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Even as Kamala Harris’ ascension revs up the Democratic electorate, the party’s hold on the Senate could still end with a single race in Montana.
The state’s Democratic senator, Jon Tester, is in the toughest predicament of any incumbent in the chamber. And though Republicans are increasingly confident about their chances of defeating Tester, and flipping the second seat they need to claim Senate control for the first time in three elections, the 68-year-old insists he’s no underdog.
“What it looks like from here and what reality is are two different things,” Tester told Semafor on Tuesday. “I’m going to go up and I’m going to go down, but I feel really good about where we’re at. And I feel really good about how this race is going to turn out.”
Some of his allies are sweating over his future anyway, particularly after an AARP poll this month showed Republican Tim Sheehy ahead of Tester and sent both parties into a tizzy, prompting a top forecaster to shift the race in Republicans’ favor. One of Tester’s fellow Democratic senators called the Montana polls “alarming” on Tuesday.
But Democrats made clear this week that they still think reelecting Tester is the party’s best path to retaining control of the chamber – and there’s zero talk of bailing on him. For all the speculation about whether Democrats should shift to prioritizing the defeat of conservative Sens. Rick Scott in Florida or Ted Cruz in Texas over Tester, most in the party don’t think so.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in an interview that Tester’s rough reelection “breaks my heart … I’ve still got my fingers crossed he’s going to pull it out.”
A majority “starts with the incumbents in winning those races,” Durbin added. “Nobody is giving up on him.”
Facing the certain loss of a Senate seat in West Virginia this fall, Democrats either need to hold all other incumbents’ seats or pick up a seat in red territory to get to 50 seats next year. Even that would only be a majority if Harris prevails in the presidential race.
David Bergstein, a spokesperson for Democrats’ campaign arm, said that “Senate Democrats are strongly positioned to defend our majority and have multiple pathways to do so.” Democrats are still competing against Scott and Cruz, contending that their commitment to Tester doesn’t preclude making a big push in those states – which hasn’t come yet.
Their focus on keeping all incumbent seats means not only getting Tester to a win, but also helping Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown prevail in the increasingly red state of Ohio and holding a half-dozen other seats.
“In my view, Democrats continuing to be in the majority requires that we win every one of the incumbents,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “The others are winnable as well. We’d like to win them. But my priority, as a matter of emotion as well as political calculations, is to keep our incumbents.”
Republicans see the situation similarly, if more defensively when it comes to Scott and Cruz.
“There’s no path for them in Florida and Texas. They have to double down on an incumbent,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said of Tester.
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Democrats’ Senate prospects this year were always daunting, and it’s a testament to their surprising 2022 results – especially Sen. John Fetterman’s flip of Pennsylvania – that they are even competitive. Back in 2018, many of Tester and Brown’s red-state Democratic colleagues were wiped out, and it was clear as early as October that Republicans would keep the majority.
That’s not quite the case right now.
“I would never say a race is over before an outcome is declared. But it’s encouraging that Tim Sheehy has run a good race,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
Tester has won three close contests, making him the rare Democrat who hung on (with all seven of his remaining fingers) even as his state tilted more toward the GOP. Montana is also hard to poll and its statewide elections can turn on just a few thousand votes, leaving plenty of potential wrinkles and unknowns to potentially tip the race.
Democrats said privately that they’ve seen Tester’s polling go up and down recently and the race is not static. A second Democratic senator who views the Tester-Sheehy polls as worrisome said that despite all the factors working against Tester, “he’s a survivor” and should be treated as such.
Republicans coalesced around Sheehy early to keep conservative Montana Rep. Matt Rosendale out of the race after he lost to Tester in 2018, an effort spearheaded by the state’s junior senator and Senate GOP campaign chief Steve Daines. Republicans largely credit that push with their strong position now.
Still, Tester hasn’t stopped reminding voters that Sheehy is originally from out of state. More recently, the Montana tribal news outlet Char-Koosta News reported on Sheehy joking last year about the drinking habits of Native Americans, a critical voting bloc in the state.
Tester called his opponent’s remarks about Native Americans “unfortunate,” adding that “I don’t think there’s any room for racism in the country, and certainly not the United States Senate.” Daines dismissed any drag from Sheehy’s remarks, saying the Republican nominee is “going to be a great partner and ally working on behalf of Indian country.”
In a statement addressing the state of the race, a Sheehy spokesperson criticized Tester for his voting record in the Senate and support for Biden and Harris’ agenda.
“While Tester performs an Academy Award-winning performance of an ‘aw, shucks’ dirt farmer from Big Sandy to D.C. media who haven’t left the East Coast in decades, it’s clear to Montanans that Jon Tester has changed, and his liberal voting record proves it,” the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, Republicans are kicking into high gear to match Democratic spending. During a Daines-hosted GOP lunch on Tuesday at the party’s Senate campaign headquarters, Republicans warned that Democrats are on pace to dramatically outspend them in swing states like Arizona, Nevada and Michigan, according to a person familiar with the meeting.
“We’ve got a gap we need to close,” Daines said ahead of the meeting. “Our biggest challenge right now is getting the resources out to the front lines.”
Republicans listened to Daines: Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), a candidate for GOP leader, transferred $4 million from his campaign accounts to the NRSC. All told, the NRSC netted $6.5 million on Tuesday alone.
Burgess’s view
It’s too early to count Tester out, but the occasionally foul-mouthed farmer is going to have to reassert his unicorn status in the party if he’s going to win. That means a ballot-box performance as shocking as GOP Sen. Susan Collins’s big win in Maine in 2020, which broke against all the polls and surprised a lot of people in Washington … yours truly included.
Here’s the best way to think about Tester’s race, though: There appears to be no chance in hell that Democrats will pull out of Montana. And Republicans aren’t yet confident enough to move their money out of the state to others on the map. Canceling all those millions of dollars in ads would be the surest sign that party honchos think a race is over.
So at the moment, it’s fair to view Montana as the state with the highest chance of being the Senate majority-maker in November, for either party.
Notable
- Senate Democratic campaigns chief Gary Peters isn’t ruling out more spending on the race against Cruz, saying “when we see opportunities like we see in Texas, we’re going to invest accordingly,” States Newsroom reports.
- The National Rifle Association launched an ad buy in Montana against Tester, its first TV expenditure of the cycle, according to Fox News.