Republican outside groups hoping to avoid surprises are spending $2 million on TV ads savaging Democrat Rob Quist, while Democratic groups have remained largely off the air. | AP Photo Dems withhold cash from Montana special election

As early voting kicks off in Montana this week, national Democrats are holding back from heavy investments in the state’s May 25 special House election, believing Democratic candidate Rob Quist still has a steep hill to climb to win a state that voted heavily for President Donald Trump just months ago.

Campaigns for Montana’s lone House district often play second fiddle to resource-hogging Senate or gubernatorial races in the state. This year, it’s being overshadowed by the special election in Georgia, where Democrats are riding not just grassroots enthusiasm — which has helped Quist raise over $2.5 million so far — but also critical demographic and political shifts that are not present in Montana.


"Our polling indicates that Donald Trump is still very popular here. It’s not like the races in Georgia or Kansas, where Trump only won by 1 point or where [Kansas] Gov. [Sam] Brownback has popularity problems,” said Brock Lowrance, the campaign manager for Republican nominee Greg Gianforte. “There’s nothing to indicate that the winds have shifted here in the last six months.”

That doesn’t mean Democrats have given up completely on the race, or that Republicans are without concerns. Republican outside groups hoping to avoid surprises are spending $2 million on TV ads savaging Quist, while Donald Trump Jr. recently stumped with Gianforte.

Along with his heady online fundraising, Quist will get a campaign assist from Bernie Sanders sometime in the next month. And the DCCC sent just under $200,000 to the state Democratic Party to help out. A DCCC aide said that the committee is “working with the Quist campaign and watching it closely. We’re excited about the energy and it’s possible we’ll invest more.”

But the House Democratic committee, which recently went on the air in Georgia, is not airing TV ads pushing back against the barrage of spots from the NRCC and Congressional Leadership Fund. Overall, GOP groups have already spent over $2.2 million attacking Quist, according to campaign finance disclosures.

“They’re doing what they can to get him in a position to where he can win, but until they see data that assures them that he can win and that the investment is worthwhile, you don’t spend that much money until you’re sure it pays off,” said Jesse Ferguson, who directed the DCCC’s independent expenditure unit in 2014.

Despite past Democratic successes in Montana by the likes of Gov. Steve Bullock and Sen. Jon Tester, some Democrats are concerned that Quist will simply hit a ceiling.

“Can Quist get it real close with a Libertarian draining off some of the vote? Yes. But can he pop over? That’s really hard,” said one national Democratic operative who’s worked in the state.

Indeed, Trump just won by 20 percentage points in Montana, where his populist message took advantage of demographics not well-aligned with the Democratic Party. The share of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher is 60 percent in the Georgia district but 31 percent in Montana, according to Census data. The Georgia district is 62 percent white; Montana is 87 percent white.

Still, last November, Gianforte lost his bid against Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock by about 4 percentage points despite spending more than $5 million of his own money on the race. Democrats in the state hope that the same pool of voters who backed Bullock and Trump in November will decide against Gianforte a second time.

“This guy ran statewide just a few months ago and got his clock cleaned, so if there was ever a moment for national Democrats to get in in Montana, now is the time,” said one Democratic operative in the state. “But if national Democrats want to get in, they need to get in tomorrow.”

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In the governor’s race, Bullock and outside groups ran wall-to-wall TV ads casting Gianforte as a “millionaire from New Jersey [who] is desperate to be governor from Montana.” Democrats also attacked Gianforte for suing the state to keep people from fishing on a stream on his property — hitting on public-lands use, a key issue for Montana voters.

"Any time you have a candidate with high name ID — and Gianforte has near-universal name ID — you take the good with the bad. He’s solid with the GOP base, but there was $6 or $7 million run against him, and obviously that sort of money being spent can impact his image,” said a Republican operative in the state. “By the same token, he's been able to do consistent positive stuff, so he is in a better spot than he was in the last election."

Republicans, who have outspent Quist on TV, have painted the folk singer as a “liberal” who “supports Nancy Pelosi.” They’ve also gone after his record on guns, saying he wants a “national gun registry” and attacked his personal tax problems.

“Quist has a long pattern of failing to pay his bills,” one of CLF’s TV ads says. “He’s even faced multiple warrants for not paying his taxes. Can you trust Quist and Pelosi with your money?”

Quist, meanwhile, has emphasized his deep roots in Montana in TV ads, along with criticizing the “300 millionaires” in Congress who “want to sell our public lands to private developers and hand our Social Security to Wall Street." It’s a message that undoubtedly appealed to Sanders, who endorsed Quist and promised to campaign alongside him.

But at least one national Democrat who’s worked in the state cautioned against leaning on Sanders too closely, “since you don’t want it to be a strict Democrat-versus-Republican because Trump did win.”

“Maybe Bernie Sanders is raising enough small dollars that it’s worth it or it amps the base — good for money and maybe good for field, but not very good for messaging,” the source continued. “But let’s hope they did the math and that it helps them, but that move comes with risks.”