MarketWatch: With Senate control at stake, these billionaires and groups have spent over $160 million on this one Montana race
Excerpt from MarketWatch | By: Katrina Scalise, Mohammed Abaherah, Daniel Lung and Dana Yim | November 4, 2024 | Photo courtesy of MarketWatch
The battle over a U.S. Senate seat in Montana has drawn record-breaking sums as political action committees funnel tens of millions of dollars into the closely watched contest.
Billionaires including Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin are keeping a close eye on Montana and have poured an unprecedented amount of money into the state, hoping to tilt the fight to control the Senate, where Democrats currently have a 51-49 majority. Jon Tester’s is one of a few critical seats that could flip and produce a Republican Senate majority, potentially opening up a pathway for the passage of GOP-sponsored legislation if Donald Trump is elected president.
Republican aerospace entrepreneur and federal contractor Tim Sheehy is running to unseat three-term incumbent Tester, one of the few Democratic senators representing a a state Trump won in 2020. An average of polls aggregated by the New York Times shows Sheehy leading Tester by four percentage points — at 49%, compared with Tester’s 45%. Montana is expected to vote for Trump a third straight time, with Trump leading the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, by 17 points in the state, according to one recent poll.