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" Philip Rucker/The Washington Post via Getty&amp;quot;These guys are going to do everything they can to try to win,&amp;quot; Tester says of his Tea Party opponent, Denny Rehberg, and his well-funded backers.    &amp;quot;President Obama has to run his race,&amp;quot; Montana Senator Jon Tester told me on Tuesday when I asked whether he&amp;#039;d be having the president out to his alfalfa farm in Big Sandy (population: 598) for an appearance before they both face their first re-election a year from now. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m gonna run my race.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;And,&amp;quot; Tester added, &amp;quot;they&amp;#039;re gonna be two separate races.&amp;quot;  Probably wise, given that a poll released Tuesday morning by Montana State University showed Obama dragging around a dismal 32 percent approval rating in a conservative state where, in 2008, he finished just 10,000 votes behind John McCain. Wiser still for a freshman senator who is virtually tied with his opponent in a campaign that&amp;#039;s going to demand &amp;quot;all in&amp;quot; party spending even though fewer than 150,000 voters are expected to determine the outcome \u2014 a campaign that&amp;#039;s already weird by national standards, yet weirdly emblematic of the minefields faced by Democratic incumbents across the country.  If Tester wins this thing, he&amp;#039;ll be called downright brilliant, of course, but right now he&amp;#039;s just doing what many Democratic incumbents tied to unpopular Obama programs desperately want to do, as well as what any Montanan familiar with wild, dangerous territory knows you need to do when predators are circling: Get away from the thing that&amp;#039;s smelling like lunch, unless you wanted to be gnawed on, too. But there is always the gnawing. &amp;quot;From taxes to spending to healthcare, his record is in lock step with Obama,&amp;quot; says Erik Iverson, campaign manager for Tester&amp;#039;s opponent, six-term Congressman and proud ranch owner Denny Rehberg. &amp;quot;Which is out of step with Montanans.&amp;quot;     Tom Williams/Roll Call via GettyRehberg already has $1.8 million on hand, a year and a half of Karl Rove-backed funding in his favor, and a duck and a wolf in his office. But a top national campaigner says Democrats &amp;quot;will not allow Jon Tester to be outspent.&amp;quot;   As fundraising pours in and $2 million in negative advertising by outside groups already blares from local TVs, it&amp;#039;s clear that Rehberg&amp;#039;s plan \u2014 Liberate Main Street! Why are we spending money on AIDS? \u2014 is itself in lock-step with the machinations of his fellow Tea Party caucus members and the Republican party at large. Not only will Tester and those like him need to save face on their records \u2014 they&amp;#039;ll literally spend the next year saving their own faces from being eaten alive.  &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re going to try to turn a Montana farmer, who is built like a lineman, has seven fingers, and a flat-top \u2014 they&amp;#039;re going to try to turn him into a caricature Barack Obama,&amp;quot; says Guy Cecil, Executive Director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. &amp;quot;Good luck with that.&amp;quot; For all the Obama-related attacks that are now incoming, Tester seemed equally prepared for the even weirder shenanigans likely to be flung from groups like Karl Rove&amp;#039;s Crossraods GPS, which entered the fray in Montana this summer, almost a year and a half out. During our phone interview \u2014 which Tester, in the vernacular of the rural lands from which he comes, termed &amp;quot;a visit&amp;quot; \u2014 I noted that Tester&amp;#039;s opponents are already telling Montanans about his Wall Street donors and hitting him for taking &amp;quot;more lobbyist money than any other D.C. politician.&amp;quot;  Tester responded: &amp;quot;You know what I look like, right? I mean, is Wall Street the first thing that pops into your head when you see me?&amp;quot; While the Wall Street line does some blocking for him, Rehberg is pushing hard on the idea that Tester, with his votes for &amp;quot;Obamacare&amp;quot; and the 2008 federal stimulus package, has become more D.C. than Montana, more lineage than linebacker, after running as a regular Montana guy just six years ago. &amp;quot;From our perspective, it&amp;#039;s about the hypocrisy of Jon Tester,&amp;quot; Iverson told me.  Tester and his people rumble right back, saying that Rehberg has been in D.C. longer than Tester, and without much to show for it. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s going to be a glaring comparison if we stick to the facts,&amp;quot; Tester told me, before admitting the most glaring fact of all: &amp;quot;These guys are going to do everything they can to try to win.&amp;quot;      Rove&amp;#039;s anti-Tester ad, delivered to Montana in July courtesy of his Crossroads group, was part of a $1.6-million, Citizens United-enabled national buy designed to hit five Democratic Senators, at least a few of whom will need to be pushed aside if Republicans are to re-take the chamber. But the buy in Montana was just a fraction of what&amp;#039;s expected, over the next year, to become an over $20 million, everyone-off-the-sidelines brawl over Tester&amp;#039;s seat. Cecil, the national senate-campaign director, said his group is going &amp;quot;all in&amp;quot; to help Tester fend off the coming assault. &amp;quot;We are 100 percent committed to this race,&amp;quot; he added, lest there be any confusion. &amp;quot;We will not allow Jon Tester to be outspent.&amp;quot;  Tester is doing pretty well himself, pulling in more than $1 million in each of the last three fundraising quarters (including $1.2 million to Rehberg&amp;#039;s $700,000 in the quarter that ended September 30). As a result, Tester&amp;#039;s at-the-ready cash pile sits at $3 million, far ahead of Rehberg&amp;#039;s $1.8 million cash on hand. Montana State University political science professor David Parker, who&amp;#039;s writing a book on this campaign, says whatever the final draw, each candidate will probably spend around 70 percent of it on advertising.  &amp;quot;This race, I think, is going to get negative real fast,&amp;quot; Parker told me, stating what&amp;#039;s already become apparent. Because when the clamor of Obama comparisons and issue-based thwacking gets familiar enough as to become background noise, a shadow question takes over: Which of these guys is more of a &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; Montanan? Which has a kind of way of suggesting that the only way to get voters off their asses and into the booth is to make national politics appear, on the face of things, pseudo-local \u2014 and certainly psycho \u2014 all over again. &amp;quot;Probably 135,000 people out of about 630,000 registered voters are going to decide this race,&amp;quot; Iverson, of the Rehberg campaign, told me. Those people are mainly Montana independents, who make up around a third of the electorate and are famous for ticket-splitting (in 2008, the same year Obama got close to winning Montana, Rehberg won re-election with 64 percent of the vote).  These independents don&amp;#039;t take kindly to sell-outs, turncoats, or guys who don&amp;#039;t exude a &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; Montana disposition, which tends to be suspicious of federally-controlled anything and hugely disdainful of the idea that someone&amp;#039;s unbalanced books deserve government assistance. (Never mind that Montana itself gets about $2.50 for every dollar it sends to D.C. in taxes. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re going to take your money but leave us the hell alone,&amp;quot; is how Parker describes it.) Tester, whose disposition includes a Senate schedule built around his farm&amp;#039;s harvesting and planting season, a loaded .22 he keeps in the barn for shooing away troublesome pigeons, a boisterous opposition to the PATRIOT Act, and the fact that he was the only Democratic Senator to vote against the Wall Street bailout, says that if he&amp;#039;s been taking money from Wall Street for his campaign (which he has been), it&amp;#039;s just because &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve got to have money to get our message out.&amp;quot;  He added: &amp;quot;Who donates to our campaign doesn&amp;#039;t influence me one bit.&amp;quot; So the campaign will be intense, and it will be, at the outset at least, about Big Important Things that already have both sides reaching for the hammers and slinging the manure. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m never going to apologize for half a million dollars for Montana for infrastructure,&amp;quot; Tester told me, defending his stimulus vote as a direct job creator for his state, which currently has an unemployment rate of 7.7 percent \u2014 not good, but not exactly as bad as the rest of us.  Same for his vote on health care reform. Tester&amp;#039;s strategy is to lean into the criticism and explain his vote as, once again, good for Montanans \u2014 even though the Obamacare-hating Tea Party is strong in Montana, even though Tea-sipping Rehberg wants to repeal the whole damn thing, even though that same Montana State University poll found 67 percent of Montanans feeling that health care reform hadn&amp;#039;t helped them at all. &amp;quot;I can give you lists and lists and lists of people who couldn&amp;#039;t afford to have health insurance,&amp;quot; Tester told me, arguing that his vote helps insure more people. &amp;quot;My wife and I couldn&amp;#039;t afford health insurance when we were younger.&amp;quot;  Democratic strategists and the Tester campaign alike sounded eager to turn the tables and give Rehberg, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, a kind of scrutiny he may not have yet experienced over the last ten years, or at least since his sister, a high-school principal, taught him about public-education funding. Rehberg, the counter-Obama counter-strike would have you believe, doesn&amp;#039;t even recognize himself. &amp;quot;This is a guy who&amp;#039;s a millionaire, who&amp;#039;s voted to increase his own pay in Congress five times,&amp;quot; says Cecil, the national strategist. &amp;quot;A guy who&amp;#039;s taken nine luxury trips paid for by special interests. He voted to gut Medicare... Four months ago, he described Pell Grants as the Welfare of the twentieth century.&amp;quot;    Andrea Helling via AP&amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m running against a guy who has a record, and not much of a record of accomplishment at all,&amp;quot; Tester says.   I first met Jon Tester in the former mining town of Butte in the fall of 2006, back when he was something of a national novelty \u2014 a Democrat who&amp;#039;d lost three fingers to a meat grinder in his youth, drove a tractor, and wore cowboy boots and a Carhart for more than just photo ops. Back then Tester was riding the wave of disenchantment with George W. Bush in particular and Republicans in general, talking in plain terms about how conservative tax policies would make life less enjoyable for the average Montanan. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s nice to go out fishin&amp;#039; sometimes,&amp;quot; I watched him remind a small crowd at the Butte Labor Temple, right after warning them that Republican tax policy would mean less money in their pockets for bait and for tackle and wearing a Carhart whenever you damn please. Montana is a little different than most states, including when it comes to campaigning. It&amp;#039;s huge, and it has a lot of rugged terrain to tangle with, but it has under one million people altogether \u2014 meaning a small crowd at a small-town labor temple is a pretty good thing. (Rehberg, who has been the state&amp;#039;s sole &amp;quot;at large&amp;quot; House member for ten years, has an unusual advantage in this regard, having traveled to all fifty-six Montana counties over the course of his every-two-years campaigning.)  Also unique to Montana: strange things \u2014 issues, you should rightfully call them \u2014 that can hit outside observers as a little stranger still. &amp;quot;Local issues are more important in Montana,&amp;quot; says Cecil, of the DSCC. &amp;quot;Issues like wolves.&amp;quot;  While in most states you won&amp;#039;t find a Democrat trying to out-hustle a Republican over who got an endangered animal like the Western wolf less federal protection, this, again, is Montana \u2014 where a lot of voters see wolves as livestock predators. So when Rehberg, who has a stuffed Canadian Black wolf in his office, suggested he&amp;#039;s the one responsible for the de-listing of American endangered wolves, Tester&amp;#039;s campaign pounced, reminding people that Rehberg&amp;#039;s bill actually didn&amp;#039;t go anywhere in Congress. &amp;quot;The record is clear as to who did what,&amp;quot; Tester told me. &amp;quot;It is absolutely, unequivocally clear. He could not get his bill out of committee. I got my bill signed by the president.&amp;quot;  Some of the broadsides skip the bills-as-proxy part altogether, and go directly, baldly at the character question. &amp;quot;It takes someone very special to sue local firefighters,&amp;quot; Cecil says, referring to a lawsuit the Rehbergs filed not long ago in Billings, claiming local firefighters didn&amp;#039;t do enough to quell a brush fire on Rehberg&amp;#039;s property. &amp;quot;A property that was drawn into the city&amp;#039;s boundaries at the request of Denny Rehberg,&amp;quot; Cecil noted.  &amp;quot;It really speaks to who he is as a person,&amp;quot; Tester told me. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s more concerned about his well-being than he is about the community he lives in... No lives were lost, no buildings were lost, but he&amp;#039;s suing the Fire Department.&amp;quot; During an election! (Iverson, Rehberg&amp;#039;s campaign manager, said the Rehbergs, whose initial court filings requested monetary damages, aren&amp;#039;t after money \u2014just trying to address &amp;quot;a legitimate public safety concern in their hometown.&amp;quot; And, Iverson countered: &amp;quot;If this is the silver bullet for the Tester campaign, we&amp;#039;re going to win this thing by ten points.&amp;quot;) Reaching further into the knife drawer, people familiar with Montana politics bring up a 2004 incident in which Rehberg, on a trade mission to Kazakhstan, fell off a horse and broke a certain number of ribs after having a certain number of shots of vodka. (These facts are not disputed, though the exact number of shots consumed is disputed, as is the number of ribs injured and the precise reason for Rehberg&amp;#039;s fall. Rehberg&amp;#039;s defenders have claimed the fall was due only to Rehberg&amp;#039;s lack of familiarity with Kazakh-style saddles, and they have denied anonymous allegations, from an anonymous e-mail allegedly from a U.S. embassy, that Rehberg made fun of Kazakh fashion on the trip by &amp;quot;doing a &amp;#039;Coneheads&amp;#039; routine from Saturday Night Live over and over,&amp;quot; a routine that allegedly involved repeated beeping sounds.)  Another incident, this one from 2009, also makes the rounds. In late summer of that year, Rehberg was in a boat that crashed into the rocky shore of Montana&amp;#039;s Flathead Lake, leaving him with a badly fractured ankle and a swollen eye, and sending four others to the hospital, one of them Rehberg&amp;#039;s state director, who was in a coma for more than a week and ended up with lasting injuries. Rehberg&amp;#039;s blood alcohol level was determined at the time to be .05, below the Montana boat-driving limit of .08, and Iverson said Rehberg was not driving in any case. The driver, a Republican state legislator \u2014 now retired \u2014 who had a blood alcohol level of .16, later admitted to driving the boat drunk, and earlier this year received a four-year deferred sentence and $29,000 in fines.  Iverson blamed the Tester campaign when I brought up these incidents, though I didn&amp;#039;t learn about them from the Tester campaign. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re the most negative, nasty campaign ever in Montana politics,&amp;quot; Iverson said. &amp;quot;The stuff they&amp;#039;re saying isn&amp;#039;t true. It&amp;#039;s demonstrably false, and it&amp;#039;s not gonna work.&amp;quot; He added that the Rehberg campaign wouldn&amp;#039;t be engaging in such personal attacks, but then in almost the next breath tried to poke holes in &amp;quot;this carefully crafted image that Tester is somehow some sort of centrist conservative Democrat,&amp;quot; saying: &amp;quot;It just isn&amp;#039;t true. I mean, the guy is a liberal former music teacher.&amp;quot; True enough. Tester did once teach music in the Big Sandy schools, where he also served on the school board. His campaign says he isn&amp;#039;t running from that fact, either. Tester&amp;#039;s instrument: the trumpet, the only one he could play best given his missing fingers.  And the wimp-by-insinuation game can, of course, go both ways. Rehberg, it turns out, is a rancher who doesn&amp;#039;t really ranch anymore, having given up first on cattle and then on cashmere goats because, Iverson admitted, &amp;quot;he couldn&amp;#039;t manage the herd and going back and forth between Montana and D.C.&amp;quot; Iverson also mentioned that Rehberg &amp;quot;now has three trackers on him&amp;quot; \u2014 people who trail the Congressman with video cameras, waiting for an exploitable slip. One&amp;#039;s from the Democratic Party, Iverson said, another is from some outside group, and the third, well, &amp;quot;he just showed up the other day for the first time.&amp;quot; --Eli Sanders is an associate editor at The Stranger FROM CHARLES P. PIERCE: Rehberg&amp;#039;s Weirdness, His Jesus Memorial + the Border Flap EARLIER: What I&amp;#039;ve Learned, with Jon Tester Follow The Politics Blog on RSS and on the Twitter &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a11573/montana-senate-race-2012-6541718/>