Can Jon Tester pull off a miracle in Montana?
By Michael Jones
I’m sure you’ve felt and seen it: Democratic enthusiasm has been otherworldly in six weeks since President Joe Biden ended his candidacy to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris’s. The party is bullish again about its winning back of the House and election of Hakeem Jeffries as the first Black speaker to serve as a legislative governing party to Harris. Harris, for her own part, has opened up the electoral map while narrowing former President Donald Trump’s paths to victory in pursuit of her own history-making victory.
But Republicans will tell you all is not lost come November. Even if Harris wins the White House and Democrats win Congress’s lower chamber, which isn’t a foregone conclusion no matter what the vibes may suggest, the GOP is currently on track to snatch back control of the Senate from the Blue Team.
I’m aware of the new polling that shows Democratic candidates leading or tied with their Republican opponents in almost every competitive Senate race, including in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada.
But there’s also Montana, where Sen. Jon Tester is again working to defy the odds and win in a ruby-red state former President Trump carried by almost 15 points in 2016 and 16 points in 2020.
A Tester loss could prove devastating for Democrats, who currently hold a 51–49 Senate majority. Let me break it down: With Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) set to retire in January, his seat is a virtual lock to fall back into Republican hands. Manchin, who still caucuses with Democrats after switching his party affiliation earlier this year, was one of three Democratic senators with a term that was about to expire in a state Trump won four years ago. The other two are Sen. Sherrod Brown (OH), who’s currently up in his race, and Tester. Republicans must flip just one to regain power for the first time since 2018.
2018 was also the last time Tester was up for reelection. He won a third term against then-Montana State Auditor Matt Rosendale by less than a point but crossed the 50-percent total vote threshold for the first time in his previous three races.
Rosendale, now a US representative from Montana’s 2nd congressional district, announced he would rechallenge Tester this cycle. But Rosendale withdrew his candidacy after a public endorsement from Trump for the eventual Republican nominee Tim Sheehy and some private prodding from Steve Daines, Montana’s other senator and the head of the Hill committee responsible for electing Republicans to the Senate.
As I reported in my last column, Democrats view Sheehy as a weak candidate with loose roots in the state and a poor grasp of the issues that matter to Montanans, like protecting public lands from being sold to the highest outside bidder.
Sheehy has also been beset by a barrage of bad headlines recently. He faced scrutiny this week for disparaging comments about Native Americans. (About 60,000 people of Native American heritage live in Montana, representing about five percent of the state’s population.) He’s also faced accusations of misrepresenting aspects of his military service. Local business leaders have also asked the Small Business Administration to investigate whether Sheehy falsely categorized his company as “socially disadvantaged” to win government contracts.
Tester’s backers hope the poor press will have a death-by-thousand-cuts impact on Sheehy’s candidacy. The senator’s supporters are also confident he can ultimately reassemble his winning coalition from last cycle when he received strong support from Native Americans, women, independents, and young voters.
But it may not matter. Sheehy is up by as many as six points in the most recent statewide poll. As I also reported last week, Tester will need a substantial number of Trump voters to split their tickets between him and the former president, a less common occurrence in recent years.
Still, Democrats aren’t ready to count Tester out.
Multiple sources in or adjacent to Montana Democratic politics told me Republican voters have been critical to each of Tester’s previous wins. Plenty of Trump supporters, they argued, will stand with the Montana Democrat because he’s someone they’re familiar with and is a champion for the state’s libertarian-flavored values.
Several of those same sources pushed back against GOP claims that behind Tester’s reputation as an independent thinker lies a rubber stamp for the most liberal policies Democratic can muster, a criticism several national and statewide Democratic operatives dismissed as the type of Republican attacks that have failed in Tester’s previous races.
“The people of those states know Tester fights for Montana,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in late July while mentioning Brown’s strength in Ohio. “They’re willing to break with the Democratic Party when they find the need to do it to represent their states.”
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) expressed a similar sentiment during the DNC late last month in Chicago.
“Jon Tester is Montana through and through,” he said. “People ask me, ‘How do you pastor a church and serve as a senator?’ Jon Tester’s got a whole farm!”
Tester also has the benefit of a hot-button issue on the ballot this November.
This Election Day, Montanans will vote on CI-128, or the Right to Abortion Initiative, which would create an explicit constitutional right to abortion care if approved. Under existing state law, abortion is currently legal until fetal viability, and parental consent is required for abortions performed on minors.
Montana is one of nearly a dozen states with abortion-related ballot measures—the most in a single year—and it isn’t the only red state to certify an initiative: Voters in Florida, Missouri, and South Dakota will take up the issue, which Democrats hope will drive up turnout for candidates like Tester. Ohio passed a similar amendment to its state constitution last November, one of the seven proposed and won by reproductive freedom advocates since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Tester is a cosponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that would restore Roe. He voted this summer to protect access to in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments and contraception, all of which Democrats warn are at risk under a Republican-controlled government.
Sheehy opposes the ballot measure and reportedly told Republican activists last December he wished abortion would “end tomorrow.”
As we’ve seen during President Biden’s term, one vote could make all the difference between progressive priorities becoming law or languishing on the legislative cutting-room floor. But beyond a potential agenda Harris would attempt to pass if elected, a GOP Senate could prevent her first choices for Cabinet and Supreme Court nominations from advancing.
But Schumer must have missed the memo that Tester, and Brown for that matter, are vulnerable to GOP flips.
“I’m confident we’re going to win those seats,” the top Senate Democrat said this summer. “I’m confident we are going to keep the Senate.”
All eyes will be on Big Sky Country in 61 days to see if he’s right.
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
