Jeff Bridges Backs Senator Jon Tester

You may recognize Oscar award-winning actor Jeff Bridges for his work in “Hell or High Water”, “True Grit” or The Big Lebowski”, but on Wednesday, Oct. 17, the actor stopped by MSU to campaign for Senator Jon Tester in the upcoming November election.

Bridges gave his support to Tester and encouraged the public to vote in this election as he spoke with student-led club, College Democrats at MSU, on the importance of voter turnout in Montana. Although a resident of California, Bridges has lived part-time in Montana for over 40 years and has spent a third of his time here supporting Tester.

Bridges said that voting was important because it is “how we participate in our democracy” and that “every vote counts.” Tester won the last senate election in 2012 by only 3,000 votes and out of the million residents in Montana, only about 682,000 are registered to vote. “An individual can change the future,” Bridges said, encouraging the current generation of college students, many of whom just turned 18, to turn in their absentee ballots or to go to polling locations.

Voters have the option to request an absentee ballot, which means that the county clerk will mail them ballots to their homes and all they have to do is fill it out and mail it back. The form to register for an absentee ballot can be found on https://www.vote.org/. If you aren’t registered for an absentee ballot, the above website also provides a way to find where local polling locations are and to check if you are registered to vote in your current state.

Along with Bridges, there are other notable people and companies also getting involved in this upcoming election. Patagonia is endorsing Tester, as the company believes he will work toward protecting the wild lands that make up Montana. They said, “this is not born from a desire to get into partisan politics,” as Patagonia did not mention that Tester was a democrat within their statement of support. Their main goal is to support candidates that vowed to protect public lands.