Tim Sheehy

Timothy Patrick Sheehy ( SHEE-hee; born November 18, 1985) is an American politician and businessman serving since 2025 as the junior United States senator from Montana. A member of the Republican Party, he is the youngest Republican U.S. senator and the second-youngest U.S. senator, after Jon Ossoff.

Sheehy was born in Ramsey, Minnesota, in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area, and grew up in a house on Turtle Lake in Shoreview, Minnesota. He attended St. Paul Academy, graduating in 2004. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a bachelor's degree in history in 2008. He was a Navy SEAL. He later attended Army Ranger School. In 2014, Sheehy founded Bridger Aerospace, an aerial firefighting and wildfire management company. In 2024, he defeated three-term Democratic incumbent senator Jon Tester. Sheehy is set to become Montana's senior senator when Steve Daines leaves office in 2027, and to be the co-dean of Montana's congressional delegations, alongside Troy Downing.

In 2023, Sheehy published a memoir, Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting. The Daily Montanan accused him of plagiarism in the book, giving four examples, the briefest a 27-word passage from Wikipedia. The memoir was not vetted by the U.S. Department of Defense Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR) as required.

In 2014, Sheehy founded the company Bridger Aerospace. Headquartered in Belgrade, Montana, it has provided aerial firefighting services in 24 states and two Canadian provinces. Upon founding the company, Sheehy was its only pilot, operating one plane and assisting ranchers with tracking cattle. In 2024, Sheehy resigned as Bridger's CEO to focus on his Senate campaign. The company was facing a dire financial situation: it had lost $77.4 million in 2023 and $20.1 million in the first four months of 2024.

In 2015 Sheehy spun off a portion of Bridger Aerospace that develops aerial surveillance and imaging systems to form Ascent Vision Technologies (AVT). The company specializes in jamming enemy drones, for the ultimate goal of shooting them down. AVT's technology was used to shoot down an Iranian drone in 2019. In 2020, AVT was acquired by CACI International for $350 million, netting Sheehy $75 million. In 2024, two former employees sued Sheehy, his brother, and their company Bridger Management, alleging that the Sheehys forced the two to sell off stock before the acquisition, which would have been worth about $3 million after the sale.

In 2020, Sheehy co-founded the Little Belt Cattle Company with Greg Putnam, another former Navy SEAL, who runs the day-to-day operations of the nearly 20,000-acre working cattle ranch, which borders over 500,000 acres of national forest. The company manages its own supply chain of sustainably raised Montana beef. In 2021, Sheehy received the nonprofit Montana Land Reliance's Conservation Award for "working to ensure the ranch 'will remain scenic and open space in perpetuity.'"

In June 2023, Sheehy announced he would run as a Republican against three-term Democratic incumbent Jon Tester in the 2024 United States Senate election in Montana. Republicans targeted the Montana election to gain a majority in the Senate.

The election was notable as the most expensive in U.S. history on a per-voter basis, with spending estimated at $487 per registered voter, mostly attributed to out-of-state "dark money" groups. Sheehy was among the personally wealthiest candidates running for Senate. He received $8 million from Blackstone Inc. CEO Stephen Schwarzman and about $47 million from at least 63 other billionaires and 37 of their immediate family members. Tester raised and spent significantly more money than Sheehy. Sheehy won the election with 52.6% of the vote.

During the campaign, Sheehy said his top three priorities were immigration, education, and the crisis at the U.S. southern border. He said that young women had been "indoctrinated" on the issue of abortion. He called himself "strongly pro-life" and also "in strong support of IVF". He was critical of 2024 Montana Initiative 128, a ballot initiative to establish a right to abortion up to fetal viability in the Montana constitution.

In an August 2023 town hall, Sheehy called for a border wall and blamed China for facilitating fentanyl trafficking.

Sheehy has said, "We have a Department of Education, which I don't think we need anymore." He proposes eliminating the department, which he says will save $30 billion.

On March 18, 2025, President Donald Trump announced that he would appoint Sheehy to serve on the United States Naval Academy's Board of Visitors. The service on the board is concurrent with his service in the Senate.

Sheehy was involved in a 2019 plane crash in which he was receiving multi-engine instruction. The plane crashed into a house, killing the flight instructor and injuring a person in the house. Sheehy sustained minor injuries. After inspecting the plane and interviewing Sheehy, who said he was not piloting it, the National Transportation Safety Board determined the instructor's actions led to the crash.

Sheehy lives with his wife, Carmen, a former Marine Corps officer, and their four children, who are home-schooled, on a ranch outside Bozeman. Before running for the U.S. Senate, Sheehy and his wife donated almost $6 million to various non-profits across Montana, with over two thirds of the donations going to support a neonatal intensive care unit at Bozeman Health Deaconess Hospital.