Union Smokejumper Faces MAGA Radio Host to Replace Zinke

Agriculture is of diminishing importance. The Bitterroot Valley and the farmlands surrounding Flathead Lake have an ideal climate for apple and cherry orchards. The Gallatin Valley, where Bozeman is located, was fantastic farmland, while Beaverhead County in the southwest corner has important cattle and sheep rangelands.

But the character of western Montana has changed. Mining is now ancient history except for the 15 Superfund sites the mines left behind. The orchards of the Bitterroot and Flathead have been subdivided into ranchettes where horses overgraze their paddocks. Bozeman is now a satellite of California’s Silicon Valley, with the farmland enclosed by city limits and housing unaffordable for those with normal incomes. Meanwhile, Beaverhead country is a playground for the ultrawealthy who compete to see who has the largest and best private hunting and fishing reserve. Currently, Rupert Murdoch is the winner with 340,000 acres and 29 miles of river.

Candidates cut from a similar cloth

In the midst of these changes, two candidates are vying for the open 1st Congressional District seat. There are many similarities between Republican Aaron Flint and Democrat Sam Forstag. Both have divorced parents. Both were raised primarily by their mothers. Forstag’s mother was a nurse; Flint’s mother worked multiple jobs as a waitress and at a hotel in Glasgow, Montana.

Their formative experiences land in that nexus between working and middle class. Both graduated from the University of Montana. Both were student body president and both have put their talents to use in public service. Their official campaign platforms are also similar in many ways. They focus on public lands access, forest management and making Montana affordable.

It is in life experience where the two begin to differ.

Flint, 46, is married and has three children. Following 9/11, he joined the military and was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was awarded two Bronze Stars. After serving in the Montana National Guard and Army Reserve for 20 years, he retired as a lieutenant colonel. During the years when he was not deployed, Flint built a career as a conservative talk radio host. One of his peers called him the “king of conservative MT radio.” He is proud of his endorsement by President Trump. His connection to Trump was sealed in March, when current Western District Congressman Ryan Zinke—who served as secretary of the interior under the first Trump administration—withdrew from the race and endorsed Flint as his successor.

Forstag, 32, moved from Ohio to Montana to attend the University of Montana. He became a smokejumper and was elected vice president of his local wildland firefighter union, the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) Local 60, which represents an estimated 800 U.S. Forest Service workers. He has lobbied for firefighters, the American Civil Liberties Union and the City of Missoula in the Montana Legislature.

Forstag’s record as a union leader and a former smokejumper has won over Montanans. This kind of public service is not taken lightly. There are only about 320 smokejumpers in the Forest Service. Their job is to stop new wildfires from spreading, and they are some of the first to respond in dangerous conditions in some of the country’s most rugged areas. Smokejumpers parachute from about 3,000 feet above ground, accompanied with firefighting tools and enough food and water so they can survive for 48 hours on their own. The job requires not only elite conditioning but excellent mental acuity and nerves of steel to help save public lands and lives.

Forstag is endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.-14). More recently, he also won the endorsement of Marc Racicot, a Republican who previously served as Montana attorney general, Montana governor and chair of the Republican National Committee. 

At the national level, the race has become one of multiple contests between MAGA and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. A September 28 poll by the firm American Pulse found Forstag trailing Flint by less than a point. Also in late September, Cook Political Report moved the race from “solid Republican” to “leaning Republican.”

Forstag’s potential to flip the seat would not only represent a rebuke of Trump and the MAGA coalition, but a real hunger among voters for political leadership that speaks to rural people’s concerns and represents the working-class.

Timber as fuel for fire and jobs

In 2001, the U.S. Forest Service banned new road construction on nearly 45 million acres of national forest land. Montana once had over 50 major sawmills and manufacturers employing thousands of loggers and mill workers. Today there are no more than six. This 2001 policy decimated the industry, even as it established protections for nearly 6 million acres of federal public land in Montana and nearly 10 million acres in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

In August, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced that she intends to rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. (The deadline for public comment is October 6.) She claimed that the elimination of logging has contributed to overgrown forests, resulting in immense fire danger.

This is where we begin to see daylight between Flint and Forstag. Flint supports repeal of the rule to encourage the return of the lumber industry, create new employment opportunities and mitigate the fire danger.

As a firefighter, Forstag too would like to see more intensive management of the forests, including logging. But he points to decades of underfunding and staff shortages resulting in poor maintenance of thousands of miles of existing Forest Service roads. He says new road construction will only contribute to the problem.

Stopping disease transmission to livestock

Brucellosis transmission from bison and elk to cattle is a huge issue for ranchers in the counties adjoining Yellowstone Park. Brucellosis has been eliminated throughout the United States except for the bison and elk in the park. Bison, which have a 50%-60% incidence, are currently not allowed to exit the park. However, the Park Service wants to increase bison numbers, which would inevitably increase the pressure for the bison to migrate. Meanwhile, elk, which cannot be contained, are transmitting the disease to cattle. When that happens, the cattle herd is quarantined, with serious economic impact on ranchers.

The more extreme bison advocates deny that this is even a problem. Consequently, bison and elk emanating from Yellowstone Park are a perpetual political football. Flint devoted at least one of his radio segments to the question and apparently advocates for solutions that support ranchers while addressing the challenges posed by wildlife management. This is a typical political non-answer.

Forstag sees it as another instance of inadequate funding for our national parks, forest service, and veterinary departments. These agencies work together to mitigate transmission of brucellosis to livestock. Better hunting access to public lands, including allowing “corner crossing,” so hunters can hop over fences where sections of public land meet at the corners of private land, will, in his estimation, help control the overpopulation of elk. Republicans oppose corner crossing, arguing that hunters violate a few inches of private airspace each time they climb over the corner. In practice, billionaire landowners benefit most by denying public access to public lands.

Restoring Country of Origin Labeling

In a free-ranging discussion with Forstag, board members of the Montana Cattlemen’s Association, made him aware of the importance of restoring mandatory country of origin (mCOOL) for beef for Montana’s cattle-raising community. He promised to support the law.

In 2015, Zinke, representing Montana’s at-large congressional district,  voted to eliminated mCOOL. What followed was a 40% collapse in the cattle market and years of below-cost-of-production prices, a major contributor to today’s low cattle numbers and high retail beef prices. Zinke now supports restoring the labeling of beef.

 In September, Trump called for support of mCOOL and the Senate Agriculture Committee included it in the draft farm bill making it safe now for Republican candidates to support it. Flint went a step further, saying he supports the labeling of all kinds of agricultural and food products, even though only beef and pork were affected by the 2015 vote. All other foods and manufactured products continue to be labeled.  

Bears coming out of the woods

Be Bear Aware signs are posted along highways in western Montana. Public service announcements advise campers, hikers, and hunters to carry bear spray, make noise while hiking, and not leave food where the bears can find it. Hunters are further advised to be extremely wary after killing game, as the bears have learned to associate gunshots with an easy food supply.

There are about 2,000 grizzly bears in Montana, with most concentrated in the designated population recovery areas associated with Glacier and Yellowstone national parks. So far in 2026, there have been two fatal attacks, most recently in August when a woman on a walk near her home was mauled. In September, a bow hunter survived and attack when he came upon a grizzly that had killed a cow. Livestock predation by the bears is on the increase and it is a definite concern for ranchers. In 2025, there were 34 livestock confirmed to have been killed by grizzly bears. Many more livestock deaths are suspected. 

The bear populations appear to have exceeded the carrying capacity—or the maximum population size a given habitat can sustain—of their official recovery zones and are moving towards the more populated areas of western Montana and along the streams flowing towards the east from the Rocky Mountain front. This eastern movement is a matter of concern for the communities, farmers and ranchers in Montana’s eastern plains. The consensus is that if residents in western Montana want to share their living space with a major predator, they should keep them there.

In July, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, along with the Republican governors of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, announced their intention to remove the endangered species protective status and transfer grizzly bear management to these three states. This would allow hunting to maintain the bear population at a safe level.

A number of organizations, including Earthjustice, the Sierra Club and the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, are challenging this proposed change. They claim there are still not enough bears to have a stable breeding pool. This makes the delisting of bears a political hot potato. Flint has said that he opposes trophy hunting of the bears, a safe political position for a Republican. Meanwhile, the Forstag has a much trickier political needle to thread. Bears are clearly feeling pressure to move off national park lands, but their advocates represent a core constituency for the Democrat.

The Forstag campaign platform is more detailed than that of Flint, which lists only five general campaign promises. Flint’s many radio broadcasts when he was an ultra-conservative radio talk jockey are hard to find on the internet, while discussions since he decided to run for office are more easily available and more carefully moderated.  

While campaign funding is comparable, with $1.3 million for Forstag and $1.2 million for Flint, October is when dark money will be turning up the heat with negative attack ads. We don’t know how much will be spent to muddy the sentiment against both candidates.

This race will ultimately come down to Montanans voting their values—and hoping their next representative can help put out the political fires in D.C.

A correction was made on October 12, 2026: An earlier version of this article misstated the occupation of Aaron Flint’s mother. It has been updated based on the candidate’s public statements.

Gilles StocktonMore by this author →

A third-generation Montana cattle rancher, Gilles Stockton raises beef cattle and sheep on five thousand acres in Grass Range, Montana. Stockton is an international agriculture development specialist, a member of the Northern Plains Resource Council, and the past president of the Montana Cattlemen’s Association. He is a regular contributor to agricultural news magazines such as Western Agricultural Reporter and the Tri-State Livestock News. Stockton advocates on behalf of the nation’s ranching and farming communities.