Congressman Matt Rosendale didn’t declare his widely anticipated candidacy for the U.S. Senate at an event with fellow right-wing firebrand Matt Gaetz at a Helena hot spring this weekend. 

But as Montana’s filing deadline on March 11 approaches, and tensions between Rosendale and the national Republicans attempting to keep him out of a competitive Senate race escalate, the gulf between expectation and reality seems to be narrowing. After all, Rosendale, an incumbent in the deep-red eastern Montana House district who won his last election by more than 30 points, likely wouldn’t need to embark on a statewide speaking tour with a Florida congressman to stay in his current office. 

“Look, I’ve been watching this very carefully and considering this. It’s a really big decision,” Rosendale said in response to a crowd member who asked if he would be running for Senate, a question that generated considerable excitement from the crowd of about 100 GOP donors, local party officials and lawmakers in the banquet room at Broadwater Hot Springs Saturday. Florida U.S. House Rep. Gaetz and Rosendale were on the stump last week with stops in Bozeman — which is not in Rosendale’s district — Helena and Joliet, part of what they labeled a “Truth Tour.” 

“And it just turned out that my friend was available to come out here right before we start getting into a heavy campaign season to spend some time with me,” Rosendale continued. “And I will tell you … if overwhelming support like this continues, I will tell you, it heavily influences my decision.” 

Gaetz was more to the point. 

“I came up here from sunny Florida for the very reason to recruit [Rosendale] to this race,” he said, imploring attendees to donate to Rosendale’s current congressional campaign committee, money Rosendale could use to launch a Senate bid. 

Gaetz added in an interview after the event that “this is the most important Republican primary in the country because it does pit an America First movement conservative against someone who is a shill of the establishment,” referring to Rosendale’s likely primary opponent Tim Sheehy.

Indeed, though the pair criticized Democratic President Joe Biden and discussed a range of political issues with currency on the right, including border security, ostensible woke-ism in the federal bureaucracy and the perils of the continuing budget resolution, it was the potential for a Rosendale Senate bid — and the division within the Republican Party that bid would represent — that loomed the largest over Saturday’s event. 

“Oftentimes, the battle lines aren’t just red shirt versus blue shirt, Republicans versus Democrats. Often it’s the corrupt establishment against the rest of us,” Gaetz, who filed the motion to oust Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last fall for working with Democrats to avert a government shutdown, told the crowd. “I’ll confess that I have an ulterior motive to be on this tour because nothing would send a shock to the corrupt system in Washington, D.C., more than parachuting Matt Rosendale into the United States Senate.” 

But the Republican Party is not laying out the red carpet for Rosendale. If he enters the Senate race — something he’s reportedly been planning for months — he will have to beat a Republican primary field headlined by Sheehy, a Belgrade-based businessman and political neophyte who has received the backing of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, a Republican campaign arm chaired by Montana U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, as well as fellow Montana Republicans Gov. Greg Gianforte and Congressman Ryan Zinke.

In the eyes of Daines and the NRSC, Sheehy has the best shot of unseating incumbent Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term incumbent who represents a key hurdle to Republican aspirations of taking over the Senate. 

Sheehy has no voting record to criticize and, as a wealthy businessman, can financially support his own campaign. He’s also a former Navy SEAL with a central-casting jawline who owns an aerial firefighting company, and, while he’s embraced former President Donald Trump since launching his campaign, has documented ties to other Republicans like Tim Scott and Nikki Haley who anti-Trump general election voters might find more sympathetic.

Rosendale, meanwhile, is a staunch anti-abortion activist who voted not to certify presidential election results in 2020. He unsuccessfully ran against Tester in 2018, and repeat challengers in national politics are rarely successful. Democrats are hip to this calculus as well: A Democratic super PAC is backing a committee that’s spent millions of dollars attacking Sheehy, with some ads appearing to contrast him unfavorably with Rosendale. But in the eyes of lawmakers like Rosendale, national Republicans’ support of Sheehy, a virtually unknown quantity before last year, is evidence of a political establishment out of step with the base.

“We’ve got a good friend of ours, his name’s Bob Good, he’s a representative from Virginia. And he’s on our team,” Rosendale said at Saturday’s event. “And Bob says, you know, ‘The national Republicans, they always say, we just need the majority, we need a majority, we need a majority.’ He said they just want more jerseys out in the field. And he said the problem is … they want a bunch of people out there with the same jersey on the field, they want them on the sidelines with the same jersey, but they don’t care what they’re doing. They don’t care if they’re kicking the ball down the field. They don’t care if they’re catching the pass and running it backwards to the wrong goalpost. They don’t care if we’re punting on the first down.”

Daines has openly discouraged Rosendale from running for Senate, and the two camps regularly snipe at each other through press releases and social media. The conflict escalated last week when Rosendale claimed, without providing evidence, that he’d been offered money by an intermediary to stay out of the race. 

“It is unfortunate that Congressman Rosendale is casting blame on others for his fundraising challenges and trouble keeping staff,” Mike Berg, the communications director of the NRSC, said in a statement. 

But Rosendale said in an interview after Saturday’s event with Montana Free Press and one other reporter that he’s not particularly worried about the money, nor is he about anyone’s presumptions of electability. (Gaetz, for his part, was openly courting donations, telling the crowd that “money is the mother’s milk of politics and Rosendale is thirsty.”)

“It’s not always about dollars. It is about ideas,” Rosendale said. “And people around this state and around this country are starving for someone to listen to them, and to actually serve the way that they campaign.”

If Rosendale enters the primary, he’d join Sheehy and former Montana Secretary of State Brad Johnson. Tester has no primary opponent. 

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