Montana congressional candidate Sam Forstag removed seven national progressive endorsers, including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, from his campaign site, even as his fundraising emails still tout their backing.
Forstag, a Democrat running in Montana's 1st Congressional District, maintained a "National Leaders" endorsement section on his campaign website as recently as June 9. The section featured Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and five other progressive members of Congress: Reps. Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Robert Garcia of California, and Lateefah Simon of California. By August 28, the entire section had vanished. Breitbart News reported that archived snapshots of the site confirm the change: the endorsement page now jumps straight from "Former Montana Elected Officials" to "Organizations," with no mention of the national lawmakers who backed Forstag during his primary.
The timing matters. Forstag secured those progressive endorsements to win his primary. Ocasio-Cortez personally campaigned with him at a rally in Missoula. Sanders lent his name to the effort. Now, heading into a general election in a state that leans heavily Republican, those names have disappeared from public view, at least on the website.
But not from the fundraising operation. On September 7, Forstag's campaign sent a fundraising email that still invoked both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez by name, telling donors they backed him because he was a "progressive brawler." The campaign, in other words, is happy to use the progressive brand to raise money while hiding it from voters browsing the endorsement page.
The National Republican Congressional Committee noticed the change. NRCC spokesman Christian Martinez issued a statement tying Forstag to his progressive endorsers and his professional history:
"Socialist lobbyist Sam Forstag can scrub Bernie Sanders and AOC off his website, but he cannot bleach them out of his political DNA. A last-minute campaign facelift won't erase years of lobbying for far-left groups that fought to allow men to compete in women's sports and allow sex changes to be performed on children without their parents' permission, all while backing tax hikes that would hammer working Montana families trying to get by."
Martinez's characterization of Forstag as a "socialist lobbyist" is the NRCC's framing, but the professional record it points to is Forstag's own. His LinkedIn profile shows he served as legislative program manager for the ACLU of Montana from December 2020 to May 2021, a roughly five-month stint that included full-time lobbying at the Montana Capitol. His listed portfolio covered criminal justice reform, voting rights, indigenous justice, immigrant rights, and the state budget. He coordinated with partner organizations and participated in coalitions focused on criminal justice, immigrants' rights, and voting rights.
The ACLU's national posture during that period is worth noting. In 2020, Paige Fernandez, then the ACLU's policing policy adviser, authored a commentary calling for activists to "defund the police." The organization has also advocated alternatives to cash bail and a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Forstag's campaign has not publicly explained why the endorsement section was removed, and no statement from Forstag addressing the change appears in available reporting.
After leaving the ACLU of Montana, Forstag became a partner at Central House Strategies, a role he held from November 2021 to April 2024. His LinkedIn profile describes the work as advocating for policies benefiting "poor, working and marginalized people." The client list included Planned Parenthood of Montana, the Montana Innocence Project, the Montana Library Association, the Montana Food Bank Network, and the Poverello Center. His portfolio spanned homeless shelter funding, public-library funding, eviction reform, medical care for unhoused Montanans, sex education, the death penalty, and legislation affecting librarians and teachers. He also helped lead the Montana Coalition to Solve Homelessness.
Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, has been building a national political footprint that extends well beyond Montana. The New York Post reported that she has traveled to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, Montana, and other states in recent months, stumping with Sanders on a "Fighting the Oligarchy" tour. When asked directly about a 2028 presidential run, she deflected: "They assume that my ambition is positional... my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country."
Her rising 2028 presidential odds and growing national profile make her endorsement a double-edged proposition for candidates in red-leaning districts. An AOC rally in Missoula might energize a primary electorate. In a general election, it hands the opposition a ready-made attack ad.
The NRCC's critique zeroes in on transgender-related policy, and Forstag's own public statements provide the foundation. In 2021, he praised the "strength and courage" of LGBTQ people and criticized elected leaders for trying to "score political points at the cost of minority groups." He urged Montanans to tell their lawmakers to vote "NO" on two bills: HB 112, which restricted transgender-identifying individuals from participating in women's and girls' school sports, and HB 427, which would have prohibited certain gender-transition surgeries for minors and referrals for such procedures.
His involvement predates his ACLU tenure. In 2017, Forstag shared a post from Catalyst Montana opposing HB 609, a bill that would have asked voters whether public-school students should be required to use bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding with their biological sex as defined by the legislation.
That record is what Aaron Flint, the Republican candidate in Montana's 1st District, has seized on. Flint, a conservative radio host, military veteran, and host of the Montana Talks statewide radio program, has called Forstag a "far-left lobbyist for the ACLU" who "fought to get men in women's locker rooms." Flint, who served as an infantry platoon leader in Ramadi, Iraq, and also deployed to Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula, carries endorsements from President Donald Trump and retiring Rep. Ryan Zinke. In a March interview on Breitbart News Saturday, Flint said the September 11 attacks inspired him to join the military and described his congressional campaign as another opportunity to "step up and fight for your country."
The contrast between the two candidates could hardly be sharper. One is a combat veteran endorsed by the president. The other is a former ACLU lobbyist and Planned Parenthood ally who courted the progressive wing's biggest names to win a primary and is now quietly tucking them out of sight.
The gap between Forstag's public-facing website and his donor-facing communications is the core of the problem. The website now shows no trace of Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, or any of the five other national progressives who endorsed him. But the September 7 fundraising email, sent weeks after the endorsement section disappeared, still leans on those names to open wallets. Forstag's campaign called him a "progressive brawler" in the same breath as invoking Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez.
That kind of two-track messaging is not unusual in competitive House races. Candidates routinely soften their image for general-election voters while keeping the base engaged through direct outreach. But the scale of the scrub here, seven national lawmakers removed in one sweep, and the simultaneous reliance on those same names in fundraising suggest a campaign that knows its primary-season brand is a liability in a Montana general election.
The broader Democratic Party faces the same tension. Democratic leaders have acknowledged growing alignment between the party mainstream and democratic socialists on key issues. That alignment may play well in Brooklyn or San Francisco. In Montana's 1st District, it is a weight around a candidate's neck, which is presumably why Forstag decided to cut the rope, at least on the endorsement page.
Ocasio-Cortez's own political trajectory only compounds the difficulty. Her national travel, her progressive tour with Sanders, and her willingness to dismiss scrutiny of controversial progressive figures keep her in the headlines, headlines a Montana Democrat running in Trump country would rather voters not connect to his name.
Forstag can delete a webpage. He cannot delete the rally in Missoula, the fundraising emails, or the years he spent lobbying for the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. Montana voters will decide whether the makeover is a fresh start or a cover-up, and they tend not to reward candidates who campaign as one thing in private and another in public.