A new report from the Daily Beast today shows that one of the Republican Senate candidates in Montana, Tim Sheehy, completely fabricated the story about “bootstrapping” and creating a successful business on his own.
In fact, in his own memoir, Sheehy revealed that his business’ success was reliant on money from his wealthy family.
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Daily Beast: GOP Star Tim Sheehy Forgot to Mention the Family Money in His ‘Self-Made’ Success Story
By Sam Brody | 12/08/2023
Key Points:
- As he introduces himself to Montana voters, top GOP U.S. Senate recruit Tim Sheehy has highlighted his experience “bootstrapping” the successful aerial firefighting company he launched in the state.
- Talking to party luncheons and interviewers, Sheehy’s success story about Bridger Aerospace has sounded like a gritty start-up tale that began with a dream and some savings, not “freebies,” as he put it in a podcast interview.
- But fresh information has emerged that undercuts Sheehy’s story of self-made scrappiness. And the details come from an unlikely source: Sheehy himself.
- In a forthcoming memoir to be released this month, titled Mudslingers: A True Story of American Firefighting, Sheehy divulges the hard work and determination that went into building Bridger Aerospace. But he also details the extensive financial support from his family that made its success possible.
- If Sheehy is hoping that talking up his start-up story will propel him to electoral success, however, his own memoir is having the ironic effect of revealing some cracks in that story.
- “As I discovered throughout this process, it’s almost impossible to enter the U.S. aerial firefighting market unless you are already in it or are an exceptionally wealthy family or individual,” Sheehy writes. “My brother and our finance lead, McAndrew Rudisill, eventually found our partner in the Blackstone Group.”
- On the campaign trail, that same candor about what it took for Sheehy to launch Bridger has not always been on display.
- At several events and in several interviews, Sheehy has repeatedly said that he built the company from “scratch,” returning often to the “bootstrap” imagery.
- Indeed, a voter listening to Sheehy’s remarks might be left with the distinct impression that he got no outside help whatsoever to start the company.
- “We started our company in my barn and just me and my co-founder, all veteran founding team,” Sheehy said at an August meet and greet. “And it was every cent we had from the military that we’d saved up and we bought one old plane from the government and developed a sensor software system to map wildfires. And then we bootstrapped it from there to create about 450 jobs, one job at a time.”
Published: Dec 8, 2023 | Last Modified: Jan 9, 2024