Democrats Need Jon Tester to Defy the Odds Again

Control of the Senate could turn on Montana.

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Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, at the Capitol last month. Mr. Tester is fighting for his Senate seat, while trying to keep distance from national Democrats.

Good evening! Tonight, my colleague Mike Baker, who covers the West, has a dispatch from the state that might have the country’s most important Senate race: Montana. Then, I look at how Democrats are spending elsewhere on the map. — Jess Bidgood

By Mike Baker

At the local Democratic Party headquarters in Great Falls, Mont., floor-to-ceiling windows are plastered with signs promoting candidates for the November election. But there is a notable exception: Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee, is not featured on the placards.

I noticed the omission while walking last week along the streets of Great Falls, a northern Great Plains city on the banks of the cascading Missouri River, where I was talking to voters and business owners about recent political upheaval. Great Falls was a Democratic stronghold in Montana for decades, thanks to a coalition of union laborers, charitable Catholics and farmers who cared for conservation. But here, it was as if Harris didn’t exist.

Keeping distance from national Democrats is part of a do-or-die strategy in Montana for what is shaping up to be the nation’s most important U.S. Senate race. If the Democrats want to sustain the slimmest of majorities in the Senate, they desperately need Senator Jon Tester of Montana to win a fourth term.

Tester has defied the odds before, far outperforming Democratic standard-bearers in past elections. But Montana is changing, no longer defined by its purple, ticket-splitting ways. In places like Great Falls and elsewhere, Republicans have swept into power in recent years, leaving Tester as Montana’s last statewide-elected Democrat.

The shift has been abrupt: In 2008, Barack Obama lost the state by fewer than 3 percentage points. Four years ago, Joe Biden lost it by 16 percentage points.

In his past races, Tester built enough good will to make up the difference, winning re-election in 2012 and 2018 by less than four percentage points. But now, polls show him trailing his Republican opponent, Tim Sheehy, including one that had Tester down six points — and, given the challenging Senate map Democrats face across the rest of the country, a loss here would most likely be enough to hand the chamber to Republicans next year.

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