In case you missed it, Gianforte won the race for the empty lone Montana House of Representatives seat. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver notes vote finalization takes a while in Montana:
Gianforte leads by about 7 percentage points as we wrap up this live blog. The numbers will shift around a bit — Montana takes a long time to finalize its vote — but we should wind up somewhere in that range, which we can call the mid-to-high single digits.
CNN shows a 6 point gap, with 5.7 points to the Libertarian candidate – Gianforte is at 50.1%. CNN’s Lauren Fox comments:
But Montana’s election may be an unreliable arbiter of what’s to come in races across the country. After all, the race here featured a banjo-playing, first-time Democratic candidate, and many of Montana’s voters cast absentee ballots before the alleged assault even took place. The events that transpired here won’t be easily replicated.
“All politics are local,” said Art Wittich, a Gianforte supporter. “It comes down to two candidates.”
Perhaps Quist didn’t have what it takes to be a good candidate. After all, being a folk singer is not the same as being an experienced politician.
So now it’s up to Gianforte to prove he’s not another GOP zombie, that he’s not joining the Gohmert/Roby/Ryan crew to vote in solid lock-step with the GOP dictates. It’s so easy, when you’re not sitting in that hot seat, to say this:
… Gianforte didn’t fully embrace the Republican House-passed bill from the beginning, arguing it was rushed and not fully baked. His own campaign staff said Gianforte wouldn’t have voted for it.
It’s quite another to actually have to face the pressure of a vote and the angry glare of the GOP whip. So will Gianforte exercise his best judgment and vote against legislation which is bad for America?
Or will he just be another zombie GOP member and betray Montana in the process?
