The scene would not have been surprising a week ago, when Republican Greg Gianforte, a wealthy Bozeman businessman, was widely expected to win Montana’s special election against folk singer Rob Quist. But in the race’s final 36 hours, a reporter accused Gianforte of “body slamming” him at a campaign event, Gianforte was charged with misdemeanor assault, and three major newspapers pulled their endorsements of him before polls opened Thursday morning.
Already, Montana’s bizarre special election and Gianforte’s win are being cast as a referendum on events in Washington and a projection of what’s to come. But is that fair?
Democrats argue the fact that Gianforte didn’t win by 20 precentage points like President Donald Trump did in November shows voters are fed up with the President and the Republican agenda. They say Montana’s election — like races in Georgia and Kansas — is a bad omen for Republicans heading into 2018.
“Republicans nationally have to be very nervous considering how much they spent, how many resources they sent here,” Matt McKenna, an adviser to the Quist campaign told CNN.
Republicans, meanwhile, argue the opposite, pointing out Thursday night that the results in Montana are proof once and for all that the base isn’t abandoning Trump despite a high-profile investigation into whether his campaign had ties to Russia.
“I think it shows the people of Montana still support Donald Trump’s agenda,” Essmann said.
But Montana’s election may be an unreliable arbiter of what’s to come in races across the country. After all, the race here featured a banjo-playing, first-time Democratic candidate, and many of Montana’s voters cast absentee ballots before the alleged assault even took place. The events that transpired here won’t be easily replicated.
“All politics are local,” said Art Wittich, a Gianforte supporter. “It comes down to two candidates.”
Not only did the final hours of the campaign center around a bombshell assault allegation that took reporters to the sheriff’s office rather than the polls, but throughout most of the campaign Quist and Gianforte weren’t just talking about Trump.
Quist tried to make the health care debate in Washington a central component of his campaign, but Gianforte didn’t fully embrace the Republican House-passed bill from the beginning, arguing it was rushed and not fully baked. His own campaign staff said Gianforte wouldn’t have voted for it.
Many of the biggest issues in the Montana special were local.
Democratic attacks against Gianforte centered around an easement disagreement he had with the state over a boundary along the East Gallatin River, which Democrats used to paint Gianforte as against public lands.
Republicans attacked Quist for saying in an early interview with The Bozeman Daily Chronicle that he might support a gun registry in a state with a strong sportsman history. That attack led to Quist airing an ad in which he literally fired a gun at a TV.
Republicans also brought out attack ads against Quist that featured a local contractor that said Quist stiffed him for work he did.
At the end of the day, it might be the case that trying to fit Montana into a national political box is a stretch.
“Montana speaks for itself,” Craig Morgan, a Gianforte supporter from Belgrade, Montana, said Thursday night.
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