“Montana has spoken loud and clear,” Sen. Jon Tester said after introducing transparency and accountability legislation last year, “our campaign finance system is broken.” Tester wasn’t wrong. Tester is just a case in point.
The Montana Democrat likes to condemn money in politics almost as much as he likes to accept campaign cash from lobbyists. Tester rails against Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision which allows corporations to make political contributions, then Tester cashes checks from corporate lobbyists.
And he cashes a lot of them. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Tester regularly ranks as the No. 1 recipient of cash from lobbyists. He has taken $401,478 from lobbyists this election cycle alone, roughly eight times the median Montana income. This has filled his war chest to the brim as he tries to fend off Republican challenger Matt Rosendale and this contradicts his hayseed populism.
Tester wants his constituents to think of him as that one farmer they sent away to Washington. The aw-shucks senator talks about how corporate money drowns out the voices of “a rancher from Sidney, a nurse in Kalispell or a schoolteacher in Anaconda.” But the truth is that the senator from Big Sky Country knows how to work a big room and how to work over a corporate lobbyist like the best of them.
This hasn’t gone without notice. The National Republican Senatorial Committee knocked Tester over the head over his lobbying money – and at the time of the ad, Tester was in fact number one in lobbyist money:
When asked whether or not the swamp had sucked him under like the NRSC argues, Tester balked, telling the Associated Press “that’s bull.” But it is actually a matter of public record.
Until he was recently overtaken by another Democrat, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Tester had the ignoble distinction of having taken the most lobbying money this cycle. This can’t be explained away by the fact that Tester faces a tough reelection though. As the AP reports, Tester took more than half a million lobbying dollars in 2012, more than even then House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
The K Street connection has become a political liability, and when President Trump visited the state, he made sure to point out that Tester has “taken more cash from lobbyists than almost anyone in the entire Senate.” Rosendale has been making this argument for months.
Coincidence? When @JonTester’s up for re-election he’s receiving THE MOST CASH from lobbyists of ANY U.S. Senator or Congressman. He’s Gone Washington. #DrainTheSwamp #DefeatTester #mtsen #mtpol pic.twitter.com/0CJ9GAfPoN
— Matt Rosendale (@MattForMontana) August 24, 2018
With two months to go, it is up to Tester to explain to voters how he is in, but not of, the swamp. His campaign finance disclosures make it a challenge.
