Exclusive: “Republicans for [Jon] Tester” is stacked with Democrats

Sen. Jon Tester’s campaign is relying on an odd strategy in the days leading up to the 2024 election.

Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.)’s campaign is relying on an odd strategy in the days leading up to the 2024 election.

Tester recently rolled out a “Republicans for Tester” coalition, which includes several prominent Republicans, such as former Gov. Marc Racicot (R., Mont) — who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 — but several of the other members, including ones relied on for campaign ads, sound, vote, and donate, like partisan Democrats.

One of the Montanans in Tester’s recent “Republicans for Tester” ad, Bob Beckley, has donated dozens of times to national and Montana Democrats, campaign finance records reveal. Another is state Sen. Terry Vermiere, a Republican legislator — albeit one whose voting record in the legislature shows that 72 percent of his votes were “cast on side taken by most Democrats”; the average for Republicans is 57 percent.

Another voter featured in the ad has attacked Montana Republicans Sen. Steve Daines and Gov. Greg Gianforte, online. He also donated to Daines’s Democratic opponent, Gov. Steve Bullock, in 2020.

Tester relying on Democrats cosplaying as Republicans follows similar reports that his embattled colleague, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) has relied on partisan Democrats to falsely claim that they are Republicans in an ad, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

It is a strategy that Democrats employ cycle after cycle. Rep. Angie Craig (D., Minn.) similarly featured a “lifelong Republican” in a 2022 ad, despite the fact that the man in question “votes as a Democrat.”

Nationally, Democrats are beginning to triage Tester’s race, mounting a desperate, last-ditch attempt to defeat Sens. Rick Scott (R., Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R., Texas), with most strategists predicting that they will lose control of the chamber next year.

Tester’s campaign did not respond to request for comment.