BOZEMAN, Mont. — Montana has the highest suicide rate in the United States. For starters, there’s the random geographical bad luck that the altitude of the state’s six most populous cities exceeds 3,000 feet, the elevation at which blood oxygen levels go down and suicide stats go way up. Along with seven Indian reservations and agriculture being a leading industry — farmers and natives are more likely to end their own lives than other Americans — veterans make up about 10 percent of the state’s population. According to the new Veterans Affairs secretary, Robert Wilkie, every day, 22 American vets kill themselves.

So I guess it stands to reason that in a state so hellbent on suicide, its citizens would seriously consider voting for a merciless, skinflint presidential bootlicker like Matt Rosendale. The Cook Political Report just slid the Montana race for the United States Senate between Mr. Rosendale and the incumbent, Jon Tester, into the “tossup” category.

Mr. Rosendale, a Maryland native, is such a meanspirited flake that my Republican father, a guy who wants his ashes shot out of a cannon he built from scratch in his backyard gun shop, plans to vote for Senator Tester, a Democrat. According to Dad, a Gallatin County voter, Mr. Tester, a second-term senator and third-generation farmer from Big Sandy, is “a Montanan who understands Montana.” At least I think that’s what he said. Once he told my mother and me he was voting for a Democrat I was distracted by determining if Mom needed medical attention.

For weeks, most commercial breaks on Montana television have featured one of the tongue-in-cheek ads scolding Mr. Rosendale for referring to himself as a rancher even though he’s never owned a single head of cattle, much less a brand. Of course the tagline is “Matt Rosendale: All hat, no cattle.” The rancher fib does make him seem less trustworthy, plus weirdly ignorant of the fact that ranches by definition require, like, livestock — a sticking point in a state where cattle is the No. 1 agricultural product.