A top-tier Senate race in 2012 is now gearing up, with Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) set to announce that he is challenging first-term Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.
Roll Call reports:
“It’s happening Saturday,” said a knowledgeable Montana GOP political operative. “He’s running. There is a lot of support and enthusiasm back home, and Denny knows he can win.”
Roll Call also reports that the operative shared an internal Rehberg campaign poll, which gave Rehberg 49% to Tester’s 43%. This is fairly similar to a Public Policy Polling (D) survey from this past NOvember, which had Rehberg edging out Tester by a margin of 48%-46%.
The obvious challenge for Tester will be that he is running for re-election in a presidential year, in a state that has only voted Democratic for president twice in the past 50 years: The Lyndon Johnson landslide of 1964, and a narrow plurality for Bill Clinton in the three-way race of 1992.
Tester was elected in the Democratic wave of 2006, defeating incumbent Republican Sen. Conrad Burns by a margin of 49%-48%. He was previously the state Senate President. He has been a relative liberal in the Senate, favoring progressive issues such as the public option during the health care reform debates, while also being more pro-gun as a Westerner.
Rehberg previously ran for Senate in 1996, when he was the state’s lieutenant governor, losing to incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Baucus by a 50%-45% margin. He then ran for the House in an open-seat race in 2000, winning with 52% of the vote, and has been easily re-elected ever since.
Rehberg might also be familiar to readers of TPMmuckraker, for his presence in a boating crash that resulted in criminal charges against the boat’s operator, then-state Sen. Gerg Barkus, who was sentenced this past January to a deferred prison sentence and $29,000 in fines.
