Former RNC Chair Defects To Endorse Democrat In Razor-Close Montana Race
Sam Forstag
A former chair of the Republican National Committee and two-term GOP governor has endorsed a Democratic House candidate running for a battleground seat in Montana. According to MS NOW, “Marc Racicot, who won two terms as Montana’s governor in the 1990s before leading the RNC during George W. Bush’s first term, is set to endorse Sam Forstag’s bid for the state’s 1st Congressional District, currently held by a Republican.”
“He cares about what he’s doing. He’s very well prepared. He has the right priorities in terms of character and virtues and values and belief in the Constitution,” Racicot told MS NOW. “It’s not even a close call for me to stand in Sam’s corner.”
This is an important endorsement for the Democrats with the midterms just around the corner. The party is hoping to win the majority in the House, and to do so in purple-shaded red states like Montana requires the support of independents and Republicans who have been disappointed by President Donald Trump.
Racicot – a critic of Trump – has backed a number of Democrats in recent years, including Joe Biden in 2020. As MS NOW explains, “The public embrace from Racicot could go toward helping the kind of crossover appeal Forstag likely needs to do what no Montana Democrat has been able to do since the 1990s: win a U.S. House seat in the state.”
The seat is currently held by a retiring Republican, and Forstag is running against Aaron Flint – a combat veteran and former conservative radio host who is running under Trump’s endorsement. According to MS NOW, “Forstag, who worked as a smokejumper after lobbying in Montana for the state’s American Civil Liberties Union wing, won a divided primary despite warnings from some critics that he was too liberal for the district.
Since then, he’s built an unusual profile in a state where the national Democratic brand has proved corrosive. He is one of only a handful of congressional Democrats endorsed by both progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders and the centrist Blue Dog political outfit. Racicot’s support on top of that offers some Bush Republican-era nostalgia for voters as Forstag tries to cut into the state’s rightward drift.”
Polls currently indicate that the race is razor close. According to the latest survey, the two candidates are running dead even with 44 percent each. That's bad news for the Republican Party, which has been working to consolidate its hold on Montana, but is expected to take major losses in the midterms due to backlash from Trump's historic unpopularity.
“We’re in a hole that both parties have been digging for us,” Forstag said, urging support for a kind of Democrat “that could actually improve your life, and is actually going to prioritize doing so, because I know what it’s like on a day-to-day basis.”
Reprinted with permission from AlterNet
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