A GOP Senate Candidate Has A New Scandal On His Hands

The campaign of Montana GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy appears to have doctored a recent TV advertisement to remove a logo of the Property and Environment Research Center from the shirt he was wearing. PERC is a Montana-based think tank with a history of advocating for the privatization of federal public lands, which has become a central issue in the race.

Earlier this month, Sheehy’s campaign sent out public land-focused mailers to Montana voters. The mailer features a picture of Sheehy sitting at a campsite with his family and wearing a flannel shirt with the PERC logo clearly visible on one sleeve.

“Tim Sheehy knows public lands belong in public hands,” it reads.

This reporter posted the image on X (formerly Twitter), and another X user, an apparent Sheehy supporter, accused HuffPost of circulating an edited image.

The unidentified X user claimed that the picture had been altered to include PERC’s logo and accused this HuffPost reporter of “ yellow journalism .” (A quick reverse image search on Google showed that the same image, including the PERC logo, appeared in an opinion piece that Sheehy published Sept. 11 in the Ravalli Republic, a weekday newspaper published in Hamilton, Montana.)

As proof, the X user pointed to a TV advertisement that Sheehy released last week and that was filmed at the same time and location as the photo on the mailer. Sheehy is wearing the same shirt but the PERC logo is missing.

A close inspection revealed that it isn’t the mailer that was doctored but likely the TV ad.

In the ad, Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and millionaire businessman, talks about establishing roots in Montana and growing his aerial firefighting company. The Minnesota native calls Montana his “home” and says he’s running for Senate to “protect our values.” On his sleeve where the PERC logo should be, the stripes of his shirt appear broken and the colors mixed, each a telltale sign of editing.

A screenshot from the TV ad. Notice the lines of his shirt on his upper arm don't match.

HuffPost sent the still image, the TV ad and other Sheehy campaign material to Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at the University of California, Berkeley.

“In the two places where you can clearly see his right shoulder, the stripes on the shirt are misaligned,” he said of the ad. “In addition, at the 00:15 second mark, you can see a slight slippage of a region on the right shoulder where what looks like a copy-paste manipulation to conceal the logo moved differently than the arm. While this is not the most compelling evidence of manipulation, given the other video you shared and the still image, I think it is more likely than not that this video was manipulated.”

Sheehy’s camp wasn’t consistent in editing the PERC logo out of its material.

Footage from the same outdoor shoot appears in a pair of public land-focused TV ads. In one, released last month, the PERC logo ― a green pine tree above the letters PERC ― is clearly visible on his shirt.

That ad notably features K.C. Walsh, with whom Sheehy served on PERC’s board for about a year before launching his campaign for Senate. Walsh is the longtime former president and executive chairman of Simms Fishing Products, the Bozeman, Montana, manufacturer of high-end fishing gear.

As HuffPost first reported in June, Sheehy failed to include his post on PERC’s board in his Senate financial disclosure, a violation of Senate rules. Since its founding in 1980, the Bozeman-based nonprofit has called for privatizing federal lands , including national parks , and been a staunch opponent of Montana’s unique stream access laws, which provide anglers and recreationists virtually unlimited access to the state’s rivers and streams, including those that flow through private property. Sheehy later updated his financial disclosure to include his work at PERC.

The video is the latest in a fumbling, yearlong damage control effort from the campaign aimed at distancing Sheehy from his own stated support for transferring federal lands and recasting him as a public lands champion. As HuffPost first reported, Sheehy explicitly called for federal lands to be “turned over” to states and, more recently, enlisted a Montana hunting guide who supports a state takeover of federal lands to help paint Sheehy as an opponent of federal land sales and transfers.

Sheehy, a Trump-endorsed conservative, is running against three-term incumbent Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.). Along with his past support for pawning off federal lands, the Montana GOP platform , adopted in June, calls specifically for the “granting of federally managed public lands to the state” — a position that numerous polls have shown a majority of residents in Montana and other states in the Mountain West oppose.

Tim Sheehy, a Republican Senate candidate from Montana, speaks at an Aug. 9 rally for presidential nominee Donald Trump in Bozeman.

Democratic and conservation-focused political action committees have attacked Sheehy in numerous TV ads, labeling him as a threat to public lands and the Montana way of life. In response, Sheehy has repeatedly accused opponents of lying about his position and recently added a section to his campaign website titled “Public Lands,” in which he declares his belief that “public lands belong in public hands” and vowed to “oppose any federal transfer or sale of our public lands.” Since early August, Sheehy has released two TV ads aimed at convincing voters that federal lands would be safe if he is elected to the U.S. Senate in November. One ad featured Walsh, a current PERC board member, and the other starred Stryker Anderson, a Montana hunting guide who, when contacted, told Huffpost he was under the impression Sheehy shared his view in favor of transferring federal lands to states. Sheehy’s campaign promptly distanced itself from Anderson.

It is unclear why Sheehy’s team opted to scrub PERC’s logo from his recent ad about protecting Montana values after having left it clearly visible in campaign materials related to his public lands position. But it’s hard to see it as anything more than another botched attempt to clean up the mess Sheehy created for himself on this particular issue.

Sheehy’s campaign did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment.

In an interview with the right-wing media outlet Newsmax over the weekend, Sheehy continued to walk a fine line on federal lands, saying that Montanans “cherish their public lands” but “have a great degree of frustration” about how federal agencies are managing those acres and raised fears about Vice President Kamala Harris if she wins the presidential race.

“A lot of our federal agencies are acting outside of their scope,” he said. “Folks feel that, they sense that, they are frustrated by it. I think the Kamala Harris regime will absolutely unleash an even greater wave of federal government overreach, and that scares a lot of people.”