Sen. Tester faces formidable challenge in Montana reelection campaign

At times, Tester has not gone along with his party. He was one of the few Senate Democrats to vote against the 2008 Troubled Assets Relief Program for banks. In December, he voted against the DREAM Act, which would have created a pathway to citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, angering activists among the liberal netroots activist community that helped propel his first campaign.

And everywhere Tester went one week in April, from coffee shops to radio studios to microbreweries, he talked with blunt machismo about wolves. It’s a classic states’ rights victory: He removed gray wolves in Montana and other Western states from the endangered-species list. Environmentalists opposed it, but Montana’s ranchers and outdoorsmen cheered.

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“Bottom line is, we’re able to hunt the wolves now,” Tester said.

Race a dead heat

The Montana race has jelled early. The most recent public poll showed Tester and Rehberg in a statistical dead heat. They do not yet have primary opponents and are raking in cash — huge sums for a rural state where television airtime is relatively cheap. In the first quarter of 2011, Tester raised more than $1.1 million, while Rehberg raised $580,000 and transferred about $500,000 from his House campaign account. At the end of the quarter, Tester had nearly $1.45 million in cash on hand, and Rehberg had $933,000.

Republicans have attacked Tester’s big haul, pointing to an analysis by the Hill newspaper showing that he collected nearly $60,000 in contributions from credit card companies in the 17 days after he introduced legislation to delay new regulations on debit-card swipe fees.

Tester’s proposal would postpone implementation of a rule that caps the fees banks can charge retailers for debit-card transactions at 12 cents. He said the delay would protect community banks that couldn’t afford to provide free debit-card privileges if retailers paid such nominal fees. But Republicans say Tester’s plan helps big banks, too.

The conservative group Americans for Job Security is airing a 60-second advertisement on Montana radio stations alleging that Tester sides with Wall Street.

When some high school students asked Tester about the ad, he said, “It’s totally bogus.” Being a politician, he told them, is like “branding calves. Most of the time it’ll be good, and every once in a while you’ll be kicked in places you don’t want to get kicked.”

This raises a paradox: Why does a man who says he is at peace harvesting wheat and loathes the ways of Washington want to return there for another six years?

Back at his farmhouse, Tester said: “I’m not going to be there when I’m an old man. I ain’t wired for that. But you can’t make the kind of changes to give opportunities to kids and move the country forward sitting on that tractor out there. You can in Washington, D.C.”