{"id":22787,"date":"2018-06-06T00:56:13","date_gmt":"2018-06-06T06:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=22787"},"modified":"2018-06-06T16:41:46","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T22:41:46","slug":"rosendale-declared-winner-in-gop-senate-primary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2018\/06\/rosendale-declared-winner-in-gop-senate-primary\/","title":{"rendered":"Rosendale declared winner in GOP Senate primary"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rosen\"<\/a>

Chuck Johnson<\/p>

Republican state Auditor Matt Rosendale thanks supporters after media groups declared him the winner of the GOP nomination in the four-way primary for the U.S. Senate.<\/p><\/div>\n

HELENA\u2014 State Auditor Matt Rosendale came from behind to defeat former Billings District Judge Russ Fagg Tuesday night in an often-bitter fight to win the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n

Politico and the Associated Press separately declared Rosendale the winner in the four-way primary.<\/p>\n

Politico reported the unofficial results showed:<\/p>\n

\u2666 Rosendale, 44,663 votes, 33.6 percent.<\/p>\n

\u2666 Fagg, 40,107 votes, 28.9 percent.<\/p>\n

\u2666 Troy Downing, a businessman from Big Sky, 26,371 votes, 19 percent.<\/p>\n

\u2666 Al Olszewski, a surgeon and state senator from Kalispell, 25,656 votes, 18.5 percent.<\/p>\n

At about 11:30 p.m., one of Rosendale\u2019s staff announced that media outlets had called the race in his favor, prompting loud cheers from the crowd of about 75 people.<\/p>\n

While waiting for Rosendale to appear, some of his campaign television ads played over the big-screen televisions in the meeting room at the Radisson Colonial Hotel in Helena.\u00a0 Then, the song, \u201cTakin\u2019 Care of Business,\u201d by Bachman-Turner Overdrive blared over the loud-speaker system.<\/p>\n

Rosendale then stepped out from behind a curtain, accompanied by his wife, Jean, as the crowd cheered.<\/p>\n

\u201cOK, this is what we\u2019ve been waiting for,\u201d Rosendale said. \u201cAll glory and honor to God.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on to say, \u201cThe battle of the flattops has finally begun,\u201d referring to his and Tester\u2019s old-style haircuts. \u201cTonight, we are one step closer to defeating Jon Tester.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rosendale said he would save his victory speech until November when he defeats Tester.\u00a0 He said the race for the Montana Senate seat will be one of the nation\u2019s most competitive.<\/p>\n

\u201cJon Tester is vulnerable, and President Trump has made winning Montana a priority,\u201d Rosendale said. \u201cJon Tester\u2019s not the same person he was when he entered the Senate nearly 12 years ago. He\u2019s gone Washington. He\u2019s hanging out with the lobbyists and the elitists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rosendale said Tester says one thing in Montana but goes back to Washington, D.C., and takes his counsel from Democratic minority leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has forgotten about the people he represents here in Montana,\u201d Rosendale said.\u00a0 \u201cEnough is enough. He has to run a campaign on denials. That is the only opportunity he has. He has to deny reality that Obamacare is a train wreck. He has to deny the reality that the VA is in shambles. He has to deny the reality that you have more money in your paycheck because of the legislation that was just recently passed that he voted against, by the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montana Republicans need to unite for him to win, Rosendale said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can pull together, we can send him back to Big Sandy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cFolks, I am not running in this to race to bring home the bacon.\u00a0 I am running this race to slaughter the hog of big government.\u201d<\/p>\n

The race between Rosendale and Fagg was highly contentious.<\/p>\n

Rosendale benefited from the $1.2 million in independent expenditures by a national conservative group, Club for Growth, that attacked Fagg as being soft on crime as a judge.<\/p>\n

Fagg, in turn, questioned Rosendale\u2019s credentials and suggested the victor\u2019s claims that he is a Montana rancher \u201call hat and no cattle\u201d since he leases out the ranch and raises no livestock.<\/p>\n

Thanks to a big lead in his home county of Yellowstone, Fagg came out of the blocks with an early lead Tuesday night. Rosendale gradually caught up to get the nomination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HELENA\u2014 State Auditor Matt Rosendale came from behind to defeat former Billings District Judge Russ Fagg Tuesday night in an often-bitter fight to win the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":195,"featured_media":22788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[3084,553,2390],"class_list":["post-22787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","tag-jon-tester","tag-matt-rosendale","tag-russell-fagg","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/195"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22787"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22801,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22787\/revisions\/22801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}