Happy Tuesday, Beacon readers! Mariah Thomas here to bring you your Daily Roundup this rainy afternoon, only one week out from Election Day. This past weekend, I took a reprieve from the chaos of candidates and campaigns and visited Missoula, where I attended journalism school. It was a good reminder that life exists outside a newsroom at this time of year — though I also have loved tracing the contours of this election cycle and what it will mean with all of you this fall.

All that said … let’s get into another dispatch from the campaign trail.

ICYMI: Vice President JD Vance took the stage in Belgrade yesterday alongside Republican congressional candidates Kurt Alme, who’s running for the U.S. Senate, and Aaron Flint, who’s in a tight race for the western congressional district against Democrat Sam Forstag. Like the president’s rally in Kalispell a couple weeks ago, VPOTUS and the other speakers, which included Flint, Alme, Gov. Greg Gianforte and U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, urged voters to get out to the polls to support the Republican slate of candidates. There was lots of great coverage of the event from several of my colleagues at other outlets around the state, who attended the event Monday morning.

While the VP was stumping for Flint in Belgrade Monday morning, Forstag was campaigning right here in the Flathead, which is Flint’s home turf. The Democratic smokejumper and union leader held a small business roundtable, took a tour of SmartLam North America’s facility in Columbia Falls and held a meeting with faith leaders in the valley yesterday afternoon. The busy day came after a Sunday rally in Kalispell, which his campaign said was attended by more than 100 people.

All of it is part of a final push to “get out the vote,” the same thing Republicans are doing across the aisle with the high-profile visits from Vance, President Donald Trump and U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who also visited Montana to push for Flint’s election last week.

At SmartLam (pictured above), a mass timber manufacturer founded by Casey Malmquist and based in Columbia Falls, Forstag and his team learned about the process of engineering wood products. Malmquist explained walls and floors are the majority of what SmartLam produces, and the manufacturer attempts to balance both aesthetics and structure in its efforts.

After the tour, Forstag told the Beacon timber is a critical industry in Montana, and one that’s on the decline. The Flathead Valley has only two sawmills remaining, down from nine 60 years ago. Flint visited F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co. — one of those sawmills — earlier this month and highlighted the same challenge. On the SmartLam tour, Malmquist said the manufacturer gets a lot of its timber from Stoltze, which is just down the road in Columbia Falls.

Forstag and Flint have found common ground in suggesting the industry needs to be revitalized and timber contracts should be easier to approve and move through the process. Forstag, however, emphasized Monday that maintaining environmental protections in that process remains critical.

And zooming back out to the broader picture and close race he’s engaged in, the Democrat suggested the Montana visits from high-profile Republicans in the weeks leading up to the election showcase his campaign’s momentum.

“We’re getting big crowds,” he said. “People are excited just to have a working person running who’s got more than just slogans and talking points — actually coming out here to offer solutions for how we, you know, maintain 75 jobs at a place like this … and how we finally introduce some balance back to our government and our economy so working people aren’t getting the shaft anymore.”

The hyper-focus on working people, which has been a key tenet of Forstag’s campaign from the jump, is the same message he hopes to drive home in the final push to Election Day.

“I would say it’s very simple, right?” Forstag said. “It’s what this campaign’s been about since the beginning: the simple notion that you should be able to work one good job in this state, in this country, and afford a roof over your head, and health coverage actually gets you health care when you need it.”

On the Senate side of things, Alme’s closest opponent in polling, independent Seth Bodnar, also has plans to swing through the Flathead and push voters to cast their ballots this week. He’ll be in town today, hosting an event at the Montana Taphouse at 5 p.m. alongside former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ryan Busse and Rachel Schmidt, vice president of the Flathead Rivers Alliance. The event is open to the public.

With all the candidates pushing voters to the polls, I’d be remiss not to remind you all that here at the Flathead Beacon, we’re still updating our election guide on a daily basis, so you have all the information you need as you cast your ballot.

If you’ve got a mail ballot, at this point, you’ll probably want to drop it off at your local elections office. If you’ve already sent it in, or you want to make sure you’re registered to vote on Election Day, you can check your voter information here: https://voterportal.mt.gov/WhereToVote.aspx. According to the Secretary of State, 39.85% of absentee ballots, or a total of 209,134, have already been received.

And if you need to register, don’t worry! You’re not too late. You can register to vote and cast your ballot on Election Day until the close of polls at 8 p.m. next Tuesday.

All right folks — that’s what I’ve got for you all today. Mariah Thomas, over and out. Onto the rest of today’s Daily Roundup.