In Montana, Sen. Jon Tester Says These Underestimating Him ‘Do not Know Jack S**t’

GREAT FALLS, Mont. — He defied the chances as soon as, then a second time and a 3rd. Now, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is hoping to do it once more. Now on his fourth attempt, he’s going through his greatest check but in a state the place, recently, all that appears to matter when election time rolls round is whether or not you’ve got an “R” subsequent to your title.

Because the final statewide-elected Democrat in Montana, Tester is an endangered species. Most of his Democratic mates within the Senate who additionally hailed from purple states have lengthy since been defeated by Republicans or chosen to go away on their very own phrases (West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin is retiring this yr), in one more signal of the nation’s deepening divisions.

Montana has additionally tilted redder since Tester’s 2018 victory that regarded equally insurmountable. The state’s shifting demographics — fueled by an inflow of recent residents amid the pandemic — Donald Trump’s sky-high reputation, and outsized nationwide consideration on the stakes of the race all threaten to spoil the senator’s marketing campaign for a fourth time period.

However the “flattopped dirt farmer” from Montana isn’t able to name it quits, bristling at chatter from political operatives and pundits who consider his luck could have lastly run out this yr. Clad in his everyman uniform — a flannel shirt, vest and denims — he turned a query from HuffPost about projections of his seat flipping purple right into a rallying cry throughout a marketing campaign cease about an hour drive from his farm on Monday, invoking his inherent Montana-ness.

“The guys in Washington, D.C., they’ve already figured this out. They said, ‘You’re in deep, deep, deep doo-doo,’” Tester instructed a crowd of a supporters who crammed into his marketing campaign area workplace in Nice Falls, a former Democratic stronghold in northern Montana. “People in Washington, D.C., don’t know jack shit about Montana, and we’re going to show them.”

“We’re in a dead heat,” he insisted, urging volunteers to knock on as many doorways as attainable and show the doubters flawed.

Public polls of the race have discovered Tester trailing his GOP opponent Tim Sheehy, a 37-year-old multimillionaire businessman and former Navy SEAL with no prior authorities expertise. Sheehy has known as Tester out of contact and assailed his ties to nationwide Democrats, together with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the brand new Democratic presidential nominee. He’s additionally blamed him for worsening the scenario on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Sheehy has additionally framed the race as rather more than merely about one state. Flipping the seat would most certainly hand management of the Senate to the Republican Occasion subsequent yr, giving Trump, if he wins in November, a possibility to nominate extra Supreme Court docket justices. And if he loses, a GOP Senate may block a lot of Harris’ agenda, Cupboard decisions and potential judicial picks.

“If Trump wins and he doesn’t control the Senate, you can assume he’ll be impeached on Day 1,” Sheehy warned a packed rally of supporters in Missoula, a Democratic stronghold, on Monday.

“The Senate is critical for Trump,” he added. “And if he doesn’t win, the Senate is a firewall for progressive lunacy.”

It’s this dynamic that makes Tester’s bid for reelection all of the harder this time round, nationalizing a race he’d very very similar to to stay to native points like defending public lands, making housing extra out there and increasing entry to well being care and abortion — a technique he efficiently employed to defeat his final Republican challenger, now-Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.).

However Sheehy is not any Rosendale, a far-right conservative who was simply caricatured as an out-of-stater from Maryland. He’s confirmed much more slippery, evading reporters within the state in addition to questions on his biography, together with his army service and enterprise pursuits. And though Tester landed many blows in opposition to him of their debate on Monday night time, the GOP candidate largely held his personal, depriving Democrats of a key second that may dramatically change the trajectory of the race.

Tester’s marketing campaign believes their path to victory hinges on ticket-splitting voters who help Trump but additionally like what the incumbent senator has completed whereas in workplace, together with, most just lately, increasing well being take care of seniors and veterans, two vital voting blocs within the state. Tester’s adverts have emphasised his working relationship with Trump when he was president and the senator has steadfastly declined to endorse Harris within the 2024 race.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat, it doesn’t matter if you’re [for] Trump, or anti-Trump, if you want somebody that’s going to represent Montana values back in Washington, D.C., I’m your guy,” Tester instructed HuffPost about his efforts to attraction to Trump supporters.

However Greg Oltvedt, 75, a former Democrat from Lolo, Montana, who has voted for Tester prior to now, mentioned he can be casting his poll for Sheehy this time round.

“He’s had Montana interests, but he’s been a strong supporter of the Biden-Harris regime,” Oltvedt mentioned of Tester as a wide-brim cowboy hat atop his head blocked out the blazing solar.

As he stood and listened to right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk proselytize to college students on the College of Montana in opposition to liberals, he mentioned, “Things need to change. This country, our republic, is at risk.” He mentioned issues modified for him due to Democrats “cheating” in elections, a favourite Trump falsehood on the marketing campaign path.

Politics in Montana are sometimes about what it means to be a “real” Montanan greater than the rest.

Tester, a third-generation farmer, spends an inordinate time reminding voters about being the Senate’s “only working farmer” (sorry, Chuck Grassley, your corn apparently doesn’t rely), his flattop haircut and his lack of three fingers in a meat grinding accident, a down-to-earth picture that has helped him survive three shut elections.

“They don’t look at Jon as a big Democrat in Montana,” Manchin, who left the Democratic Occasion just lately, instructed HuffPost. “They look at Jon Tester as just Montana. He’s just original. Being original, no one can help him with that.”

Republicans have sought to pierce Tester’s model, nonetheless, mocking him for driving a Prius hybrid in Washington, D.C., and even criticizing his drink of alternative throughout one night time out — a vodka cranberry. They’ve additionally attacked him for voting to question Trump and for accepting cash from lobbyists regardless of criticizing the flood of money into political campaigns lately.

In the meantime, Tester has accused Sheehy, who moved to Montana from Minnesota in 2014 and now owns a non-public cattle ranch, of being a wannabe cowboy of the sort serving to gas the state’s housing disaster. (When Sheehy arrived to debate Tester on the College of Montana on Monday, for instance, Democratic volunteers greeted him with chants of “Rhinestone Cowboy.”)

“You got an opportunity to vote for a guy who came to this state a few years back, bought himself a 37,000-acre ranch, blocked everybody off it, and now is charging $12,500 to go hunting on it,” Tester mentioned of Sheehy at their debate on Monday.

The issue: Montana has added a bunch of voters for whom Montanan cred could matter lower than conservative politics. In 2021 and 2022, following the coronavirus pandemic, Montana’s inhabitants jumped 1.8% after which 1.5% earlier than progress slowed in 2023. All the inhabitants progress was as a result of folks transferring into the state, with deaths in state truly outpacing births each years.

Democratic strategists have lengthy feared Montana’s rising inhabitants has made the state extra conservative, as right-leaning residents of liberal states like Colorado and California transfer to a state they assume higher matches their very own ideology.

“It remains to be seen if Sheehy being a Halloween cowboy is going to be a problem for him given all the new people who dress up like cowboys every day,” Matt McKenna, a longtime Montana Democratic strategist, instructed HuffPost.

One problem the place Tester has put Sheehy on his heels is on defending public lands, a supply of delight in an enormous state like Montana.

Tester on Monday accused his opponent of constructing “an incredible transformation” on land use after he known as for federal lands to be “turned over” to states or counties (an thought vice presidential nominee JD Vance appeared to agree with), did not disclose his put up on the board of an environmental analysis nonprofit with a historical past of advocating for privatizing federal lands and appeared to physician a current TV advert to take away the group’s brand from the shirt he was carrying.

Sheehy, who has spent a lot of the marketing campaign doing harm management on this problem, claimed he opposes the sale or switch of federal lands whereas calling for landowners close to nationwide forests within the state to have “more input into what happens on” that land than the federal authorities.

“Public lands belong to the public, that’s you — the people of Montana,” Sheehy mentioned.

To which Tester responded: “What they say in back rooms, when they don’t think the recorder is going or the camera is running, is usually what they think. And Tim said we need to turn our lands over to either his rich buddies or county government. That’s not protecting public lands.”

The most important benefit Tester doubtlessly has going for him on this yr’s race is a referendum that may codify protections for abortion within the Montana state structure. The Supreme Court docket’s 2022 resolution that overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving the abortion problem as much as the states, has sparked a wave of enthusiasm amongst Democrats and pro-choice voters throughout the nation in search of to guard reproductive rights, together with in Montana, a state with libertarian tendencies.

In 2022, Montana voters rejected a measure that may have declared that an embryo or fetus is a authorized individual, giving advocates pushing for passage of the constitutional referendum hope it is going to cross with bipartisan help.

“People would say to me, I’m a lifelong pro-life Republican and I’m against it. I think people realize the problems with an either complete or near complete abortion ban,” Melissa Cunningham, a nurse and Democratic candidate for Montana’s state legislature, instructed HuffPost of the 2022 measure.

Final yr, nonetheless, Republican lawmakers handed a invoice proscribing abortion entry, together with one saying the state’s proper to privateness doesn’t defend abortion rights. Sheehy has additionally known as abortion “terrible” and “murder.” Though he claims to help exceptions to the process, similar to in circumstances of rape, incest or when the lifetime of the mom is in danger, he has not dominated out supporting a nationwide ban on abortion.

Tester, like different Democrats, has framed the problem as a matter of defending particular person freedoms, saying that individuals in Montana “don’t like the federal government telling them how to live their lives.”

Mark Lundquist, an impartial voter and U.S. Military veteran who got here to see Tester at this marketing campaign workplace in Nice Falls, on Tuesday, mentioned he wished to see the senator communicate extra in regards to the problem with the intention to attraction to girls voters. “They’re not so much party-centered as men are party-centered,” he mentioned.

Nonetheless, the 75-year-old, who moved to Butte, Montana, from California just lately to spend extra time along with his grandchildren, doubted Tester’s capability to win in a state Trump carried by 16 factors in 2020.

“Trump is very popular. This is a Republican state and Tester could lose this, it’s that close,” Lundquist mentioned.

“This is going to be Tester’s toughest race,” he added.