After Sen. Jon Tester helped sink President Trump’s nominee to run the VA, he started a war that it looks like Trump is about to finish.
Tester is running for another term in the Senate from Montana, a state Trump won big, and he may very well lose next week.
Polls show the race is tied, and President Trump is coming back for another rally before Tuesday.
According to Politico:
“Jon Tester would be a near lock for reelection if Montana’s Senate race came down to the classic test of which candidate voters would rather have a beer with.
Unfortunately for him, Republicans and President Donald Trump are determined to make the race anything but a beer test between Tester and Matt Rosendale, the intense and buttoned-up Republican candidate, who hails from Maryland. To the extent it’s a popularity contest, they want it to be Tester vs. Trump, who carried the state by 20 points in 2016 and remains popular there today.
Tester’s down-home, informal style is his biggest strength as he barnstorms the state, trying to personally connect with just enough voters to send him back to the Senate for six more years. But Tester has long infuriated the GOP, which has tagged him as a liberal out of step with Montana. The difference now is that they have a president willing to go all out to defeat him.
Trump is out for revenge after Tester helped derail his pick to run the Veterans Affairs department, Ronny Jackson, earlier this year. And now a deluge of money from outside groups and visits from anti-Tester surrogates, including Trump himself, threaten to tip a race that everyone agrees is tightening.
Though Tester has a narrow lead, the race is statistically tied, according to new Republican polling viewed by POLITICO. Republicans think a late surge of GOP enthusiasm tied to Trump’s visit this coming weekend could produce a major upset of a two-term incumbent who has never cleared 50 percent of the vote.”
