“What’s happening isn’t democracy, it’s bullshit”

Sen. Tester spoke to Democracy.News about fighting rampant political corruption and protecting public lands, issues he championed during his nearly 20 years in the Senate and advocates for today.

When Jon Tester, a third-generation Montana farmer, first ran for U.S. Senate, political donors spent roughly $17.6 million on both the primary and general election for all candidates. “That was too much money,” Tester told me. That first Senate race was in 2006, four years before the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Last year, during the 2024 general election, donors poured an incomprehensible $273 million into the race between Tester and his Republican challenger, Tim Sheehy, whose victory helped Republicans secure control of Congress. As Tester summarized, “What’s happening isn’t democracy, it’s bullshit.”

“The exponential increase in political spending has diluted voters’ ability to know the truth,” Tester said. “All this ad spending just adds up to people being more confused. The ads don’t help understand, they don’t hold anyone to account.”

Tester and I spoke about fighting rampant political corruption and protecting public lands, issues he championed during his nearly twenty years in the Senate and advocates for today.

Across the United States, there are 640 million acres of public lands that include national parks and wildlife reserves. A strong majority of Americans, and 70% of Montanans, across the political spectrum support protecting public lands.

Montana’s culture and economy is especially shaped by those parks and wilderness, as nearly a third of the state’s land mass is state or federal land. “The great thing about public lands is that you don’t have to be a millionaire ranch owner to enjoy these really incredible landscapes,” Tester told me. “They’re special places. You can go a lot of places and hear the cars honk and the sirens go by, but there aren’t a lot of places where you can go to get in touch with yourself, go learn about yourself, and you can do that by going out and spending some time on our public lands. It’s one of the things that makes America great.”

Selling off and leasing public lands is now one of the Republican Party’s goals. Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines, who has received over $1 million from the fossil fuel industry, has introduced legislation that would sell off the lands to oil and gas companies. Daines also reportedly, behind closed doors, negotiated with Utah Senator Mike Lee about his provision in the Congressional mega-bill that would have forced the sale of up to 3 million acres of public lands and enabled another 250 million acres to be put up for auction.

Ultimately, the sell-off provision was eliminated, but Montana Senators Daines and Sheehy voted for the mega-bill, which cuts millions in National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management funding and allows corporations to non-competitively lease unclaimed lands for just $1.50 per acre annually. The conservation group Wild Montana said in a statement that Congress had just laid “the groundwork for oil and gas corporations to lease up to 200 million acres of public lands across the West.”

“Once you sell the lands, they’re locked up, they’re gone forever,” Tester told me. He opposes selling off public lands because of their inherent value, but also because: “Selling off public lands is economically a terrible idea. In our state, we have a $3 billion economy that depends on those lands because of our outdoor industries.”

Everyday Montanans — who benefit from hunting, fishing, hiking, and making a living off the local economy — aren’t going to be the ones who benefit from land sales, Tester emphasized. “The people who’d buy up the land would be wealthy people, political donors, who made money on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley. This all goes back to campaign finance issues, to the 2010 Citizens United decision, because selling the land is all about [politicians] doing a favor to donors.”

What can we do about Congress prioritizing wealthy political donors over the rest of us?

Tester gave three main recommendations: First, pay attention to what elected officials do, not what they say. Daines, for example, issued public statements condemning the sale of public lands, after reportedly negotiating with Lee and other Republicans for a temporary carveout exempting Montanan lands from sale, without protecting the rest of the country’s hundreds of acres of public lands. “If you vote for someone who supports selling off public lands, you’re voting to sell public lands,” Tester said. The same applies for other issues, too. Don’t convince yourself otherwise.

Second: Go out and tell your elected officials what you think. “Townhall meetings are really important,” Tester said. “Showing up in person is a lot more powerful than writing an email or making a phone call. Go show up in person.”

Third: Believe change is possible and support it through campaign finance reform. “A lot of people are getting sick of this shit,” Tester told me, and that’s a positive sign. “In the end, we’re going to have a campaign finance system that works. We’re going to have legislation to make spending more transparent, spending caps will be put back on. There are a lot of good people out there working on this. It takes a long time for this stuff to happen, but people are so sick of this shit that I believe it’s going to happen.”