Luckily for the Tester campaign, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder didn’t appear to go off script and start saying anything about how one of Senator Jon Tester’s (D-MT) biggest contributors should commit suicide. Pearl Jam was back in Missoula, Montana over the weekend. They were singing the same song they sung during Tester’s initial race for the US Senate in 2006.
As Politico reports:
In between swigs out of a champagne bottle, Eddie Vedder, the band’s lead singer who has a cult-like following, singled out Tester before a packed hall at the evening concert, saying that the band turns down gigs often for candidates – but not for the Montana Democrat.
Republicans quickly dismissed the Sunday events.
“It’s no surprise that after raising $1.7 million for President Obama, Pearl Jam would come to the aid of Sen. Tester, who supports Obama 95 percent of the time in Washington,” said Rehberg spokesman Chris Bond. “But maybe Sen. Tester can spare a few minutes from his busy schedule of planning rock concerts to explain to the workers at the Corette plant in Billings why he voted for the Obama EPA regulations responsible for mothballing their facility.”
Of course, it may be a little hard for Tester to sing the same song as he did back in 2006. Back then, he decried lobbyist influence. Since then, he’s become the number one recipient of lobbyist and environmentalist cash in the run up to the 2012 elections. And yet, he still tries to sing the anti-lobbyist tune.
The Missoulian appeared to have a two-part spread on the Tester fundraiser.
One Missoulian article contained this line:
In keeping with his low-key style and belief that Montana’s politicians should be accessible to the people who elected them, there were no bodyguards, no security that ushered the senator and the rock star to the stage.
In keeping with whose low-key style? Eddie Vedder’s? Certainly not Sen. Tester’s. He’s been known to show up in small Northeastern Montana towns, old FDR Democrat locales, with armed security at his invite-only meetings.
Sen. Tester may not have had security at his rock concert, but at least one of his supporters apparently felt the need to act like the local security detail. As the liberal Buzzfeed reports, a GOP activist tracking Sen. Tester was pushed to the ground by a Tester supporter. The Tester supporter is then seen on camera mocking the activist, saying, “Don’t cry.”
Click below to watch the video.
Related
Liberal magazine Mother Jones describes Tester as the urban elected Democrat.
The irony for Tester is that he owes his 2006 victory not to the large crop of Montana voters who look and live a lot like him, but to a patchwork coalition of college kids, transplants, American Indians, and retirees. When the final votes were counted, Tester had done significantly worse among rural voters than Schweitzer did in 2004—but he’d managed to improve enough on Schweitzer’s performance among liberal constituencies to carry the day. He was, Singer ventured at the time, “the first urban elected official to ever come out of Montana.”
ICYMI: Rehberg Continues Lead Against Tester
A new poll has found that Republican U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg has a 3-point advantage over incumbent Democrat Jon Tester for the U.S. Senate.
A poll commissioned by Lee Newspapers of Montana found that 48 percent say they’ll vote for Rehberg while 45 percent support Tester. One percent said they’ll vote for Libertarian Dan Cox and 6 percent are undecided.