Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) is likely to challenge Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) this year, reversing his position after a ferocious lobbying campaign from top Democrats who hope he can put another Senate seat in play.
Bullock’s decision, first reported by The New York Times, comes just days before the state’s filing deadline. He had resisted the idea of running for Senate for months; Bullock told The Hill as recently as February that he would serve out the end of his term and that he would not run.
But a source close to Bullock said he’s likely to announce a Senate run on the filing deadline on Monday after the governor talked with his family.
During a recent visit to Washington, Bullock sat down with former President Obama, who urged the Montana governor to run for the Senate seat, according to a source familiar with the meeting. Also last month, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) flew to Montana to make a last-minute appeal.
The lobbying campaign, and assurances from top party leaders that he would have the financial and political support necessary to mount a strong campaign, helped change Bullock’s mind.
Still, Bullock faces an uphill climb ahead. President Trump is all but certain to win Montana’s electoral votes in November; he beat Hillary Clinton by 20 points in Montana in 2016. Daines won his seat with nearly 58 percent of the vote in 2014, and he ended the year with more than $5 million in the bank.
But Bullock’s entry will make Daines’s life more difficult. Five little-known Democrats are challenging the incumbent, none of whom have raised more than half a million dollars.
Bullock has a new political donor list after his brief run for the Democratic presidential nomination. A recent survey conducted by the University of Montana showed Daines winning 47 percent of the vote and the Democratic candidates, all tested in the same question, pulling a combined 53 percent of the vote.
Republicans have been preparing for a potential Bullock candidacy, testing messages against him in private surveys. President Trump has tweeted about Daines several times in recent days, a sign, top Republicans said, that Trump would use his coattails to pull Daines along.
“The great people of Montana can have no better VOICE than Senator @SteveDaines. He is doing an incredible job! Whoever the Democrat nominee may be, please understand that I will be working hard with Steve all the way,” Trump tweeted Wednesday.
And Republicans signaled they would accuse Bullock of failing to warn a future employer of sexual harassment allegations against a former top political aide. That aide, fired from the Democratic Governors Association in 2015, later resigned from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office in the face of new harassment allegations.
Alex Bolton contributed reporting.