BUTTE, Mont. — On paper, Sen. Jon Tester faces almost insurmountable odds of winning reelection: He’s a second-term Democrat in a state that President Donald Trump carried by 20 points over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But Tester is not Clinton. He’s running on different issues, emphasizing border security, veterans’ health care and public lands protection. More important, he’s blanketing every corner of Montana — a state Clinton never visited in 2016 — in preparation for the fight of his political career.


That’s how Tester found himself in Butte’s plumbers and pipefitters union hall at 10 a.m. on St. Patrick’s Day, drinking a red beer — a half-domestic beer, half-clamato juice Montana specialty — and wearing a green baseball cap bearing the local’s logo, which he had found earlier that morning in his house, hundreds of miles away. As Republicans yoke themselves to Trump and bludgeon Tester with links to national Democrats, Tester is betting key issues and a surprising number of Trump-signed bills can set him apart. But his biggest bet is that his own personality and biography vault him beyond the baseline numbers that suggest a Democrat shouldn’t win Montana.

“I don’t think they can beat who I am,” Tester said in an interview.

Republicans don’t think they need to do anything fancy to beat Tester. The party’s candidates in Montana say they just need to remind the state’s conservative electorate of Tester’s vote against the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch, his vote against tax reform and his vote for Clinton in 2016.

“He comes back and tries to act like he’s this jolly old farmer, and that may well be so,” said Matt Rosendale, the state auditor and the front-runner in the June GOP primary. “But he’s not representing us well. He’s been one of the most reliable votes for [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer.”

Morning Score newsletter Your guide to the permanent campaign — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Senate Democrats’ narrow hopes of winning the majority in 2018 — or at least not falling deeper into the minority — rest on how well Tester and several colleagues can fight that charge. He is one of 10 Trump-state Democrats up for reelection this year, and one of five from states the president carried by double digits. Of those five, Tester is the least likely to vote with the president. But Tester, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp and the others won their seats in the first place thanks to unorthodox ideological profiles and unique personalities that appealed to voters who usually stick with the GOP — and they are quick to fire back at anyone who dismisses their chances.

“Do they bring up the fact that [Steve] Bullock won by 4?” Tester said, referencing Montana’s Democratic governor to rebut the GOP argument that Trump’s 2016 margin dooms him. “Do they bring up the fact that when Mitt Romney won, I won?”

Butte, where Tester spent St. Patrick’s Day, symbolizes both Tester’s strategy of Montana appeal and Republicans’ hope that the state craves a more Trump-friendly senator. The mining city is a traditional stronghold of labor and Democrats, and Tester won more than two-thirds of the vote there in 2012. But Trump also did better in Butte than any Republican presidential nominee in recent memory, and any erosion could doom Tester, who has yet to win more than 49 percent of the vote in two statewide elections.

But Tester believes swing voting is ingrained in Montanans’ character, and he put his campaign cash where his mouth is in his first TV ad. It’s a rare Democratic ad that mentions the president without bashing him, as Tester and other Montanans tick off the bills he’s sponsored that Trump later signed into law. The list includes a slew of measures to help veterans, firefighters and police officers, and to improve cell service in rural areas.

“Washington’s a mess, but that’s not stopping me from getting bills signed into law that help Montana,” Tester says.

Tester stops counting at seven in the ad, a nod to the three missing fingers on his left hand, which he lost in an accident with a meat grinder in a child. The meat grinder is still in the butcher shop on Tester’s farm, and the missing fingers have become his personal symbol. As Tester walked the parade route in Butte, passersby saluted with seven fingers. A group of women ran into the street to take a photo with him.

The interactions validated Tester’s early-morning decision to walk the route instead of sitting in a staff-driven pickup — “I’ll lose all my union support!” Tester joked with an aide that morning. “Second, if you’re driving, you‘ll cause a wreck on the parade route.”

Tester owns a house in D.C. — something his Republican opponent will be sure to mention in November — but he returns to his farm in Big Sandy each weekend, working the fields and butchering his own meat to bring to Washington when he’s not campaigning. (“I look them in the eye when I butcher them,” Tester said, explaining why he doesn’t simply go to a grocery store. “I know they’re not sick.”) He spent the day before the parade in Butte moving snow with a backhoe, creating paths for runoff so that snowmelt does not flood his fields or house later, he explained.

It’s an experience no other senator lives, though Republicans say it masks a more conventional Democrat than Tester would have voters believe. “He’s a likable guy, but he’s lost touch with Montana. He’s gone Washington,” said Troy Downing, another Republican running against Tester.

But Tester’s Montana roots are undeniable. They had him responding sharply to Clinton’s recent comments that Trump-supporting areas of the country were “backward.”

“It hurts to lose an election,” Tester said. “She’s going to say things. She’d be, quite frankly, better off to just get over it and move on. I don’t agree with her on that particular statement.”

In addition to regular skirmishes with Republicans, Tester’s Montana point of view has also pitted him against national progressives, especially during a recent high-profile Senate fight over banking regulations.

“When I have to do what I think is right for Montana, I do it. And nobody really ever gives me shit over that,” Tester said. “The last couple of weeks have probably been the most. I know what I did, and I’d do it again tomorrow. And if I lose this election because of it, I’d do it again anyway.”

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently led a charge against Tester and his fellow moderate Democrats, more than a dozen of whom supported legislation rolling back portions of the Dodd-Frank banking regulation law. Warren accused her “teammates” of “not showing up to the fight.”

“Motives have been challenged,” Tester said, still fired up about the fight. “The criticisms were not founded in fact.”

Tester offered an analogy: He says there were five grain elevators in Big Sandy when his dad took over the family farm, and that number was down to three when he was in high school. Now, just one remains, “and it’s hanging by a thread.” In rural America, consolidation often means elimination.

“I see that same thing in banking,” Tester said. “If this pattern continues, we’ll only have Wall Street banks left. And Wall Street banks won’t serve rural America, they won’t serve Montana. Goldman Sachs isn’t coming out here, Citibank isn’t coming out here. So what will rural America do?”

Any squeeze from Tester’s left imperils his reelection chances, given that he won his first two terms without a majority. Both times, a Libertarian candidate won a small chunk of the vote on the right, but in 2018, there will be a Green Party candidate on the ballot, unless a lawsuit filed by the state Democratic Party gets him thrown off the ballot.

The morning after St. Patrick’s Day, Tester and a crowd of 40 people, mostly University of Montana students, crowded into the activities room to eat pizza at Imagine Nation Brewing. One of the first questions Tester got was about his bank regulation vote, followed by a slew of other left-leaning queries. One woman wistfully wondered when the U.S. will have free child care. Others asked about encouraging recycling and about protecting the state’s public lands.

One student, an Army veteran, stood up to ask Tester about the Russia investigation. He cited retired military leaders expressing worry the president is a Russian asset. Tester’s response is as serious as he gets all weekend.

“The lack of apparent recognition of Russia’s role in this election is very dangerous to our democracy,” Tester said. “And why it’s happening, I can only surmise.”

Tester’s answers are mostly standard-issue Democratic rhetoric. He promises to protect the public lands, and he says he’s supportive of universal child care, but that it’s too expensive. He tells the woman concerned about recycling to call her local officials. There is no nod to the center. When a reporter asks if Tester would answer these questions differently in a Trump-friendly portion of the state, his answer is simple: “Nope. No translation required.”

