Damning new reporting revealed Sheehy ignored months of outreach from Montana’s Jewish community and leaders over antisemitic posts and staffers

Helena, MT – Damning new reporting from the Daily Montanan reveals that for months, Tim Sheehy has stonewalled and evaded questions from leaders in Montana’s Jewish community about antisemitism in his campaign for U.S. Senate.

Sheehy’s campaign ran an antisemitic campaign ad featuring images “harkening back to an antisemitic trope that Jews secretly control politics.” Shortly after, reporting revealed that one of Sheehy’s campaign staffers promoted antisemitic social media posts – and Sheehy’s campaign ignored calls from the Montana Association of Rabbis to remove the staffer from payroll.

According to the Daily Montanan: 

“The Montana Jewish Project reached out to Sheehy’s campaign repeatedly in the days following the original post. It heard nothing. It reached out to several other Republicans who knew the campaign, only to hear nothing.”

Read more below:

Daily Montanan: Jewish leaders in Montana concerned about Sheehy, Gallatin Co. Republicans posting
By Darrell Ehrlick
August 7, 2024

• When the memes started appearing, many leaders in Montana’s Jewish community thought that U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy was probably not aware of the deep roots of the cartoon.
   
• They thought the same might be true of the Gallatin County Central Republican Committee, after another meme popped up in the middle of June.
   
• But now, most of those leaders don’t know what to think because both the Sheehy camp and the Republican leadership in one of Montana’s largest communities remain silent and non-responsive to two social media messages they’ve posted depicting Jewish leaders controlling other liberal politicians by puppet strings, harkening back to an antisemitic trope that Jews secretly control politics, the media or banking.
   
• Memes aren’t the only issue; comments from a campaign staffer also have raised concerns, and those same Jewish leaders weren’t the only ones taking notice.
   
• They heard from fellow Jews and concerned citizens reacting to the postings. When the Daily Montanan reached out earlier this summer, most said they didn’t want to talk about it until they reached out to the campaign and committee to have conversation.
   
• Since then, there’s been little response by the Sheehy campaign and even less response by the Gallatin Republicans to counteract the notion that they’re trading on old antisemitic tropes that depict Jews as secretly exerting control.
   
• Neither the Sheehy campaign nor the Gallatin County Republicans responded to questions or interview requests from the Daily Montanan.
   
• The Gallatin County Republicans posted a meme that featured a baggy-eyed cartoonish figure of liberal activist George Soros, who is Jewish, controlling former President Barack Obama, who is, in turn, controlling President Joe Biden and Vice President and now-Democratic President nominee Kamala Harris with a caption that said, “Our current situation explained.”
   
• The leaders within Montana’s small Jewish community reported that they, too, approached the campaign and committee wanting conversations. Those failed.
   
• Rebecca Stanfel is part of the leadership of the Montana Jewish Project, based in Montana’s first historical synagogue, Temple Emanu-el in Helena. 
   
• The Montana Jewish Project reached out to Sheehy’s campaign repeatedly in the days following the original post. It heard nothing. It reached out to several other Republicans who knew the campaign, only to hear nothing.
   
• Finally, Stanfel said she “went old-school,” and sent a certified letter to the only address she could find on Sheehy’s website. She was contacted by one staff member who said that the campaign couldn’t respond until later this month.
   
• In a recent interview, retired Rabbi Laurie Franklin of Missoula said that the memes play on popular antisemitic tropes, including that the Jews control the media, the Jews control the banks and there are political conspiracies of Jews controlling the political process.
   
• In Montana, Franklin said such ideas can lead to powerful results in communities where Jewish families make up a fraction of the population.
   
• “This shows profound carelessness and a lack of consideration for people who are Jewish,” Franklin said. “I see this as somewhat unbelievable. Who was doing the messaging, and why did they decide to publish this? How does that happen?”
   
• It is not the first time the Sheehy campaign has found itself being questioned about its candidate’s stance on antisemitism.
   
• Several political journals covering national politics noted the presence of Caleb Oriet, a Montanan active in conservative Montana politics with a history of controversial, even bigoted postings.
   
• Oriet was connected by payroll records filed through the Federal Elections Commission as working for the Sheehy campaign.
   
• Sheehy’s campaign didn’t not respond to national media outlets like Axios and the Daily Beast about Oriet’s status on the campaign, and it’s still unclear whether he’s affiliated.
   
• When the connection between the Sheehy campaign and Oriet was first discovered, the Daily Beast’s Riley Rogerson reported it this way on May 20:
• “The account belonging to the 21-year-old Montanan and self-proclaimed ‘Anglo-Saxon Protestant’ and ‘menace to society’ liked, for instance, a tweet that refers to Black Americans as ‘the most criminal, dependent, and socially destructive part of the population,’ and attacks GOP efforts to connect with Black voters.”
   
• After the article appeared, most of Oriet’s social media accounts were taken down, and it reported that his name on the Sheehy campaign website had been removed. However, the campaign also failed to answer whether Oriet was still involved with the campaign. Those questions went unanswered by the campaign when the Daily Montanan reached out it to it last week.
   
• At first, both of the Republican-based political advertisements look thematically similar, puppeteers controlling the strings of either politicians or institutions. Both attack Democrats.
   
• But the person pulling the strings, literally, in both ads happens to be Jewish. What people may not understand is the long history of Jews being accused of secret plots and political fixing. The idea and imagery of Jews controlling politicians and institutions has it roots centuries ago, but was used more recently in the pogroms of Russia and the U.S.S.R., as well as propaganda during the Third Reich in Germany.
   
• The American Jewish Committee reports that it’s closely tied to the idea of replacement theory as well as an idea of clandestine world domination.
   
• “Universally, it’s troubling and disheartening,” Stanfel said. “People who have brought these things to our attention keep asking, ‘Well, did they respond?’ And, we have to keep saying, ‘No.’”
   
• The decision to go public with their concerns happened only after weeks of silence and trying.
   
• “It’s important to call out hate of any kind,” Stanfel said. “But it’s not the most effective way to help a person or group understand that what they’re doing my be hurting people. We really tried a different strategy. We said explicitly: We want to talk face to face, phone to phone, or Zoom screen to Zoom screen.”
   
• Franklin said what many of the leaders most hoped for was a conversation, not a call-out.
   
• “And to have heard nothing,” Franklin said. “No opportunity to have the discussion and no answer is either bad administration or a sign that they didn’t not want to have a discussion.”