In Montana, a race as tight as winner’s flattop

Jon Tester had been up most of the night tending to the vote count in his tight race for the U.S. Senate, and he swallowed plenty of black coffee Wednesday afternoon to get through live television interviews with everyone from local reporters to national anchors.

Montana, rarely a bellwether of national politics, held the national spotlight as one of two races -- with Virginia -- that would decide which party controlled the Senate. And Democrat Tester, standing against a blue banner that proclaimed “Real Montanans for Real Change,” was the face to watch.

What viewers saw was what Montanans have been watching for the last two months: a burly third-generation organic wheat farmer with a flattop haircut and three fingers missing from a meat-grinder accident in his youth.

By late afternoon, the 50-year-old Tester had won the race by 2,847 votes out of about 400,000 cast with all precincts reporting, the Montana secretary of state’s office said.

The official tally put Tester’s total at 198,302 votes, or 49.1%, to 195,455, or 48.4%, for three-term incumbent Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, who late Wednesday had refused to concede the race. Stan Jones, a Libertarian Party candidate, got 10,324 votes, or 2.6%.

That margin was a squeaker, but it is more than the 0.5% or less of a difference that the Burns campaign would need to initiate a formal recount process. With any margin larger than that, Burns would have to persuade a judge that the count was flawed or fraudulent.

Elections officials and Montana political experts said the victory appeared solid, despite Burns’s refusal to concede.

“Montana isn’t historically known for a lot of voter fraud or problems with counting the votes,” said Craig Wilson, a political scientist at Montana State-Billings University, who added that even mandatory recounts had never reversed the original results in a statewide race here.

“It’s over,” said Gov. Brian Schweitzer. “Burns is no longer a U.S. senator come January.”

Analysts here cited a combination of factors behind Tester’s victory over a tenacious incumbent in a conservative-leaning state.

Foremost was the candidate himself, who played well in this heavily agricultural state: a farmer with scruffy boots, a beat-up red pickup truck and an original haircut.

“I like the low-maintenance angle,” Tester said of his flattop in an interview Wednesday.

One oft-repeated television ad featured the popular Schweitzer endorsing Tester but adding, with a chuckle, that he wouldn’t get one of those haircuts.

Also a factor was Burns’ lengthy service -- exit polls here suggested that 60% of voters agreed with the sentiment that Burns, 71, had been in office for too long -- and his damaging links to convicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Burns had accepted more money from Abramoff-linked clients than anybody else in Congress.

“The big issue is accountability,” Tester said in describing the potential effect of a Democratic-controlled Congress on issues such as a plan for bringing the troops home from Iraq, healthcare, and reducing the national debt. “The checks and balances are going to be restored.”