Executives at two companies met privately with Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) and donated to his reelection campaign as he helped secure federal funding for their tech hub in Montana.
The leadership team of defense-focused artificial intelligence company Reveal Technologies and venture capital firm Next Frontier Capital, part of a consortium focused on defense technology, gave nearly $30,000 in personal donations to the Tester campaign and an affiliated joint fundraising committee, according to federal fundraising records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
The donations, given in small increments across a two-year time frame, coincided with a series of meetings Tester held with the executives and their lobbyists as he helped Headwaters Hub, a Montana business tech consortium, receive federal accreditation and ultimately $41 million in grant money approved through the federal CHIPS and Science Act last month.
Tester has long made clear his support for the consortium. In February 2023, he held a roundtable to encourage the Biden administration to designate Headwaters as a regional tech hub and, once that designation was granted, urged officials including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to award it next-phase funding.
But the donations have raised ethics concerns as Tester, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, runs for a fourth term in the Senate.
Richard Painter, a chief ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush and former Democratic House candidate, said Tester was no “different than the rest of them,” referring to other politicians who accept campaign donations from companies that stand to benefit from their advocacy.
But he called the contributions “indicative of what’s wrong with our campaign finance system.”
“I think we need to really tighten up, to say they shouldn’t be meeting with people who can make contributions at all,” Painter said. “This is the type of thing that doesn’t promote public confidence in the government.”
Tester joined other members of the Montana congressional delegation advocating the tech hub, hailing the grant as a chance to bring cutting-edge jobs to a rural state. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), his Republican counterpart in the Senate, also voted for the CHIPS and Science Act, lobbied for Headwaters to get funding, and claimed credit for its grant.
But Daines did not receive campaign donations from Reveal or Next Frontier; neither did any other member of the Montana delegation besides Tester, outside of a one-time $50 contribution Reveal made to Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) in 2022.
“Sen. Tester worked with Republicans and Democrats to pass bipartisan legislation that will help America outcompete China and allow a rural state like Montana to lead the nation in critical technological innovation,” a Tester spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “He is proud to have worked with Republicans like Sen. Steve Daines on this bipartisan bill to bring good-paying jobs back to the United States, secure our domestic supply chains, and develop next-generation technology right at home in the Treasure State.”
Tester’s office did not address questions about whether he was aware of the donations from Reveal Technologies and Next Frontier Capital. The spokesperson noted he “played no direct role” in which companies were chosen for the Headwaters Hub, while his campaign declined to comment and directed the Washington Examiner to his Senate office.
Tester’s relationship with Reveal extends back to at least March 2022, when Tester held a call with Reveal CEO Garrett Smith. Smith began donating to Tester a month later with a $1,000 contribution to his campaign.
Over the next year, from July 2022 to July 2023, Smith made periodic donations to Tester’s campaign totaling $3,550. On at least two occasions around the same period, in March and August 2023, Tester issued public press releases urging the Biden administration to select Montana to create the tech hub consortium that would become Headwaters.
In October 2023, the tech hub was ultimately awarded $500,000 in funds to establish itself.
Most of the meetings, listed on Tester’s public schedule, occurred after the creation of Headwaters, while the majority of the donations from executives began this year.
In January, Tester met with Smith, Reveal Director of Business Development Dave Caudle, and registered Reveal lobbyist Dan Sennott. Later that same month, Next Frontier founder and General Partner Will Price became his company’s first executive to donate to Tester’s reelection with a $500 contribution.
Headwaters submitted its grant application for $75 million in February. That same day, Tester publicly called for the administration to select them.
From March until the $41 million was granted to Headwaters on July 2, Smith, Caudle, and other Reveal executives, including Chief Operating Officer Andrew Dixon and Chief Product Officer John Laxson, contributed another combined $11,650 to Tester or his affiliated joint fundraising committee.
Over the same period, Next Frontier leadership gave $13,200 by way of three contributions from Richard Harjes, another founder and general partner.
All of the men extended donations in the days and weeks leading up to a June 24 meeting between Reveal, Next Frontier, and Tester that included representatives from the Air Force and Space Force. One of the donations occurred on the same day as the meeting.
The donations, in aggregate, are small compared to the tens of millions of dollars raised by the Tester campaign. But Painter said the donations present a possible conflict of interest and could be construed as an attempt to gain access to the senator.
“They want someone in Washington, and they give money, and then they get meetings, and then whatever happens, happens,” he said.
It’s unclear if or how much Reveal and Next Frontier stand to gain from the grant specifically. When asked how the funds will be divided among the 27 companies, associations, or public higher-education schools that comprise Headwaters, the tech hub’s executive director, Tim VanReken, described the organizations “working together to invest in and grow the capacity of Montana’s innovation and tech development ecosystem.”
“The funding will be used for a series of projects managed by the state of Montana, universities, and local non-profits,” VanReken said.
Not every company stands to receive the funding, according to other members of Headwaters. Nonetheless, Reveal was referenced in Headwaters’s grant bid, touting the company’s “innovations in Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) remote sensing technology, as reflected by Reveal Technologies’ rapid growth.”
Smith, its CEO, also thanked elected officials for helping secure the award in a press release on the day of the grant’s announcement.
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Reveal declined to comment about its donations and meetings with Tester, in addition to how much of the grant it expects to receive. Next Frontier did not respond to requests for comment.
Headwaters was one of 12 consortiums selected to receive additional funding out of the 31 regional hubs established across the country.
