Why 'two Montana guys' are duking it out in the Senate

Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, chair of the Republicans' Senate campaign committee, told reporters at a Monitor Breakfast that he and the state’s other senator, Jon Tester, "get along just fine." So why is one trying to get the other fired?

|
Courtesy of Sen. Steve Daines Office
Sen. Steve Daines (R) of Montana, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and his wife, Cindy, in Montana's Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness in August 2023.

About 45 minutes into our Monitor Breakfast last week with Sen. Steve Daines, I finally asked him the question: “So how's your relationship with Jon Tester these days, given that you're trying to get him fired?”

Senators Daines and Tester of Montana are one of the few remaining “odd couples” of Congress’ upper chamber – one a Republican, the other a Democrat. And as chair of the Senate Republicans’ campaign committee, Mr. Daines is indeed working hard to defeat Mr. Tester in November. Control of the Senate, currently in Democratic hands, is on the line.

But in response to my question, Mr. Daines insisted all was well. “Oh, we get along just fine,” he said. “It’s two Montana guys.”

Then Mr. Daines suggested perhaps a bit of tension. In 2020, he said, when he was up for reelection, Mr. Tester had tried to get him “fired.”

It’s kind of like high school football, he said. “You're wearing one color jersey, and your opponent's in the other color jersey. You’re taking hits against each other.” Afterwards, “you say ‘good game,’ and you move on.”

Indeed, both men are affable Montanans. Mr. Daines had a career in the private sector, including six years in China working for Procter & Gamble, before going into politics. Mr. Tester is a third-generation dirt farmer and former schoolteacher, first elected to the Senate in 2006. I once ran into him at Costco (here in Washington, not Montana) – he’s hard to miss with his distinctive flattop – and we had a nice chat.

But there’s no denying the yin and yang of their relationship. At our well-attended May 2 breakfast, Mr. Daines was soon taking another dig at his state’s senior senator: “It’s almost as if there's two different states represented, truly. If you look at Jon Tester’s voting record, it’s 95% with Joe Biden.”

And, Mr. Daines added for good measure, “I'm pretty sure by the time we get to November, Montanans will have a very clear view of what his voting record has been like.”

Maybe this Montana odd couple’s days are numbered. But with six months to go before Election Day, the game has just begun.

Watch the full video here. 

Read our coverage here. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Why 'two Montana guys' are duking it out in the Senate
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/monitor_breakfast/2024/0506/Why-two-Montana-guys-are-duking-it-out-in-the-Senate
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe