Troy Downing (born March 4, 1967) is an American politician and businessman serving as the

Montana state auditor The Montana State Auditor is a constitutional officer in the executive branch of government of the U.S. state of Montana. The State Auditor is elected once every four years, concurrent with the state's gubernatorial election and the U.S. presid ...

. Prior to the 2020 election, Downing worked as a real estate developer and technology entrepreneur.

Early life and education

Downing is a native of Indio, California. He earned a Bachelor of Science in applied mathematics and computer science from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

Career

After college, Downing founded WebCal, a web calendar company that was later acquired by

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

. Downing enlisted in the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...

after the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

. During his service, Downing worked as a pilot and engineer and was deployed to

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

twice. Downing is the founder and CEO of AC Self Storage Solutions, a self-storage and real estate investment firm based in Carlsbad, California. Downing was a candidate in the

2018 United States Senate election in Montana The 2018 United States Senate election in Montana was held on November 6, 2018, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the State of Montana, concurrently with other elections to the United States Senate, elections to the Unit ...

, placing third in the Republican primary. Downing was elected

in the 2020 election.

Personal life

Downing built a vacation home in

Big Sky, Montana Big Sky is an unincorporated census-designated place (CDP) in Gallatin and Madison counties in southwestern Montana, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 2,308. It is southwest of Bozeman. This unincorporated community st ...

in 2000 and moved there full-time in 2009. In 2005, Downing was accused of abuse and failure to pay child support by an ex-wife. During the 2020 election, after court documents were released, he denied the allegations. In 2017, Downing was charged with hunting license violations. Downing and his wife, Heather, have four children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Downing, Troy 1967 births Businesspeople from California Businesspeople from Montana Candidates in the 2018 United States Senate elections Living people Montana Republicans New York University alumni People from Carlsbad, California People from Indio, California