A vulnerable Democrat senator facing a tough re-election has refused to endorse Kamala Harris for president and won’t be attending the Democratic National Convention this week.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), appears to have fallen behind his opponent, Republican challenger Tim Sheehy, in the latest polls, and the senator’s refusal to endorse Harris or attend the DNC appear to be calculated moves to try and save his seat.
In the three most recent polls, conducted between June 29 and August 12, Sheehy appears to be leading by a comfortable margin, +5 in the latest Remington poll, +2 in the latest poll from Emerson, and +6 in a poll taken by KULR-TV between August 10 and 12. The Real Clear Politics average has Sheehy sitting at 4.4. points ahead of Tester.
The election is still several months away, but the latest polls show the three-term senator could be heading for defeat. He’s won his previous two re-elections by small but decisive margins (3.1 percentage points in 2018 and 3.7 percentage points in 2012) and may see Harris as a net negative to his campaign.
Tester has refused to endorse Harris, NPR reported, and claimed he won’t be attending the DNC because it’s harvest time and he’ll be busy on his farm. Tester was a superdelegate at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in 2016 and spoke remotely during the Democrats’ 2020 convention during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was presumably harvest time during those conventions as well.
Tester’s campaign also told NPR that he was too busy for interviews, making it appear he is taking the Harris tactic of not speaking to the media or releasing policy proposals so that they can’t be derided.
As for what Tester has done to campaign so far, he appears to be running against his own record. Tester is openly running against political positions he has taken as a United States senator, including illegal immigration. Tester is now running ads showing him attacking President Joe Biden’s handling of the border – when just last year he was praising Biden’s policies.
“I think the big issue here is we need to make sure the southern border is secure and I think the President has helped do that,” Tester said last year on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Tester now claims that he is “working with Republicans to do whatever it takes to finally secure the border,” according to a campaign ad that ran in May.
Tester is also attempting to claim credit for blocking a Biden administration push to pull funding from school hunting programs. Tester, however, voted for the bill that would have blocked such funding.
Former President Donald Trump won Montana by 16 points in 2020.
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