SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Republicans, of course, are exultant about Tuesday's election results, and perhaps especially in Montana, there the party completed a decades-long effort to win every statewide elected office, finally defeating the three-term Democratic Senator Jon Tester. Montana Public Radio's Shaylee Ragar has the view from the state.
SHAYLEE RAGAR, BYLINE: A few days after Election Day, which coincided with Montana's first snowstorm of the season, the mountaintops surrounding the state capital are dusted with snow. A few miles south, at The Hardware Cafe in Montana City, mechanic Brian French is having breakfast and feeling relieved.
BRIAN FRENCH: I was really depressed before the election, and I feel like a new man.
RAGAR: Depressed, French says, because the presidential race looked tight, and he didn't want former President Donald Trump to lose. French owns an auto repair shop and said he was thinking of taking drastic measures if Democrats had won the White House.
FRENCH: I considered closing up my business. I - there's no sense fighting.
RAGAR: French says inflation has been tough. He hopes Trump will force the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates and follow through on his promise of mass deporting undocumented immigrants. He was also happy to see former Navy Seal and first-time candidate Tim Sheehy beat 18-year incumbent Democrat Jon Tester, who he says has been disingenuous.
FRENCH: He's a Democrat, but he acts like a Republican when he wants to get reelected, so we finally put him in this place - sent him home.
RAGAR: Tester has long maintained a moderate position in an ever-polarizing environment. In his campaign ads, Republicans for Tester said they backed him. Tester also often distanced himself from the Biden administration. Democrats have held at least one U.S. Senate seat in Montana for more than a hundred years, but not anymore. The morning after the election, Tester called Sheehy to wish him well.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JON TESTER: And I told him work hard, keep Montana the greatest state in the greatest country in the world.
RAGAR: Montana's days of purple politics are in the rearview mirror for now. It reelected its Republican governor, and the party kept both of Montana's U.S. House seats.
DON KALTSCHMIDT: We are now officially a completely red state.
RAGAR: Don Kaltschmidt is chair of the Montana GOP. Running for his third term last year, he asked party members to give him the chance to defeat Tester. Kaltschmidt says that was no easy feat.
KALTSCHMIDT: He has proven himself to be a wily opponent.
RAGAR: After the election, Kaltschmidt announced on social media that he would step down his chair, having accomplished his goal. All told, the candidates and outside groups spent more than $277 million on Montana's U.S. Senate race, according to data from OpensSecrets. Senator-elect Tim Sheehy won despite several controversies that plagued his campaign, including conflicting stories about how he sustained a gunshot wound and questions about the financial health of his aerial firefighting company. The wealthy businessman ran on Donald Trump's endorsement, saying the returning president would need a Republican Senate to push his priorities forward. At his election night watch party at a ritzy hotel in Bozeman, Sheehy addressed the state's working class.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TIM SHEEHY: To the people who work with your hands, our ranchers and farmers who make this economy run, you are the people that we have to make this economy work for again.
RAGAR: Back at The Hardware Cafe, mechanic Brian French says he feels Democrats look down their noses at Republican voters.
FRENCH: That's what the country's had enough of is people talking at us, telling us what we are. We're all hard-working.
RAGAR: He's glad to see people who think like him come into power.
For NPR news, I'm Shaylee Ragar in Helena, Montana. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.