MT-Sen: While we haven’t heard anything about Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s interest in this race in the two months since the National Journal first relayed that he was considering, the Washington Post now says he’s one of the two people that national Republicans want to recruit to take on Democratic incumbent Jon Tester. The other is wealthy businessman Tim Sheehy, a Navy SEAL veteran whose name first surfaced last month and whom NRSC chair Steve Daines reportedly has been trying to land. The Post adds these same insiders don’t want Rep. Matt Rosendale, who lost to Tester 50-47 in 2018, to be their nominee again.
This isn’t the only way Daines has been trying to intervene in his home state, though, as the New York Times’ Nick Corasaniti reports that one of his allies played a key role in drafting the bill to adopt a top-two primary system intended to weaken Tester. Corasaniti writes that lobbyist Chuck Denowh wrote to the legislation’s sponsor, state Sen. Greg Hertz, “We would like it to apply only to United States Senate races,” and, “We’d like a sunset in 2025.” Denowh didn’t specify who he meant by “we,” but one state senator told his colleagues the bill “came from Daines” and was the “brainchild” of the NRSC’s executive director.
The plan recently passed the state Senate, and two Republican members also informed Corasaniti that Daines’ team pressured them into backing it. Critics argue this is no more than a scheme to weaken Tester, and Tester only, in a state where Republicans frequently complain that Libertarian Party candidates cost them vital support: Indeed, one legislator says party officials outright told them that beating Tester was the plan’s purpose. However, as FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich’s recently wrote, “You can’t just assume that every Libertarian voter would have voted Republican if the Libertarian candidate hadn’t been on the ballot; elections don’t work like that.”
Indeed, Rakich went on to highlight that, not only would the GOP candidates have needed to take the Libertarian vote overwhelmingly in 2006 and 2012 to beat Tester, they’d also have needed almost all of those third-party backers to show up in the first place even without their candidate on the ballot. No amount of Libertarian support would have saved Rosendale, though, as Tester won his third term with a majority of the vote.
GOP Gov. Greg Gianforte said of the bill, which is set to receive a vote in a House committee on Monday, “I think it’s kind of an interesting idea, but we won’t take a firm position until we actually see the final legislation.” There may be a change in store, though, as Hertz introduced an amendment to the lower chamber to require the top-two system be used for all U.S. Senate races rather than just Tester’s 2024 contest. Republicans are also waiting for Gianforte’s signature on legislation to ban instant-runoff voting, which is not in use in Montana.