seen this from any other administration.”
The situation symbolized what the state had become. Montana had been purple for nearly a century, with union roots as deep as mine shafts. It was the epicenter of one of the most famous labor movements in national history, when unionized miners in the city of Butte took on the corrupt Anaconda Gold & Silver Mining Company in the late 1800s. By the turn of the twentieth century, Butte was known as the “Gibraltar of Unionism,” with thirty-four unions representing nearly eighteen thousand workers, from blacksmiths and teamsters to newsboys and waitresses. The state only went all red in 2024, after voters ousted three-term Democratic senator and third-generation farmer Jon Tester. The race shattered spending records as Republicans aimed to retake the Senate, successfully electing MAGA novice Tim Sheehy.
That’s not to say some blue hasn’t cracked through the red. In Kalispell, the seat of a historically right-wing county that Trump took by nearly 34 points in 2024, Democrats elected Ryan Hunter as mayor in 2025. Citizens in Billings, Montana’s largest conservative city, elected Democrat-backed Mike Nelson as mayor. Although both candidates won by fewer than three hundred votes, their victories indicated discontent with Republican policies.
By the time of his speech, Forstag had abandoned the idea of making a difference as a lawyer. He was thinking of running for state legislature. But he wasn’t ready to run for Congress. Not yet.
Part Four: The Burn
It felt like much longer than two minutes before the man came running out of the spruce. Behind him, Forstag saw the wall of fire crest the ridge, the trees blazing up like firecrackers. It sounded like a train coming.
They needed to turn and sprint for the drainage, but the other crewmember couldn’t move any faster. The man was redlining, breathing hard.
“Listen, man, we need to move,” Forstag said. They struggled together through the trees as the fire consumed everything behind them.
By the time they made it to the grove of hardwoods, it had been forty minutes. Still no sign of air support. The JIC called dispatch again as Forstag went looking for a place to deploy their shelters, which resembled metallic tunnels, designed to protect their bodies from intense heat. He found a dried-out creek bed, little more than depressions in the ground amid the tall grass.
“If worse comes to worst, that’s where we go,” he told the crew.
The smokejumper buttoned up his fire-resistant coat. He pulled on gloves to protect his hands. He readied a water bottle. He thought about everything he’d done. Everyone he loved.
At that moment, an air tanker appeared over the approaching flames.
Forstag almost didn’t tell me that story. He doesn’t like to talk about fighting fire. It feels too much like bragging. By telling it, though, he helps me understand the situation that public lands—and their protectors—face. The government cuts had hollowed out federal fire support. The dispatcher on the ground was only in his third week of employment in a low-paying job that sees high turnover. Without proper funding, undertrained staff is inevitable. Forstag doesn’t blame the dispatcher, though. He blames the Trump administration’s reckless actions for that near-death incident in June 2025.
“It makes you reconsider your part in a very serious way,” he says. “Life is short. Am I doing all that I can do?”
A few months later, he would drive his van into the valley and decide to run for Congress.
He’s pushing for affordable homes and rentals. Comprehensive health care. Expanded investments in childcare and paid leave for new parents. Education that’s affordable for working people. Raising the federal minimum wage, strengthening unions. Heightened tax rates on corporations and the wealthy. Immigration reform. And, of course, reinvestment in public lands.
His message has resonated. Close to a thousand people have signed up to volunteer for his campaign. Compared with his primary opponents, he has far more endorsements from state legislators, including Republicans like former state representative Greg Frazer.
“We are alienating our brothers and sisters who oftentimes are fighting for the same exact thing,” Frazer told me. “What matters to me most is that somebody is going to actually fight for the working class.”
Forstag thinks Zinke saw the tides changing. “I’m a little disappointed that [Zinke’s retirement] steals the pleasure of actually beating him myself at the ballot box, after all the harm he did,” he says.
Polling is sparse for the Democratic race. According to a Tulchin Research poll touted by competitor Ryan Busse, Forstag sits in third. If Forstag manages to win the primary on June 2, he’ll face the Republican candidate on November 3. Though he may never smokejump again, the memories will always remain—especially of the Fairbanks blaze.
A few days after he and the crew made it out, the JIC returned to the burn site to retrieve any surviving gear. The fire had ravaged the ground they covered. Their chainsaws were incinerated. Their pumps were completely gone. The JIC grabbed what little remained, including the face mask from Forstag’s helmet and the metal handle from his drogue release, rubber melted away. Forstag still has them in his garage.
20
u/Tungstenfenix 21d ago
Oh damn you really ARE a Forstag staffer huh.
4
u/jimbozak Governor Dutton [Yellowstone] 21d ago
I honestly laughed out loud at this. I suppose they're not going to hide it anymore.
4
u/Rocky_Missoula 21d ago
Sympathy for young people given uphill jobs that lead to…more uphill, then a precipice.
11
u/theRavenQuoths 21d ago
I think he’s done and it’s Russ-Busse now
8
5
10
u/mcphilclan 21d ago
I love Sam but the amount of big money behind him is too concerning for me to vote for him. I’m all in on Russ.
12
u/busy_livng 21d ago
What is this "big money"? I can't find any evidence that he excepted any PAC money.
5
u/jimbozak Governor Dutton [Yellowstone] 21d ago edited 21d ago
I can't find anything on opensecrets. I'll do some digging.
Searching his name brings up the Progressive Vet PAC on the very bottom. I have seen an advertisement for Alani Bankhead from this same PAC. Not much information is available on their website other than talking about Alani's background and how she'll fight for Veterans and their interests. Very interesting that searching Sam's name brings this one up.
There's probably not 'enough' recorded data yet concerning donations to Sam Forstag. I'll try to find some other sources. His campaign [(MT Free Press) - April 16, 2026] has reported raising $212,542. Ballotpedia is reporting that contributions are (May 12, 2026) $449,612 and expenditures are $237,070.
It is also bringing up a press release from today - the 'largest' Federal Employee Union AFGE is endorsing Sam Forstag for U.S. Representative, saying 'Forstag knows our issues as well as any candidate ever has, and will advocate for us as passionately as any lawmaker ever could'. This does not necessarily mean they're giving him a donation... I expect they will.
Sort of related side notes:
Searching donations by Legislature (2026 not available yet) brings up some questionable data indeed. NW Energy has given $409,489 to 861 different filers spanning 26 years. $283,915 to Republicans is the important one there. Looking at NW Energy in the 2023 data for our Legislature shows that there are 216 records (they're second after 'Unitemized Donations' for a total of $44,640. Our Governor, as you might expect, is also on this list (5th) (148 records, $27,860).
2
u/Rocky_Missoula 21d ago
Digging done. Here you are, courtesy Mt, Resistance:
“When you look at his campaign rhetoric and dive into his Q1 donor data, a clear picture emerges of a financial strategy that relies heavily on elite-level support from the very "billionaire class" that Sam Forstag claims to be running against.
Q1 Federal Election Commission data reveals a pattern of high-dollar donations to Sam from billionaire individuals who operate at the highest levels of global finance and media. Here is a detailed breakdown of the specific donors and their backgrounds.
The Media & Dynasty Tier The Murdoch Family ($14,000): Background: James Murdoch (son of Rupert Murdoch) and his wife Kathryn. Significance: This is arguably the most politically dissonant donor bloc for a progressive candidate. James Murdoch is a former 21st Century Fox executive. The family's wealth is tied to the very media empire that constructed the conservative information ecosystem that Forstag's own supporters frequently campaign against.
J. Sebastian Scripps ($7,000): Background: An heir and shareholder of the E.W. Scripps Company, which saw an $11.9 billion sale of its networks division. Significance: This is dynastic, inherited wealth. It reinforces the critique that Forstag is being supported by the "old money" and media elite of the East Coast, rather than the grassroots Montana base he claims to represent.
The Hedge Fund & Billionaire Tier Stephen Mandel ($7,000): Profile: Founder of Lone Pine Capital, a hedge fund giant with approximately $19 billion in assets under management. Forbes lists his net worth at approximately $5 billion. Significance: Mandel is a "Tiger Cub" hedge fund manager who built his career at Tiger Management. He is a prolific Democratic donor known for funding super PACs (like the Lincoln Project) and has been described by some philanthropy trackers as a "black box billionaire" because he uses foundations to mask the true destination of his massive political and charitable giving. His contribution to Forstag is a clear signal of elite financial sector buy-in.
Gaurav Kapadia ($7,000): Profile: Founder of XN LP (XN Exponent Advisors). His fund manages several billion dollars, and he is a prominent player in the concentrated, long-biased portfolio strategy space. Significance: Kapadia represents the "new guard" of hedge fund managers. Like Mandel, his donation isn't just a simple grassroots gift; it is a strategic investment from an individual whose professional life is defined by managing massive pools of capital for wealthy clients.
Social Media Posts Sam Forstag is building his entire campaign on the claim that he's a working-class outsider taking on the billionaire class and "dark money" interests. But the FEC records tell a story he doesn't want you to know. His primary campaign war chest is being fueled by some of the biggest names in Wall Street hedge funds and media dynastic wealth. He is happily taking maxed-out checks from hedge fund billionaires like Steve Mandel (Lone Pine Capital) and Gaurav Kapadia (XN), while also accepting $14,000 from the Murdoch media family. He's not running against these people he's running on their money.
The report shows a total of $54,050 received from 15 different Political Action Committees (PACs) and political organizations. Geographic Origin: With the exception of one $50 contribution from an in-state committee ("McLaughlin for Montana"), every other entity listed is based outside of Montana. These include organizations headquartered in major political hubs like Washington, D.C., as well as Maryland, Texas, Nevada, New York, and Massachusetts.
Proportion of Funding: According to the report, these contributions account for 12% of the campaign's total receipts for the first quarter. The facts from his own FEC filings: Hedge Fund Power: Maxed-out contributions from high-net-worth hedge fund managers like Steve Mandel (net worth: ~$5B) and Gaurav Kapadia. Dynastic Media Wealth: $14,000 from the Murdoch family and $7,000 from the Scripps family. The "Two-Tier" Scam: $17,500 of his general election cash is locked up and provided solely by these elite coastal donors.
It's easy to talk about "fighting the system" when the system is the one signing your campaign checks.”
7
u/SomeSchmidt 20d ago
Got a link for your source? My searches for your quoted text turn up this reddit thread
0
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
Montana Resistance Facebook site. Or go directly to FEC.gov and look at 2026 first quarter campaign finance reports.
6
u/SomeSchmidt 20d ago
So no link?
0
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
Can’t copy and paste direct link to Facebook. Just go to site and scroll down to 4/17. Or check yourself on FEC.gov.
5
u/SomeSchmidt 20d ago
Fec.gov for Sam Forstag:
We don't have itemized individual contributions for this candidate for 2025-2026.
2
u/outofdoubtoutofdark 19d ago
I can see the Murdoch contributions, as well as 800 other individual contributions for 2025-2026, on FEC.gov
I'm not passing any particular judgement, but all those records are there? They're under the recipient "Sam for Montana" not "Sam Forstag"
0
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
From google:
Yes, 2026 1st quarter campaign finance reports for federal candidates and committees (covering January 1 through March 31, 2026) are generally available. These reports were officially due to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) by April 15, 2026, for quarterly filers.Availability: Data from these reports is available for search and analysis on the FEC website.Monthly Filers: For committees following a monthly schedule, reports covering March activity were due April 20, 2026.Special Elections: Reports for ongoing 2026 special elections, such as in Georgia and California, are also being filed on specific schedules.Analysis: Data analysis of this first quarter is now public via organizations like the Campaign Legal Center.The next major quarterly report (Q2) will cover activity through June 30, 2026.
→ More replies (0)2
-5
u/IndividualStep9314 20d ago
Russ Cleveland is a millionaire. Why is he using donor dollars to pay himself for childcare?
5
u/brandideer 19d ago
I mean, a millionaire isn't much these days. Bernie is also a millionaire, we all know that's a silly argument.
I'd like a source on paying himself for childcare while he's on the road? Idk that that makes sense. His wife is a doctor, I think, so I'd imagine he's needing to pay for childcare while he's on the road since he's the primary caregiver...is that a problem for you?
0
u/IndividualStep9314 19d ago
It's right there in his FEC report. Why would a multimillionaire need to pay himself for childcare with hard working donor money. Seems pretty gritty to me.
3
u/brandideer 19d ago
Can you post a link? Screenshot? Anything? I'm seeing nothing to indicate this whatsoever.
2
u/uLL27 20d ago
Pointing to other candidates and saying they did something wrong doesn't make this any better. It just drives the point home for me.
5
u/Sturnella2017 20d ago
Yeah, OP here doesn’t know how to take legitimate critique and analysis of the candidate they’re supporting -whether they’re paid staff or not- and is responding with insults and whataboutism. Looks like they took down their initial response to my comment, in which they called me an idiot. Maybe we’re too subtle?
“HEY u/IndividualStep9314 EVERY TIME YOU RESPOND TO A COMMENT WITH AN INSULT, DEFLECTION, OR WHATABOUTISM, YOU LOSE A VOTER, OR SEVERAL VOTERS.”
-4
u/IndividualStep9314 20d ago
If you take the MT Resistance seriously, then you're already lost.
1
u/Sturnella2017 20d ago
Ok, that’s a little better: you’re not insulting people. But you’re still dodging and avoiding the points raised.
1
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
As opposed to taking seriously a candidate who puts this up on website:
“Unlike Ryan Zinke, Sam isn’t backed by billionaires and corporate PACs. Sam’s counting on grassroots donors like you to pitch in and help grow his campaign.”
Then proceeds to turn around and take money from billionaires?
2
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
Let’s hear it. Cut and paste source below.
-1
u/IndividualStep9314 20d ago
It's in his FEC Filing. Can't you look it up or do I need to spoon feed it to you? Funny, that you haven't looked through that, since you seem to speak with the false confidence of a white man.
2
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
Then do what I do - cut and paste. Which is a skill many races and genders master.
1
u/Violet624 20d ago
Why is a simple smokejumper little guy so well connected as to get the backing of Bernie Sanders and an article in Esquire? He sure seems different than the smokejumpers I know. The rhetoric isn't matching the truth. That's the issue. Not the wealth. Russ at least seems genuine and has been making endless rounds across Montana talking to people. I'm not a campaigner for him, but your comparison makes me even more suspicious of Forstag 😅
1
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
Forstag is the nephew of Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nevada, net worth $9 million.
We’ve seem this before. In 1974 Max Baucus introduced himself as an average-guy young government attorney. Left unsaid was that he was heir to the Sieben livestock fortune, which takes up a big swath of territory between Helena and Great Falls.
-1
u/IndividualStep9314 20d ago
Probably because he's an actual progressive. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid at Cult Cleveland.
2
u/Rocky_Missoula 21d ago
Here you go, courtesy of Mt. Resistance:
“When you look at his campaign rhetoric and dive into his Q1 donor data, a clear picture emerges of a financial strategy that relies heavily on elite-level support from the very "billionaire class" that Sam Forstag claims to be running against.
Q1 Federal Election Commission data reveals a pattern of high-dollar donations to Sam from billionaire individuals who operate at the highest levels of global finance and media. Here is a detailed breakdown of the specific donors and their backgrounds.
The Media & Dynasty Tier The Murdoch Family ($14,000): Background: James Murdoch (son of Rupert Murdoch) and his wife Kathryn. Significance: This is arguably the most politically dissonant donor bloc for a progressive candidate. James Murdoch is a former 21st Century Fox executive. The family's wealth is tied to the very media empire that constructed the conservative information ecosystem that Forstag's own supporters frequently campaign against.
J. Sebastian Scripps ($7,000): Background: An heir and shareholder of the E.W. Scripps Company, which saw an $11.9 billion sale of its networks division. Significance: This is dynastic, inherited wealth. It reinforces the critique that Forstag is being supported by the "old money" and media elite of the East Coast, rather than the grassroots Montana base he claims to represent.
The Hedge Fund & Billionaire Tier Stephen Mandel ($7,000): Profile: Founder of Lone Pine Capital, a hedge fund giant with approximately $19 billion in assets under management. Forbes lists his net worth at approximately $5 billion. Significance: Mandel is a "Tiger Cub" hedge fund manager who built his career at Tiger Management. He is a prolific Democratic donor known for funding super PACs (like the Lincoln Project) and has been described by some philanthropy trackers as a "black box billionaire" because he uses foundations to mask the true destination of his massive political and charitable giving. His contribution to Forstag is a clear signal of elite financial sector buy-in.
Gaurav Kapadia ($7,000): Profile: Founder of XN LP (XN Exponent Advisors). His fund manages several billion dollars, and he is a prominent player in the concentrated, long-biased portfolio strategy space. Significance: Kapadia represents the "new guard" of hedge fund managers. Like Mandel, his donation isn't just a simple grassroots gift; it is a strategic investment from an individual whose professional life is defined by managing massive pools of capital for wealthy clients.
Social Media Posts Sam Forstag is building his entire campaign on the claim that he's a working-class outsider taking on the billionaire class and "dark money" interests. But the FEC records tell a story he doesn't want you to know. His primary campaign war chest is being fueled by some of the biggest names in Wall Street hedge funds and media dynastic wealth. He is happily taking maxed-out checks from hedge fund billionaires like Steve Mandel (Lone Pine Capital) and Gaurav Kapadia (XN), while also accepting $14,000 from the Murdoch media family. He's not running against these people he's running on their money.
The report shows a total of $54,050 received from 15 different Political Action Committees (PACs) and political organizations. Geographic Origin: With the exception of one $50 contribution from an in-state committee ("McLaughlin for Montana"), every other entity listed is based outside of Montana. These include organizations headquartered in major political hubs like Washington, D.C., as well as Maryland, Texas, Nevada, New York, and Massachusetts.
Proportion of Funding: According to the report, these contributions account for 12% of the campaign's total receipts for the first quarter. The facts from his own FEC filings: Hedge Fund Power: Maxed-out contributions from high-net-worth hedge fund managers like Steve Mandel (net worth: ~$5B) and Gaurav Kapadia. Dynastic Media Wealth: $14,000 from the Murdoch family and $7,000 from the Scripps family. The "Two-Tier" Scam: $17,500 of his general election cash is locked up and provided solely by these elite coastal donors.
It's easy to talk about "fighting the system" when the system is the one signing your campaign checks.”
3
u/uLL27 20d ago
Where is a source for these breakdowns? I can't seem to find anything when googling it.
0
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
Go to the Montana Resistance Facebook site, scroll down. Or go to FEC.gov and go to the 2026 first quarter campaign finance reports.
0
u/Sturnella2017 20d ago
This deserves its own post on this sub, especially with AOC coming to stump for him. Do you think you can do that?
0
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
I don’t get into original posting here, most everything I want to discuss gets brought up by someone else and I’m doing too much phone time as is - but feel free to disseminate anywhere you want
0
u/Sturnella2017 20d ago
Between the original post and this comment, this is a helluva lot of work for a candidate who’s not going to make it past the primary. It’s a lot of muckracking for something that will ultimately be futile.
1
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
Which candidate would that be?
0
u/Sturnella2017 20d ago
Neither Forstag nor Cleveland or even that other guy are going to make it past the primary. I concur with the analysis that Busse has this in the bag. Everything here [gestures broadly] is all for naught.
2
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
A very bad buy if so. Busse is the candidate most likely to be hit with an October Surprise; he was resistant to releasing to tax returns in 2024 and rightfully so, what came out was a bad look. Will be the perfect set completion for Bill Yellowtail, Rob Quist, and John Driscoll.
1
u/Sturnella2017 20d ago
I don’t disagree with you, but it looks pretty clear to me he’s going to win. I’d love any of the other candidates running to win -I’m not a big fan of losers making a second attempt- but I just don’t see it from my armchair.
What’s really interesting is that I just got a text saying AOC is coming next week to stump for Forstag. So that’s a huge juxtaposition: the info you shared on his backers on one hand, and the Heir Apparent of the Progressives on the other. What gives?
1
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
Hard to get a read in a world where reliable newspaper polls have ceased to exist, one more victim of media cost cutting.
I just can’t place much faith in DC people trying to influence Mt. politics anymore than I can authoritatively speak on Massachusetts elections - the chief sources either way are fragmentary national news bites or else supplicants pitching for money.
-6
u/IndividualStep9314 20d ago
Russ Cleveland is a millionaire. Why is he using donor dollars to pay himself for childcare?
2
u/Sturnella2017 20d ago
It doesn’t reflect well when you -or any staffer- responds to these comments with Whataboutism. Forget the other guy, what do you have to say about these accusations?
2
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
Assume your insinuation is that he collects campaign donations and uses them to pay people who take care of his kids? Well, want to hear more about that. Cut and paste source below.
4
u/Th0rn_Star 21d ago
Exactly. I mean, an Esquire profile for chrissakes? I get more circus vibes than actual nuts-and-bolts policy here. His career is impressive, but he’d probably be better used as a figurehead/public speaker than an actual lawmaker.
-2
u/Rocky_Missoula 21d ago
Which is kind of insulting to circuses. I think he’d do well as a background face for a real political ad.
3
u/Independent_Fix_9597 20d ago
Sam is not accepting any support from corporate PACs, AIPAC, or dark money. Same exact pledge you’ll see from Busse today, and the same pledge Russ took into 4 weeks ago when he saw that the unions weren’t supporting him despite his request and reimbursed the one PAC check he’d already accepted to turn it into a campaign platform.
The only PACs Sam has gotten support from are unions and progressive congress members like Bernie. His average donation is less than $60, and he still haw less than half as many maximum donations as Busse.
6
u/Violet624 21d ago
I got an unsolicited text about this guy yesterday from 'Bernie Sanders.' I really personally am turned off by how the out of state establishment has swarmed around him after he came into the race fairly late and are like 'this guy is just a fire fighter!' I feel really suspicious. Why him? I'm going to vote for Russ, since he is not backed by any pacs, etc, at a time when we are trying to change dark money funding in Montana.
2
u/BitterMarket233 20d ago
He spoke at the rally AOC and Bernie did in Missoula last spring. I'm sure now he is using those connections he made to cash in on this race.
It seems like normal politician stuff any of these candidates would welcome if they could get the endorsement.
I do think Sam has a much more polished big city campaign team working for him though. They seem to know how to hit all the political notes.
1
u/Violet624 20d ago
Out of curiosity, why did he speak at the rally? Was he speaking as a union rep? I only became aware of him when he entered the race in January. I tried to go to that rally but it was full by the time I made it to Missoula 😶
2
u/BitterMarket233 19d ago
He spoke as a federal employee (during doge cuts) and as a union guy. I thought he did a great job.
I live in Livingston now and this isn't my congressional district, but I think both Russ and Forstag would be a fresh start and something new vs Busse. I'd welcome either one as the candidate. Granted both Forstag and Russ seem to have their issues...Russ being a rich guy and Forstag seeming a bit too political polished/inauthentic.
Rains would actually be my pick as someone that would have the best chance of winning in the general.
7
u/IndividualStep9314 21d ago
Oh no! A progressive candidate that other progressives like! We must find a witch and burn it!
0
u/Violet624 21d ago
By other progressives, do you mean a bunch of out of state progressives that all of a sudden are chiming in on a Montana primary? It's weird and seems disingenuous to me.
20
u/EddieCheddar88 21d ago
Calling Bernie disingenuous is crazy to me. I feel like he has a lifetime of being on the right side of things and deserves the benefit of the doubt. Forstag seem like the unequivocally most progressive candidate here, no surprise he’s not getting huge support from Montana democrats
-2
u/Violet624 20d ago
It's disingenuous to accept money from a lot of out of state interests while Progressives in Montana are making strides trying to eliminate Citizens United here. I also do not like getting a random spam text message from someone who is clearly not actually Bernie Sanders about a primary candidate in my state. I'm sure the text came from an org associated with Bernie, but be for real. Our government in Montana is being run by people who won because of outside money. Progressives need to walk the walk and not give some bullshit 'I'm a humble smokejumper' story while somehow rallying intense support from outside of Montana powers. It does not read as authentic messaging and I don't think it is.
5
1
u/IndividualStep9314 20d ago
He's also received the endorsement of nearly every sitting elected democrat in Montana, but that probably doesn't count either because it doesn't fit his narrative.
0
u/Rocky_Missoula 21d ago
About the same effectiveness as 19th century Indian treaty commissioners riding west and determining who and who isn’t a “chief.”
0
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
Only if they don’t have their act together and aren’t media-savvy to go the distance, like the ones on “Charmed.” All of whom would make a superior congressional choice.
6
u/Rocky_Missoula 21d ago
At least we got slightly more than a paragraph of the log cabin origin story, which is more than the collective Western Mt. media has managed to produce; a constant theme is the reduced circumstances of early life. Apparently a schoolteacher-nurse combo parentage is insufficient now for middle class life. Extra nursing shifts and overtime are simply an accepted part of the profession, and as for the apparently wandering dad, unfortunately too early to blame on Trump Administration; George W. Bush as villain will probably have to do. Unfortunate there were not enough electrons in the online story to mention that Forstag's aunt is Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.), net worth $9 million.
0
u/Violet624 20d ago
Ooooh, is that why is has all this backing? Like at least be transparent about political roots and connections.
0
u/Rocky_Missoula 20d ago
Well, all that would get in the way of the “born in poverty, I had to construct my own ladder out of the cradle” narrative.
2
u/Violet624 21d ago
Also, the reason Hunter won in Kalispell is because the Republican ticket got split. I'm very happy he won, but it's not because of a blue wave here. This article is exactly the kind of thing that makes me suspicious of Forstag. It clearly does not actually know Montana.
4
u/Rocky_Missoula 21d ago
As far as Esquire goes for political coverage, look at one of their 1984 covers titled “The Neoliberals,” featuring a grinning Gary Hart heralding a new political era.
3
u/Rocky_Missoula 21d ago
Has the writer internalized every possible variant of the "there I was" story from World War II? A big feature of this DC-canned campaign has been the equaling of smokejumping with war heroics. A useful corrective - no one in Western Montana will ever deny smokejumping is dangerous work, and no one in Western Montana will ever deny its highly lucrative blue collar work tailored to appeal to high-adrenaline types, just like less celebrated occupations of offshore oil worker and bush pilot. The difference is - smokejumping activity is voluntary and high paid, unlike enlisted military personnel - who are required to go where ordered and undertake extremely more hazardous tasks for nothing remotely resembling smokejumping paychecks.
1
u/Rocky_Missoula 21d ago
And the “oooo, marry me cute firefighter!” vibe of the whole profile manages well to blow past the “substance” of the Ohio/Oregon expatriate’s camoaign - which is to denounce billionaires up front while palming their money in back.
From Forstag website:
“Sam isn’t backed by billionaires and corporate PACs. Sam’s counting on grassroots donors like you to pitch in and help grow his campaign.”
And from the Mt. Resistance site:
“When you look at his campaign rhetoric and dive into his Q1 donor data, a clear picture emerges of a financial strategy that relies heavily on elite-level support from the very "billionaire class" that Sam Forstag claims to be running against.
Q1 Federal Election Commission data reveals a pattern of high-dollar donations to Sam from billionaire individuals who operate at the highest levels of global finance and media. Here is a detailed breakdown of the specific donors and their backgrounds.
The Media & Dynasty Tier The Murdoch Family ($14,000): Background: James Murdoch (son of Rupert Murdoch) and his wife Kathryn. Significance: This is arguably the most politically dissonant donor bloc for a progressive candidate. James Murdoch is a former 21st Century Fox executive. The family's wealth is tied to the very media empire that constructed the conservative information ecosystem that Forstag's own supporters frequently campaign against.
J. Sebastian Scripps ($7,000): Background: An heir and shareholder of the E.W. Scripps Company, which saw an $11.9 billion sale of its networks division. Significance: This is dynastic, inherited wealth. It reinforces the critique that Forstag is being supported by the "old money" and media elite of the East Coast, rather than the grassroots Montana base he claims to represent.
The Hedge Fund & Billionaire Tier Stephen Mandel ($7,000): Profile: Founder of Lone Pine Capital, a hedge fund giant with approximately $19 billion in assets under management. Forbes lists his net worth at approximately $5 billion. Significance: Mandel is a "Tiger Cub" hedge fund manager who built his career at Tiger Management. He is a prolific Democratic donor known for funding super PACs (like the Lincoln Project) and has been described by some philanthropy trackers as a "black box billionaire" because he uses foundations to mask the true destination of his massive political and charitable giving. His contribution to Forstag is a clear signal of elite financial sector buy-in.
Gaurav Kapadia ($7,000): Profile: Founder of XN LP (XN Exponent Advisors). His fund manages several billion dollars, and he is a prominent player in the concentrated, long-biased portfolio strategy space. Significance: Kapadia represents the "new guard" of hedge fund managers. Like Mandel, his donation isn't just a simple grassroots gift; it is a strategic investment from an individual whose professional life is defined by managing massive pools of capital for wealthy clients.
Social Media Posts Sam Forstag is building his entire campaign on the claim that he's a working-class outsider taking on the billionaire class and "dark money" interests. But the FEC records tell a story he doesn't want you to know. His primary campaign war chest is being fueled by some of the biggest names in Wall Street hedge funds and media dynastic wealth. He is happily taking maxed-out checks from hedge fund billionaires like Steve Mandel (Lone Pine Capital) and Gaurav Kapadia (XN), while also accepting $14,000 from the Murdoch media family. He's not running against these people he's running on their money.
The report shows a total of $54,050 received from 15 different Political Action Committees (PACs) and political organizations. Geographic Origin: With the exception of one $50 contribution from an in-state committee ("McLaughlin for Montana"), every other entity listed is based outside of Montana. These include organizations headquartered in major political hubs like Washington, D.C., as well as Maryland, Texas, Nevada, New York, and Massachusetts.
Proportion of Funding: According to the report, these contributions account for 12% of the campaign's total receipts for the first quarter. The facts from his own FEC filings: Hedge Fund Power: Maxed-out contributions from high-net-worth hedge fund managers like Steve Mandel (net worth: ~$5B) and Gaurav Kapadia. Dynastic Media Wealth: $14,000 from the Murdoch family and $7,000 from the Scripps family. The "Two-Tier" Scam: $17,500 of his general election cash is locked up and provided solely by these elite coastal donors.
It's easy to talk about "fighting the system" when the system is the one signing your campaign checks.”
1
u/Various-Vermicelli8 14d ago
What exactly do you think is going on here with Forstag? He is the only democratic candidate fit enough to defeat republicans. Am I missing something?
1
u/Rocky_Missoula 14d ago
What I think is going on is a DC-based attempt to build a candidacy by flying in, spending a couple of days observing disparate regional parts like UM, smokejumping, social activism, etc. and then finding a willing local vehicle who has national connections to aggregate the above into a congressional campaign. Topped off by the assumption that Missoula dominates Mt. politics to the same extent that Portland (his home town) does Oregon’s. Aside from children’s crusade-style fervor, evidence is thin on the ground that he has an huge hidden reserve of support from Libby to Dillon to tap, and thinner still considering this is his first real political race. Rookie mistakes better handled and corrected at the downballot level are starting to pile up.
-8
u/McKeldinDangler 20d ago
Ryan Busse has better policies
2
u/brandideer 19d ago
Lol Ryan Buss is a horrible person.
3
u/Rocky_Missoula 19d ago
Everything thing Busse does reeks of a “George Costanza for Congress” campaign.
3
u/McKeldinDangler 19d ago
Yeah this was a stupid move.
3
u/brandideer 19d ago
Yes, but also a really, really slimy one that tells me a lot about his character. I don't think he really has any, to be honest.
1
1
u/ArtistAccomplished54 19d ago
Ryan has a couple strikes against him: He's an outsider (can we get somebody who has actually lived in Montana for the last 20 years?). His gun control/responsibility planks will be used against him with great fervor by the Republicans. Busse strikes me as the same cut of cloth as Forstag, just a generation older and a more establishment background.
2
•
u/AutoModerator 21d ago
As a reminder, please keep your discussion on topic towards Montana politics.
In general, please be respectful to others. Debate/discuss/argue the caliber of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban.
If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them accordingly.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.