The race for a new Montana congressional district has taken on a reptilian feel.
In a campaign ad for the state’s new 1st Congressional District, Democratic nominee Monica Tranel calls Republican rival Ryan Zinke a “snake.” It’s one of the world’s oldest and most degrading insults, hearkening back to biblical references about a “serpent” who triggered the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.
FORMER TRUMP INTERIOR SECRETARY RYAN ZINKE WINS MONTANA GOP HOUSE PRIMARY
In the political realm, Tranel is making a George W. Bush-era movie reference to later ethics investigations of Zinke, a House member from 2015 to 2017 who later became former President Donald Trump’s first interior secretary — as in Snakes on a Plane, the 2006 Samuel L. Jackson camp action flick about an FBI agent who takes on a plane of deadly snakes meant to kill a witness against a mob boss.
It’s a none-too-subtle callback to the reasons Zinke had to quit Trump’s Cabinet after two years. Zinke, a retired Navy SEAL, faced mounting federal ethics investigations over his official travel. Specifically, an inspector general report showed that Zinke violated the Interior Department’s travel policy by having his wife travel with him in government vehicles.
Tranel’s ad covers a different Zinke controversy. The spot features snakes crawling around a private jet while she accuses Zinke of spending “thousands of our tax dollars to fly on private planes” while he was the secretary of the interior.
“I’m Monica Tranel. I’ve spent my career taking on snakes like Ryan Zinke,” she says in the ad while taking a snake off an airport runway.
Zinke appeared nonplussed at his opponent’s criticism of him in the extended Plains State (the definition covers Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, but also, in addition to a chunk of Montana, parts of Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming).
“When you drain the swamp, it exposes serpents. And they attack!” the former interior secretary said in a video. “As interior secretary, I got an extra dose of fake news and false charges. And now, running for Congress, it’s happening again.”
Zinke has a reason to be confident about his comeback bid. Montana, after all, is a heavily Republican state where, in 2020, Trump beat President Joe Biden soundly, 57%-41%.
The Big Sky State is, however, rapidly diversifying politically. Due to major population growth in the decade before the 2020 census, Montana will have two House districts for the first time in 30 years starting in January. In the new 1st District located in western Montana, Trump would have beaten Biden, though by a smaller margin than statewide, 52.2% to 45.3%.
A poll from the Democratic super PAC Big Sky Voters, taken from Sept. 27 to Oct. 1, found Zinke leading Tranel 41%-40%, with Libertarian candidate John Lamb taking 8%. The Victoria Research poll of 840 likely voters, done by live callers with a margin of error of 3.4%, showed Zinke having a 41% favorable rating, compared to 49% unfavorable.
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Tranel is a lawyer and former rower. She competed for the United States at the 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympics.
Despite Tranel’s criticisms of Zinke, he is likely to win in Montana — at least this year, with Republicans having a built-in voter registration advantage. FiveThirtyEight, the elections prognosticator, recently gave Zinke a 94% chance of winning.
But political observers predict the district could become more competitive as the decade goes on, especially as resort towns such as Butte and Missoula continue to pack on liberals leaving the West Coast for less expensive homes with more land and open space at their fingertips.
