Montana congressional candidate Sam Forstag quietly removed Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and five other progressive lawmakers from his endorsement page, while still invoking their names to raise money behind the scenes.
Forstag, a Democrat running for Montana's 1st Congressional District, maintained a "National Leaders" section on his campaign website at samformontana.com that featured seven high-profile progressive endorsers as recently as June 9. By August 28, that entire section had vanished. The page now jumps straight from "Former Montana Elected Officials" to "Organizations," with no mention of the national figures who backed his primary campaign. Breitbart News reported the change after comparing archived versions of the site through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
The missing names include Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Rep. Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, and Rep. Lateefah Simon of California. Every one of them appeared on the June 9 snapshot. Every one of them was gone by August 28.
Forstag's campaign has offered no public explanation for the removal. Neither Sanders nor Ocasio-Cortez has commented on the change.
Whatever the public-facing website now shows, Forstag's private fundraising operation still leans on the same progressive credentials. A September 7 campaign email referenced both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez by name, telling donors that the two lawmakers backed Forstag because he was a "progressive brawler." The email is archived at politicalemails.org.
That two-track approach, erasing progressive endorsements from the page voters see while deploying them in donor pitches, is a familiar play for Democrats running in red-leaning territory. Montana's 1st Congressional District is not Brooklyn or Burlington. Ocasio-Cortez personally campaigned with Forstag at a rally in Missoula during the primary, but that kind of association carries a different weight in a general election.
Republicans are not letting the website cleanup go unnoticed. NRCC spokesman Christian Martinez issued a statement connecting Forstag's endorsement shuffle to 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 draws on Forstag's own professional biography. Forstag's LinkedIn profile lists him as a legislative program manager at the ACLU of Montana from December 2020 to May 2021, a role that involved full-time lobbying at the Montana Capitol. His profile describes advocacy for "poor, working and marginalized people." He later served as a partner at Central House Strategies, a lobbying firm, from November 2021 through April 2024.
His client list at Central House Strategies included Planned Parenthood of Montana, the Montana Innocence Project, the Montana Library Association, the Montana Food Bank Network, and the Poverello Center. He also helped lead the Montana Coalition to Solve Homelessness.
Forstag's advocacy trail extends beyond the lobbying disclosures. 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 publicly urged Montana lawmakers to vote against HB 112, a bill restricting transgender-identifying individuals from competing in women's and girls' school sports, and against HB 427, which would have prohibited certain gender-transition surgeries for minors and referrals for such procedures.
Four years earlier, in 2017, Forstag shared a post from Catalyst Montana opposing HB 609, a measure that would have asked voters whether public-school students should use bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their biological sex as defined in the legislation.
The ACLU of Montana, Forstag's former employer, has called for reducing "the role, resources and power of police" and investing in alternatives. The organization has also advocated for alternatives to cash bail and a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. A former ACLU policing policy adviser, Paige Fernandez, authored a 2020 commentary calling on activists to "defund the police."
Forstag's Republican opponent, Aaron Flint, has made the Democrat's progressive ties a centerpiece of his campaign. Flint, a conservative radio host and military veteran who served as an infantry platoon leader in Ramadi, Iraq, and deployed to Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula, has framed the race in direct terms. During the primary, he called Forstag a "Bernie bro" and a "far-left lobbyist for the ACLU" who "fought to get men in women's locker rooms."
Flint told Breitbart News Saturday in March that the September 11 attacks inspired him to join the military and described his congressional campaign as another chance to "step up and fight for your country." He carries endorsements from President Donald Trump and retiring Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana.
The contrast the two candidates present to voters in Montana's 1st District is not subtle. One is a Trump-endorsed combat veteran. The other is a former ACLU lobbyist who rallied with Ocasio-Cortez in Missoula and now hopes voters won't notice.
Forstag's campaign has not responded to the NRCC's characterization of his lobbying record or explained why the national endorsements disappeared from the website while remaining in fundraising appeals. The gap between the two versions of the campaign, one for Montana voters, one for progressive donors, sits in plain view on the archived pages.
The June 9 archive shows seven national progressive lawmakers proudly displayed. The August 28 archive shows them gone. The September 7 email shows them back, pitched to donors as proof of Forstag's progressive credentials.
Voters can decide which version of Sam Forstag is the real one. But when a candidate hides his endorsements from the public and highlights them in private, the answer usually isn't complicated.
