Samuel Kelley Forstag

Campaign finance · Sam for Montana: July Quarterly 2026, through Jun 30, 2026

Raised $1,384,063.75 this cycle · spent $832,794.19 · cash on hand $550,079.11 · debts owed by the committee $0.00 — through Jun 30, 2026. Where the money came from (cycle to date, as reported): Individuals $1,219,839.18 (88%); PACs and other political committees $140,550.00 (10%); Party committees $100.00 (0%); Transfers from authorized committees $21,985.00 (2%); The candidate (contributions) $1,267.18 (0%). Where it went (itemized operating expenditures this cycle, FEC-processed through Sep 20, 2026): media/ad buying $270.9K; other $185.8K; individuals (staff, contractors, reimbursements) $29.0K; digital $18.9K; compliance/treasurer $17.2K; direct mail $13.1K.

Financial disclosure · Candidate report 2026

Candidate report (2026), covering 01/01/2025–04/03/2026; filed 05/11/2026. Reports 3 assets; highest reported ranges: Primary Residence $500,001–$1,000,000; Clearwater Credit Union Savings and Checking Account $1,001–$15,000; Reddit, Inc. Class A Common Stock (RDDT) $1,001–$15,000. Liabilities: Home Mortgage (Glacier Bank) $250,001–$500,000. Earned income: Salary, Sam for Montana $21,293.85; Salary, U.S. Forest Service. Also: 1 position listed (e.g. Partner, Central House Strategies); 6 source(s) paying over $5,000.

Western Montana Congressional candidate Sam Forstag · KGEZ

Radio interview · KGEZ Good Morning Show Excerpts from GOTV Intel's transcription: [03:32] “Yeah. And, shoot, the forest service ain't too much different. Um, there are massive inefficiencies in the federal government. We spent the last year and a half living through the aftermath of this Department of Government Efficiency. The inefficiencies they found were not the problem. The inefficiencies are not the people whose lives were turned upside down across Montana where in the forest service, most of the people that we lost were making less than 20 bucks an hour swinging tools in the woods. Um, and I think that when we win this seat, and when I'm in Congress, part of what I want to work on is how do we actually find efficiency in the federal government. Federal hiring right now takes nine months to hire a GS-4 forester. Nine months to hire somebody who's going to make 16 bucks an hour. What that does is make us spend a whole lot more money in the hiring process, and it makes it a lot harder to find good talent. So let's reform federal hiring. Let's restore direct hire authority so that you don't have to spend the better part of a year getting somebody into an entry-level position. Um, let's actually listen to the people who are doing the work on the ground. Because if you're working in forestry, well, you do know what some of the best solutions are to making sure that forest management is more efficient. And I think in healthcare and housing, that's the same case as well. So many of the best solutions come from the people doing the work on the day on a day-to-day basis, and so few of the people in Congress know what it's been like on the ground here for the last 5-10-15 years.” [05:40] “Oh, sure. Well, we talk about it in terms of efficiency, because the conservative solution here is to invest upfront in things like forest management and fuel-mitigation, fire mitigation. Uh, what we need are people stopping around the woods with a chainsaw in the front country, making sure that our communities are fire safe. Um, and an example I keep sharing with people is the Windy Rock fire, that we had just last summer. I was outside of Helmville. Not the most populous part of the state. 2000-acre fire cost the state $56 million.” [11:46] “John, I would say we should give people of all ages the option to buy into Medicare. And we should renew those subsidies that were let to expire this past year. So that, well that's the option of free healthcare for every working-class person in this country. And if we were to do that, if we were to give people the choice to join the part of our healthcare system that actually has lower administrative costs than private health insurance, we would all save so much money. Because it's like it says in scripture, I promise, you will pay every penny before you leave this place. We are paying every penny in higher health insurance premiums year after year. They just went up 24 to 27% across Montana one year ago to today. And right now we're paying every penny in worse outcomes and people living on the streets, 30% of whom have are grappling with mental illness or behavioral health disorders, and a complete lack of access to the sort of care that they need to actually deal with those things in the more compassionate, more cost-effective way. So let's give people the option to access healthcare. And let's give people of all ages the option, because you know who the cheapest people to insure are? It's actually young people.”

Q&A: Sam Forstag, Democratic western district U.S. House candidate · MTPR

Radio Q&A · Montana Public Radio Excerpts from GOTV Intel's transcription: [00:23] “Well, Austin, I've spent the last eight years doing wildland fire across Montana, across the West. I worked over in Condon for a few years, in Lincoln, and spent the last couple of years working at the Missoula smoke jumper base, and working as vice president of my union's local, which covers the Lolo, Bitteroot, Custer Gallatin National Forests. And in the last year, they fired about a quarter of the forest service between dose cuts, and all the rest, and in the course of that, I could not get a meeting, much less a phone call, with our congressional representative. And, well, after a year or so of that, I decided that if they're going to come and take all my co-workers and union members jobs, I'm going to come and take theirs.” [01:59] “Right now, what we need are big, bold, policy solutions to fix the housing crisis and our broken systems of health care and childcare in this country. But also, we need leaders who know how to work with folks in both parties and talk to people in both parties, rather than just gin up anger. And rather than just uh tell us that we ought to be more angry at the folks in the other party and that's why you should vote for this one this time, because that doesn't get us anywhere. And that doesn't solve problems. So, my hope would be and and is that when we win this election and get to Washington, well, we're still going to have a Republican in the White House, hopefully with control of the Senate and the House. And if we want to use that momentum that we're building right now, well, we need to be able to work with those folks to actually fix housing, and health care, and childcare, because there are a lot of big problems, and it does not feel like we got time to sit around and wait a couple more years to start fixing them.” [04:01] “Austin, right now, it is everything everybody talks, every time you go to a bar in the state, it is housing and it's health care. You should be able to work a full-time job here in Montana and afford housing and health coverage that actually gets you health care when you need it. And we are in a crisis when it comes to our system of housing and we've had a housing crisis before in this country. We had a housing crisis after World War II with a whole generation of Americans coming back from overseas ready to buy houses and build families, and you know what we did? The federal government stepped in on a bipartisan basis and invested billions in 1950s dollars to build hundreds of thousands of units of homes, to create the low-income housing voucher program, and there are a lot of flaws in the ways that we did that, but we got a whole other set of tools we could be investing in right now to make sure that you can actually afford a roof over your head and not end up doing a job like smoke jumping of all things, jumping out of airplanes into public lands to fight wildfires and still scraping by spending 70 to 80% of your income just to keep a roof over your head. That is not a working system and we deserve better and and we can still fix these big problems.”