Money pours into Montana Senate race as Trump makes his third stop
BILLINGS, Mont. Oct 17, (AP): Outside groups and individual donors have poured more than $45 million into Montana’s US senate race as President Donald Trump prepares a third trip to the Big Sky state in his crusade to unseat two-term Democratic Sen Jon Tester.
The race is on pace to be the most expensive in Montana history, and it’s been driven by Trump’s apparent personal interest in Tester’s defeat and his efforts to ensure Republicans keep power in the Senate.
Republican challenger and Trump loyalist Matt Rosendale trails far behind in fundraising. But he’s stayed competitive with $14 million spent by deep-pocketed conservative groups on his behalf, largely on ads attacking Tester on guns, immigration and taxes, according to an Associated Press review of spending reports.
Tester says it’s a case of outside interests trying to influence Montana politics. But he also has out-of-state backers: Political committees representing conservation groups, hospitals and banks.
Trump targeted Tester for defeat after the Democrat made allegations public that derailed the president’s Veteran Affairs nominee, Ronny Jackson.
Trump plans a Thursday campaign rally for Rosendale at the Missoula airport - the latest in a parade of White House visits to Montana that have included Vice President Mike Pence and the president’s son, Donald Trump, Jr.
Montana backed Trump by 20 percentage points in 2016. Rosendale, currently serving as state auditor and insurance commissioner, has staked his campaign on a bet that those voters will come out for him in November.
“One challenge for Tester is Montana’s getting more polarized, just like the rest of the nation, and also becoming more Republican,” said Jeremy Johnson, a political analyst at Carroll College in Helena, Montana. “But it’s also a Democratic year. I’m not sure if that will balance
out or not.”
Democrat Beto O’Rourke abandoned his usual message of unity and optimism and laid into Ted Cruz, hoping to reverse polls that show him fading against the Republican incumbent during the second debate of a Texas Senate race that has become one of the nation’s most closely watched.
During the opening moments of the debate Tuesday night , Cruz criticized O’Rourke for past votes supporting a never-enacted oil production tax that might have hit oil-rich Texas hard. O’Rourke responded by evoking a moniker President Donald Trump bestowed on the senator when the pair were bitter rivals during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, saying, “Senator Cruz is not going to be honest with you.
He’s going to make up positions and votes that I’ve never held.”
“It’s why the president called him Lyin’ Ted,” O’Rourke said, “and it’s why the nickname stuck, because it’s true.”
A former Ivy League debate champion, Cruz shot back, “It’s clear Congressman O’Rourke’s pollsters have told him to come out on the attack.”
Democrats have long dreamed about a growing Hispanic population helping to flip Texas from red to blue and shaking up the electoral map. But polls that once showed O’Rourke within striking distance of a monumental upset now suggest Cruz may be edging further ahead. No Democrat has won any of Texas’ nearly 30 statewide offices since 1994, the country’s longest political losing streak.
On Wednesday morning, Trump tweeted that he watched the debate and reaffirmed his support of his one-time GOP rival. During the 2016 presidential race, Trump re-tweeted an unflattering photo of Cruz’s wife and suggested that his Cuban-born father had a hand in John F Kennedy’s assassination.