MISSOULA, MONTANA—Walking around the University of Montana campus hours before the homecoming football game (Go Griz), I kept seeing people wearing jersey number 37. This isn’t typically the number of the star quarterback, so I asked somebody about it. They explained a tradition going back more than 40 years, started by a fullback named Kraig Paulson, a Montanan from a tiny town called Plentywood.

After a four-year career marked by gritty play over raw talent, Paulson gave his number 37 to another native Montanan, who gave it to another, and so on. Eighteen Grizzlies have now worn #37, which now stands in for the “Spirit of Montana… hard work, dedication to the team, and tough play on the gridiron,” according to the team website.

The Republican governor of Montana couldn’t wear #37; Greg Gianforte is from San Diego. Its two GOP House members are Baltimore-born Matt Rosendale and Ryan Zinke, who is at least from Bozeman but who spends much of his time in Santa Barbara. And the hope of Republicans nationwide to win back the U.S. Senate rests on the shoulders of Tim Sheehy, a Minnesotan who got involved in Montana politics as a donor for other Republicans.

Gianforte owned a software company that he sold to Oracle; Steve Daines, Montana’s GOP senator, was an executive at Procter & Gamble and then joined Gianforte’s firm. (Daines was born in Los Angeles, but moved to Montana when he was two.) Rosendale was a real estate developer; Zinke and Sheehy are ex-military, but Zinke became a property manager, while Sheehy started a company that benefits mostly from federal contracts. There’s an archetype for this generation of Montana Republicans, in other words, that doesn’t jibe with the Spirit of Montana: They’re mostly out-of-state millionaires.

By contrast, when I ran into Jon Tester on a street corner in Missoula, he was in a tractor.