Washington Smear Machine Launches Ad in Rescue Mission to Help Save Rosendale

Mitch McConnell Props Up Rosendale Yet Again

Billings—The National Republican Senate Committee launched their latest attempt to resuscitate Matt Rosendale’s campaign, which has been dragged down by scandal after scandal. Their latest television ad attempts to hide Jon Tester’s record of fighting back against lobbyist influence in the Senate.

This is an ambitious task for the NRSC, which has backed a candidate who regularly rolls over for whoever happens to be propping up his campaign.

Tester has built a career out of cracking down on influence in Washington. One of the first bills he ever helped pass was legislation that banned members of Congress—himself included—from accepting travel, meals, and gifts from lobbyists. The legislation also requires the disclosure of campaign money bundled by lobbyists.

Tester also recently introduced a bill to impose a five-year lobbying ban on lawmakers to prevent elected officials from cashing in on their connections when they leave the public sector.

Matt Rosendale has committed himself to no such ethical standard. In the state legislature, Rosendale voted to let lobbyists pay for his travel through “special accounts”—a system that had previously been eliminated due to widespread abuse. And when Rosendale was elected state insurance commissioner, one of his first orders of business was to hire an insurance industry lobbyist to run his office.

As insurance commissioner, Rosendale raised $16,600 from insurance executives on a junket to Florida—then cut himself a personal check for that amount of money when he got back to Montana.

Rosendale also has a history of skirting campaign finance law and fighting against greater transparency. He used a “legal form of money laundering” to dodge campaign contribution limits that effectively allow him to raise more money from wealthy donors who had already contributed the maximum legal amount to his 2018 campaign. This isn’t surprising behavior coming from Rosendale, who regularly voted to keep dark money darker when he voted against better disclosure laws in the Montana legislature.

“Jon has faced an onslaught of outside money trying to turn him into something he’s not—but Montanans aren’t buying it,” said Montanans for Tester spokesperson Luke Jackson. “Here’s the truth: Rosendale can’t defend his own record of cozying up to lobbyists and lining his pockets with insurance industry cash, so his billionaire pals have tried to distort Jon’s record instead. But no amount of misleading attack ads will ever change Jon’s proven record of fighting for government transparency and ethics every day.”

For more information on the NRSC’s advertisement, click HERE.

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