After 17 years within the U.S. Senate, Democrat Jon Tester is a widely known commodity in Montana — a plain-spoken grain farmer with a flattop and a rigorously cultivated popularity as a average.
The 67-year-old lawmaker smiled and laughed his manner by way of the gang at a Veterans Day occasion in Bigfork, a small city on Flathead Lake the place the inhabitants has surged lately. He chatted with veterans who supported him and a few who didn’t, then stood behind a lectern within the Bigfork Excessive College gymnasium to advertise his greatest latest accomplishment: expanded federal well being look after hundreds of thousands of veterans uncovered to poisonous smoke at military “burn pits.”
Tester has survived three shut elections and a modified nationwide political panorama to emerge because the lone Democrat nonetheless holding excessive workplace in Montana. The 2024 election brings presumably his stiffest problem but: Republicans, simply two seats wanting Senate control, are anticipated to spend tens of hundreds of thousands on assault advertisements portray him as a Washington insider tainted by lobbyist money.
Ousting Tester additionally would cement a Republican lock on a state that voted overwhelmingly for Republican Donald Trump within the 2020 presidential election.
Tester entered the Senate after promoting Montana voters on his authenticity, and the previous highschool band instructor’s message hasn’t modified a lot. He nonetheless mingles comfortably with union members, ranchers and veterans, has a document of engaged on their behalf, and says his coronary heart stays firmly in his sparsely populated state, an enormous expanse that spans from the arid Nice Plains to the plush forests of the Pacific Northwest.
Nonetheless, authenticity is more durable to promote if you’ve develop into a prime Washington fundraiser. He’s taken in nearly $20 million for subsequent 12 months’s election, rating Tester sixth amongst Senate candidates nationwide, in keeping with Federal Election Commission data by way of September. Tester insisted that the cash hasn’t modified him, that he doesn’t even know the place all of it comes from.
“I can’t tell you who’s donating to me. Even from within the state of Montana, I can’t tell you who donates to me because I don’t look at that list,” he mentioned in an interview. “It’s not important. I trust that those people believe in me and I’m going to continue to do the same job.”
His marketing campaign studies reveal considerable lobbyist money, the type that not often comes from individuals who don’t need one thing, and but the lawmaker’s journey from outsider to fundraising behemoth has largely been one in every of necessity. With West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s determination towards searching for one other time period, Tester has develop into a prime goal for Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his large fundraising operation.
McConnell’s aspirations to once more be majority chief might get slowed down if a main struggle develops between his anointed candidate in Montana, U.S. Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, and U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale, one of many far-right House members who ousted fellow Republican Kevin McCarthy of California as Home speaker. Dozens of state lawmakers have inspired Rosendale to enter. He ran towards Tester in 2018 and misplaced regardless of a huge push from then-President Trump.
Republican unity subsequent November would chop Tester’s path to victory, particularly if he’s branded as a Washington insider. As he’s gained seniority and affect — and as election spending nationwide has exploded — the flood of marketing campaign money that’s flowed towards Tester has left him weak to assault.
The efficiency of the authenticity challenge even inside his personal celebration was on show throughout a latest city corridor hosted by Tester within the Democratic stronghold of Butte, the place a bunch of activists pressed him repeatedly to name for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. The lawmaker, who heads the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on protection, rebuffed their pleas, saying Israel had a proper to defend itself towards the Oct. 7 assault by Hamas.
That rankled Noah Sohl of Missoula, who mentioned he twice voted for Tester and supported the Democrat’s final reelection by making cellphone calls and registering voters. The nursing scholar drew a straight line between donations to Tester’s marketing campaign by protection business lobbyists and Tester’s opposition to a cease-fire.
After turning into the panel’s chairman in 2021, Tester acquired more than $160,000 in contributions from staff and committees representing the protection business. The donations got here at an important juncture for each the protection funds and Lockheed Martin, which benefited from $1.8 billion for the F-35 fighter jet that Tester’s subcommittee pushed as a part of a army spending bundle.
Sohl pledged to not assist Tester this election if he received’t change his stance on a cease-fire. Sohl acknowledged that would profit Republicans.
“They’re all licking their chops over the fact that among his (Tester’s) constituents, there’s a rising group that don’t agree with him,” Sohl mentioned. “His big thing is, ‘I’m not like those Republicans. I’m a true Montanan just going to Washington to fight for the people who voted for me.’ But it seems like he lost his footing.”
Tester dismissed any notion that marketing campaign donations sway his vote or that he’s basically modified since 2006. He additionally disregarded the elevated stress on him since Manchin’s departure.
Veterans points resound in Montana, which has the second-highest share of veterans within the U.S. among the many grownup civilian inhabitants, in keeping with the U.S. Census Bureau. Tester chairs the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
“I take my cues directly from the veterans of this state,” Tester advised the meeting at Bigfork Excessive College.
Within the entrance row sat Terry Baker, who served within the Vietnam Battle and voted towards Tester the primary time he ran. Tester’s backing of veterans transformed Baker right into a supporter. He mentioned the lawmaker stays the one Democrat he has ever voted for.
“He’s been a tremendous asset for all the veterans’ groups,” mentioned Baker, 72, of Kalispell. “The fact that there are a tremendous amount of veterans in Montana, that will help Tester out.”
Montana itself has modified considerably since Tester got here to workplace. There’s been an inflow of newcomers from Arizona, Washington state, California and Texas. Farmland is yielding to subdivisions at the same time as cities similar to Bozeman and Missoula have housing crises.
The state’s politics have lurched rightward. When Tester entered the Senate, Democrats held nearly each statewide elected workplace in Montana, from governor, secretary of state and lawyer common, to 2 of the state’s three seats in Congress. Because the 2020 election, that’s all the way down to Tester’s seat.
Republican state lawmakers maneuvered unsuccessfully to hobble his possibilities for a fourth time period this spring. They proposed election rule changes that will have allowed solely the highest two candidates to advance from subsequent 12 months’s Senate main. That possible would have stored third-party candidates off the overall election poll and will have tipped the election for Republicans.
Previous races for Tester’s seat have been shut sufficient some Republicans blamed third-party candidates for the Democrat’s victories. Concern that would occur once more can’t be discounted. Montana Libertarian Get together Chairman Sid Daoud introduced Monday that he’s getting into subsequent 12 months’s Senate race, elevating Republican fears of a third-party spoiler.
Tester rode to workplace on the unpopularity of the Iraq struggle and a specter of scandal that plagued his predecessor, three-term Sen. Conrad Burns, over the Republican’s shut ties to “super-lobbyist” Jack Abramoff. Abramoff was jailed for conspiracy and fraud. No expenses have been filed towards Burns, a former cattle auctioneer who dismissed criticism over the matter as “old political hooey.”
Challenges to Tester’s authenticity dogged him in the course of the 2018 election cycle, when he ranked for a time because the top recipient of lobbyist donations amongst members of Congress. He presently ranks second with $407,000 in contributions from lobbyists, placing him simply behind Washington state Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, in keeping with the analysis group OpenSecrets.
These direct contributions don’t embody hundreds of thousands of {dollars} anticipated to be spent on the race from exterior teams, together with McConnell’s formidable operation and comparable Democratic organizations.
To date, there may be nothing to point that cash flowing Tester’s manner swayed his decision-making or that he did something fallacious. Nonetheless, Republicans have highlighted the ties to lobbyists in an advert marketing campaign launched earlier this month that declares “after nearly two decades in Washington, Jon Tester has changed.”
Tester invited anybody who assume he’s modified to return out and “pick rock” on the farm close to the small city of Massive Sandy that he runs together with his spouse, Sharla. He mentioned he’s nonetheless cognizant that in Montana, each reference to voters is important.
To his mind-set, that makes authenticity the type of factor cash can’t purchase.
“This is an eyeball-to-eyeball state,” he mentioned.
