Smoke Jumper Sam Forstag doing his firefighting thing in Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains, August 2025. Photo courtesy Sam Forstag via Esquire. Not just your conventional centrist red-state Dem who promises to be less awful than Republicans, but a populist progressive Democrat named Sam Forstag. wielding a real Forest Service chainsaw while fighting a real wildfire, with very real flames close to him in the foreground. “Between fire seasons, I fought for working people in a state capital that too often ignores us,” Forstag told Fox News Digital.