Montana Senate hopeful Matt Rosendale praises ‘sincere’ support from Democrats who are spending millions to try to eliminate Trump-backed candidate Tim Sheehy in the Republican Party’s hotly contested primaries

A conservative candidate running for Senate in Montana is bizarrely enlisting Democratic support as he faces a tough bid for the Republican nomination.

Rosendale entered the Senate race on Friday, kicking off what could be a painful GOP primary as he faces Trump and Republican establishment-backed candidate Tim Sheehy, a retired Navy SEAL.

The Democrats currently hold a one-seat majority in the Senate and face an extremely tough challenge to maintain their grip on power.

They are competing against each other in one of the biggest battlegrounds on the 2024 Senate map – the battle for Democratic Senator Jon Tester’s seat in Montana – where former President Trump won by more than sixteen points in 2020.

However, the long-awaited candidate doesn’t seem to mind setbacks, even publicly praising Democrats who funneled money into ads to boost him over Sheehy. Rosendale lost to Tester by 3.5 points in 2018, and Democrats believe they have a better chance of keeping their seat against him in a rematch.

Rosendale said Monday on the Voices of Montana radio program that he is stunned by the “genuine” support he is receiving from a “number” of Democrats.

“I’m really amazed at the people who have called me and contacted me, well-known Democrats in the state of Montana, saying, ‘Matt, we support you. We support you,” Rosendale said.

Entrepreneur Tim Sheehy is the NRSC and Trump-backed candidate in the race to unseat Democratic Senator Jon Tester of Montana

His comments come as the Wall Street Journal editorial board, dubbed Rosendale’s Senate, offers a “gift” to top Democrat Chuck Schumer.

The board said Schumer’s “best hope” to maintain the Democratic majority is to “divide and conquer the Republican Party, and Mr. Rosendale is calling in for help.”

They suggested that Democrats think they have a better chance of winning against Rosendale in the fall than against Sheehy.

At the same time, the New York Times reported that Montana Democrats “quietly” placed online ads promoting Rosendale by touting his conservative credentials — before he had even entered the race. The advertisements of the group Treasure State Truths.

It’s a controversial move reminiscent of what we saw during the 2022 election cycle, when Democrats ramped up support for a number of further right-wing candidates in the primaries, who their candidate would then defeat in November.

The Montana Senate race is expected to be one of the most expensive this year. According to tracking by AdImpact, Montana has already seen more than $83 million in ad spend and bookings.

Included in that spending are ads placed by the Last Best Place PAC, which has ties to Democrats. It registered with the Federal Election Commission last fall and has spent more than $5 million on ads attacking Sheehy and supporting Rosendale.

After his comments about Democratic support on Monday, Rosendale’s campaign doubled down and said he is already looking at the big picture.

Campaign manager David Herbst argued that Montana is an independent state and Rosendale will be the candidate to sway people because he is getting results.

Rosendale’s entry into the race has already led some Republicans to raise alarms about the damage a combative GOP primary could do if Republicans look to flip the Senate from blue to red.

Republican party Leaders have already begun to rally behind Republican businessman and veteran Tim Sheehy.

National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Chairman and fellow Montana Senator Steve Daines called Rosendale’s entry into the Senate race “unfortunate” and accused him of choosing “to create a divisive primary.”

President Trump quickly endorsed Sheehy on the same day Rosendale entered the race, despite Rosendale’s close alliance with the former president.

In a post to Truth Social on Friday, Trump wrote that he had supported Rosendale in the past and would do so again if he were to run for Congress, but the former president called Sheehy the “best positioned” candidate to defeat Tester and gave him his ‘Complete and Total Approval!’

In his launch video, Rosendale targeted only President Joe Biden, but also Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and “Washington insiders.”

Democrat Senator Jon Tester is running for re-election in Montana in 2024. It is a state that President Trump won by 16 points in 2020.

Tester, a Democrat and rancher from Montana, has served in the Senate since 2007. He was re-elected in 2018, defeating then-Montana Auditor Matt Rosendale by more than three points.

Rosendale’s campaign also argued that conservative Republicans who hold establishment Republicans responsible for their failures are not unpopular among Republicans, but the opposite.

Herbst argued that having primaries is “healthy for the party” and that there should be a debate about what it means to be a Republican.

But some Republicans disagree. As evidence, they point to the last election cycle.

In 2022, Democrats scored victories in multiple battleground states after Republicans staged a series of nasty and expensive primaries that pitted establishment-backed candidates against Trump-backed opponents and self-styled outsiders for the nominations.

This also isn’t the first time Rosendale has run for Senate in Montana. In 2018, he lost to Tester by more than three points in the general election.

His campaign believes there is a much different landscape in Montana for Rosendale this time around, including being better established statewide, Trump on the ballot and new voters in the state, than when he ran in 2018 for the Senate.