Another tight Senate race could be moving into the red column…

Conservative candidate for US Senate in Montana, Matt Rosendale, who is in a very tight race against the liberal Democrat Senator John Tester, just got some very good news. His libertarian opponent, Rick Breckenridge, who had no chance of winning the election, but had the potential to be a spoiler for the Republican candidate, Matt Rosendale, has pulled out of the race and has announced that he’s throwing his support behind Rosendale. Breckenridge cites a dark money mailer from an unknown group aimed at harming Rosendale’s support among conservatives as the reason for backing his opponent.

Trump won Montana by 20 percentage points in the 2016 election, buoying Republican hopes of toppling Tester. The president took a personal interest in Montana’s Senate contest in April after Tester released allegations that derailed the president’s nomination of White House physician Ronny Jackson to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs

When Trump last visited Montana in July, Tester took out full-page ads in 14 newspapers welcoming the president to Montana. Trump proceeded to slam Tester at a rally in Great Falls as an obstructionist who was out of touch with the state’s voters.

Rosendale said any notion that Tester and Trump are working together was “rather amusing” given that Tester opposed the president on matters ranging from tax cuts to the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the most recent Real Clear Politics polling numbers, they give the liberal Democrat Senator Jon Tester a 2 to 3 point advantage (within the margin of error).

According to Real Clear Politics– The mailer comes two days before President Donald Trump plans to hold a campaign rally in Bozeman supporting Rosendale — the president’s fourth visit to the state and an indication of how much the White House wants to unseat Tester. Trump has blamed the Democrat for derailing the nomination of his first choice to head the Veterans Affairs department.

Breckenridge said in an interview that he doesn’t know the source of the mailer, which promoted him as a “true conservative” and claimed that Rosendale supports using drones to spy on private citizens.

He said it appeared to be an attempt by so-called dark money groups to influence Montana’s election and that he’s decided Rosendale is the best candidate to stop such efforts. Federal election laws require campaign materials to disclose their funding source.

“The reality is I’m only going to get 3 or 4 percent of the vote, and he (Rosendale) has the character to combat this issue,” Breckenridge said. “I’m standing in unity and solidarity with Matt to combat dark money in politics.”

 

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