• MT-02: Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale announced Friday that he was ending his nine-day-old reelection campaign because of what he described as "a death threat against me and false and defamatory rumors against me and my family." The far-right congressman made his declaration less than a month after he quit Montana's U.S. Senate race, a campaign that itself lasted less than a week.
Rosendale's latest, and probably final, about-face came just ahead of Monday's candidate filing deadline. Several other Republicans had launched bids to replace him in the 2nd Congressional District back when they expected him to run for Senate, and no major contenders appear to have dropped out during the brief time he was seeking reelection.
Given how volatile things have been, though, we're going to need to wait for the state to release its list of candidates to know exactly who is and isn't competing in the June 4 Republican primary. The one thing we can say with certainty, though, is that the winner of that contest should have no trouble in the general election for this 62-35 Trump seat in the eastern half of the state.
Plenty of Republicans in both Montana and in the nation's capital are hoping this is indeed the final chapter of Rosendale's political career, which saw the Maryland native lose a winnable 2018 Senate race to Democratic incumbent Jon Tester, refuse to support Kevin McCarthy during any of the 15 ballots for speaker, and join with seven other Republicans to oust McCarthy.
Yet despite Donald Trump's penchant for intransigent miscreants like Rosendale, the congressman even managed to find his way into the MAGA doghouse: During the January 2023 speakership fight, he was photographed waving off Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as she tried to get him to take a call from "DT."
Rosendale, who badly wanted to avenge his loss to Tester, reportedly began informing his network as early as last April that he intended to run for the upper chamber again. But rather than make those plans a reality, Rosendale instead spent the next 10 months publicly playing coy about his interest and raising little money for a new campaign. NRSC chair Steve Daines, who happens to be Montana's junior senator, used this long delay to successfully recruited wealthy businessman Tim Sheehy and boost his bid.
Rosendale finally announced he'd seek a rematch against Tester in February, but it was already too late. Trump endorsed Sheehy that very day, and Rosendale said the next week that he was dropping out because of Trump's decision. (Maybe he should have taken that phone call.)
What followed was days of uncertainty about whether the congressman would turn around and run for another term in the House, a brief period in which he announced he'd seek reelection only to end that campaign almost as quickly as the last one.
Rosendale did not elaborate on the rumors he says drove him from the race, but last month, former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp claimed on a podcast that the lawmaker had dropped his Senate bid because of a "rumor" that he had "impregnated a 20-year-old staff person." A Rosendale spokesperson threatened legal action in response, but it's not clear whether any has been taken.