The House’s vote to repeal Obamacare has extended to Montana’s special congressional election, in which the Republican nominee had, at first, tried to distance himself from the measure.
WASHINGTON — When Greg Gianforte, the Republican running for an open House seat in Montana, was asked on Thursday whether he would have supported the bill repealing the Affordable Care Act that passed the House that day, he declined to answer.
“Greg needs to know all the facts, because it’s important to know exactly what’s in the bill before he votes on it, ” said a spokesman for Mr. Gianforte, who is running in a special election for the seat vacated by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
But on the same day, during a private conference call with Republican-leaning lobbyists in Washington, Mr. Gianforte offered a more supportive view of the health bill. Making the case for the “national significance” of the Montana election on May 25, Mr. Gianforte said: “The votes in the House are going to determine whether we get tax reform done, sounds like we just passed a health care thing, which I’ m thankful for, sounds like we’ re starting to repeal and replace.”
Mr. Gianforte’s attempt to appeal to two different audiences — Montana voters skeptical about the House’s repeal bill and Washington Republicans eager to undo President Barack Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment — illustrates the complicated politics surrounding the health law. While Republicans expect their elected officials to fulfill their longstanding vows to tear up the Affordable Care Act, the broader electorate is uneasy about abandoning the law’s protections and benefits it has come to depend on.
It also plays to the Democratic line of attack — that Mr. Gianforte is a New Jersey multimillionaire, more comfortable with the East Coast elite than in his adopted state. Mr. Gianforte has lived in Montana for nearly 25 years.
Even in Montana — a Republican-leaning state on the presidential level, but which still elects Democrats statewide — it appears no longer politically safe in the heat of a campaign to offer full-throated support for repealing Obamacare.
Asked to reconcile Mr. Gianforte’s public and private statements, his campaign manager said the candidate was only “thankful” the process of repealing the law was underway.
“He would not have voted for the bill because he didn’ t know what was in it, ” said Brock Lowrance, the aide, noting that the Congressional Budget Office has not yet offered a fiscal analysis of the measure.
While it has drawn far less interest than a special House election in Georgia, the Montana race is drawing the attention of both parties. Senator Steve Daines of Montana announced on the call that Vice President Mike Pence would campaign with Mr. Gianforte, setting up something of a proxy fight between the administration and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is set to stump later this month with the Democratic nominee, Rob Quist.
Republican groups, alarmed by the intensity of liberal voters during special elections this year, have been pouring millions into the state. National Democrats have been skeptical about the prospects of Mr. Quist, a folk singer-turned-novice candidate who has been battered by stories about his personal finances. But the House Democratic campaign arm has been nudged to put money into the race.
Mr. Quist has raised more than $2 million, in large part because of liberal online donors — a fact that Mr. Gianforte highlighted on the Thursday call.
“The Democrats have fired up this ActBlue organization, ” he said on an audio recording obtained by The New York Times, referring to the online Democratic fund-raising hub. “We’ re seeing about $70,000 a day pouring into the state from liberals in San Francisco, New York and Hollywood.”
Asking the lobbyists to give $5,000 each by Friday to “scare off some other Democrat money, ” Mr. Gianforte acknowledged that Mr. Quist had far wider support.
“We’ ve had over 5,000 individual people support the campaign financially so far, ” he said on the recording. “The challenge is my opponent has over 30,000 contributors.”
Polling by both parties has indicated that Mr. Gianforte is leading in the race, but only narrowly, which the Republican acknowledged on the call.
“We’ re in a single-digit race, ” he said, adding that the left would relish the symbolic importance of snatching a Republican-held House seat. “The Democrats would like nothing more than to put one up on the board and take this away from us to stop the Trump Train and block tax reform and block the regulations we’ ll be able to peel back.”
