Get an insider’s look into what’s happening in and around the halls of power with expert reporting, analysis and insight from the editors and reporters of Montana Free Press. Sign up to get the free Capitolized newsletter delivered to your inbox every Thursday.September 19, 2024About Those ‘Excluded’ White FarmersThe Crow community was still fuming over a leaked audio recording of Senate candidate Tim Sheehy talking about tribal members “drunk at 8 a.m.” when a new TV ad began circulating about “white farmers” being excluded from a federal farm aid program.“They’re just saying it out loud, now,” Rae Peppers told herself in disbelief. The ad struck the Crow tribal member and former Democratic state legislator as blatant race-baiting, and it arrived as Tribal Chairman Frank White Clay was being pressured to call out Sheehy about a campaign anecdote that had offended many Indigenous Montanans. Though the ad never identified the aid program, Peppers recognized it. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had set up a booth at Crow Native Days in June. Tribal members with small farm and ranch operations inquired about debt forgiveness. Peppers said she collected USDA literature to learn more about DFAP, short for Discrimination Financial Assistance Program. In the American West, the 228 Montana farmers who qualified for the assistance are second only to California’s 1,059, according to USDA data. Just as the ad said, Montana’s incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester had voted for the program,twice, the second time to fix it. Senate Leadership Fund, Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell’s $124 million unaffiliated super PAC, used for supporting candidates and non-coordinated expenses, paid for the ad.“You know, the USDA runs more than 60 direct and indirect programs for farm aid. And we’re talking about two, possibly just one, for Indians, farmers that have Indianness in them,” said Susan Webber, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe. Webber, a Democrat, serves on the Agriculture Committee in the state Senate. “They [non-Indigenous farmers] get direct payments, they get crop insurance. In 2019 they received $22 billion in government payments. Indians don’t get that. “The average market value for products sold by a Native American-owned farm is around $50,000 a farm, compared to white-owned farms and ranches, which is approximately $187,000. They’re not the big conglomerates,” Webber said of Indigenous farmers. “They’re just regular farmers. Really, it confirms that Native Americans are just eking out a living. And the commercial has these white disadvantaged farmers saying they’re disadvantaged? They got $22 billion.”Montana ranks 18th nationally as a recipient of farm aid, according to the Environmental Working Group, a subsidy watchdog. Payments to Montana farmers in 2023 totaled $450 million, with crop insurance accounting for 48%. Ten different programs issued payments to 20,377 applicants, some of whom are counted in more than one program. Two of them are featured in the “white farmer” ad. Still, 61% of Montana farmers received no subsidy.In eastern Montana, where 82% of the state’s agricultural products are produced, the 2022 ag census counted 640 Indigenous farmers and 29,053 white farmers.The Discrimination Financial Assistance Program wasn’t a slam dunk for Congress. The first version — the one referenced by McConnell’s leadership fund ad, stalled in court. The $4 billion program was part of the American Rescue Plan, which passed in March 2021.Scott Wynn, a white farmer in Florida, sued USDA because he didn’t qualify under DFAP’s race-specific loan forgiveness terms, which were designed to address generations of racial injustice in American farm policy. The U.S. District Court, Middle Florida District, blocked the program before it started. Later, Wynn prevailed.Congress then retooled the program and passed a smaller version within the Inflation Reduction Act in late summer 2022. The terms were broadened to accommodate non-racial forms of discrimination. Tester voted for the Inflation Reduction Act.The decades old backstory of the loan-forgiveness program’s funding involves lawsuits filed by minority farmers who suffered decades of discrimination. For Indigenous farmers, the case was George and Marilyn Keepseagle v. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The Standing Rock Sioux couple proved that because of race they had been denied low-interest loans and other USDA services. The government settled, agreeing to forgive $80 million in loans, while also paying $680 million in damages to 3,600 Indigenous farmers. Two years before Keepseagle was filed, Black farmers sued on the same grounds in Timothy Pigford v. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, leading to a $1.06 billion settlement for nearly 16,000 Black farmers.—Tom LuteySuspicious Recruiter SpotlightedAfter Capitolized reported in June about the recruitment of Libertarian Congressional candidate Dennis Hayes by a secretive online group, Helena resident Paul Golter came forward with a similar recruitment story. Like Hayes, who is now a candidate for U.S. House in Montana’s western district, Golter had been contacted on Facebook Messenger by Patriots Run Project. “Hi Paul – Would you consider running for office as a conservative Independent?” read the PRP pitch. “We need people like you to stand up with Trump and run against the Uniparty Establishment. We are willing to roll up our sleeves to help. Is this something you would consider?” Golter was interested, but only if he could help end medical malpractice and government corruption. The COVID-19 vaccine was a major concern for the Helena man, so much so that he had disapproved of Donald Trump, as president, backing “Operation Warp Speed,” the plan that accelerated the development of COVID vaccines. Montana Republican U.S. Sen. Steve Daines was the plan’s bill sponsor in the Senate.Patriots Run Project would later be found to be a secretive group operating at least 96 different Facebook accounts and 12 different social groups as it recruited third-party candidates for federal elections. Facebook owner Meta would later report that PRP was acquiring accounts from Bangladesh. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a cyber watchdog, identified 14 states in which PRP, unincorporated and unregistered as a political group, and with no people identified as part of its membership, was recruiting candidates. Meta gave Patriots the boot. This week, the Associated Press identified more Patriots recruits, including Joe Wiederien of Des Moines, Iowa, now an independent candidate for the U.S. House. In Iowa, where Wiederien needed at least 1,726 signatures to get on the ballot, Patriots Run Project provided them, AP reported.Similarly in Montana, the group covered Hayes’ $1,740 filing fee, meeting him at a Helena bank to deposit the funds.The Associated Press found that PRP recruits in some states had paperwork signed by consultants and treasurers used by Democratic campaigns, and Republicans have suggested that PRP is a plot to siphon votes from GOP congressional candidates, though Democrats insist otherwise. The GOP wants the Federal Elections Commission to investigate. —Tom LuteyGreen Gets GreenlightThe Green Party candidate in Montana’s U.S. Senate race won a rare ruling Tuesday from the Montana Supreme Court and will remain on the U.S. Senate ballot. The Montana Democratic Party had asked the High Court to block Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen from certifying candidate Robert Barb from the general election ballot, arguing that the Greens hadn’t followed their own rules in appointing Barb to replace Green primary winner Michael Downey. Downey withdrew from the general election on Aug 12. Rivals in the June primary, the two candidates had traded accusations this spring of being decoys, Downey for Democrats, Barb for Republicans.Barb has several social media posts, including some mocking climate change concerns, that Democrats pointed to as proof his politics were several shades redder than chartreuse. This election is the third since 2018 that Democrats sued to remove Greens from the ballot. This time the party was tripped up by a new law requiring plaintiffs seeking temporary restraining orders to prove they are likely to succeed on the merits of their case. Democrats failed to persuade the Supreme Court that a lower court judge had erred by ruling against the party Sept. 3.The Sept. 17 ruling means that both Greens and Libertarians will have candidates on the ballot for U.S. Senate. Republicans had tried to persuade Libertarian Sid Daoud to drop out, flying the Kalispell resident to Bozeman to meet with Donald Trump at a rally for Republican candidate Tim Sheehy, who has been leading incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in five different polls since August. —Tom LuteyOn BackgroundMontana Democrats sued to keep Green Party candidates off the ballot in 2018 and 2020, arguing that Republican meddling had benefited the minor party. Before the “white farmers” ad that offended Native Americans, leaked audio recordings of Tim Sheehy sharing anecdotes about Indians and alcohol angered Indigenous leaders.   When we looked at spending by Senate Leadership Fund in the Montana Senate race through August, the political action committee had spent $430,000.The post Tribes Take Another Elbow from Senate Race Rhetoric  appeared first on Montana Free Press.