Montana Sen. Jon Tester made a somewhat surprising announcement last week: He is, in fact, running for reelection in 2024 and a fourth six-year term in the U.S. Senate. I placed the odds of our senior senator seeking reelection at about even, for no other reason than the increasingly tough environment for Democrats in the state. His next race will be his toughest yet. And that’s saying something since none have been easy.
In 2006, when he challenged Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, Tester was aided by the simmering Jack Abramoff scandal, which engulfed a handful lobbyists and politicians, including Burns, who saw his poll numbers plummet in the state to around 40%. Despite the incumbent’s headwinds, Tester won the seat by just over 3,000 votes, far fewer than the more than 10,000 cast for third-party Libertarian candidate Stan Jones.
Fast forward six years and Tester was considered one of the most vulnerable members of the Senate. He had a formidable challenger in second term Republican U.S. Congressman Denny Rehberg, who several pollsters had leading the race out of the gate, although it was considered a toss-up on Election Day.
Like the previous campaign, the 2012 contest would include a Libertarian, except this time the candidate attracted 4% of the vote in Montana, an unusually high number that once again was greater than Tester’s margin of victory over his Republican challenger. For the second time, he was elected without earning more than 50% of the vote.
That would change in 2018, when Tester was challenged by then Republican Montana State Auditor and current U.S. Congressman Matt Rosendale. Former President Donald Trump, who beat Hillary Clinton in Montana by 20 points just two years prior, traveled to the state four times to campaign against Tester. It didn’t matter. He secured more than half the votes for the first time and was reelected by a margin of 3.5 percentage points.
It was the last time a Democrat won a statewide race.
It’s fair to say 2020 was a bloodbath for Tester’s party as Republicans swept every office, from the governor to the secretary of state to the attorney general. And none of the races were particularly close. Perhaps most worrisome for the Democratic Party was the showing by Steve Bullock, the relatively popular outgoing governor who was heavily recruited and eventually agreed to challenge Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Steve Daines. Bullock lost by 10 percentage points.
Whether it was due to COVID lockdowns, an influx of newcomers, or both, Montana, which notoriously split tickets for decades, was now voting strictly along party lines and leaning heavily Republican. Two years later, in 2022, the GOP would capture supermajorities in the state House and Senate, the results of which are playing out in real time as culture wars are being fought and constitutional changes proposed at the Legislature.
Montana’s politicians know Tester is vulnerable. U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, who served as Interior Secretary in the Trump administration, said he will consider a Senate campaign. Rosendale is also likely mulling it over. Another obstacle to Tester’s reelection is his colleague Daines, who is the current chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the official campaign organization for Senate Republicans that will do everything in its power to flip the seat.
In other words, a lot will need to break in Tester’s favor in 2024, even if he is by far the Democrats’ best chance to win in an increasingly red Montana.