A Montana Democrat running for Congress in the red state has picked up what once would have seemed like an unlikely backer: a former GOP governor who was chairman of the Republican National Committee. 

Marc Racicot, who won two terms as Montana’s governor in the 1990s before leading the RNC during George W. Bush’s first term, is set to endorse Sam Forstag’s bid for the state’s 1st Congressional District, currently held by a Republican.

“He cares about what he’s doing. He’s very well prepared. He has the right priorities in terms of character and virtues and value and belief in the Constitution,” Racicot said in an interview with MS NOW. “It’s not even a close call for me to stand in Sam’s corner.” 

Racicot has supported Democrats in recent years, including Joe Biden in 2020 and then-Sen. Jon Tester in his unsuccessful re-election bid in 2024. He’s a critic of President Donald Trump and has also been rebuked by the state GOP. 

Yet the public embrace from Racicot could go toward helping the kind of crossover appeal Forstag likely needs to do what no Montana Democrat has been able to do since the 1990s: win a U.S. House seat in the state.

The 1st District, which includes Missoula, is currently held by Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, who won it in 2022 by about 3 points over a Democrat who had Racicot’s support. Zinke won by a wider margin in 2024, and announced in March that he wouldn’t run again.

On the Republican side, Aaron Flint — a combat veteran and former conservative radio host — quickly got Trump’s endorsement and won the June primary. Flint launched an ad recently, saying in the video that he is “tired of Washington politicians looking down on people who work with their hands” and calling for jobs “that China can’t steal and AI can’t replace.”

Even with a national midterm environment that favors Democrats, Montana remains difficult terrain for the party. Forstag, who worked as a smokejumper after lobbying in Montana for the state’s American Civil Liberties Union wing, won a divided primary despite warnings from some critics that he was too liberal for the district.

Since then, he’s built an unusual profile in a state where the national Democratic brand has proved corrosive. He is one of only a handful of congressional Democrats endorsed by both progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders and the centrist Blue Dog political outfit. Racicot’s support on top of that offers some Bush Republican-era nostalgia for voters as Forstag tries to cut into the state’s rightward drift.

“We’re in a hole that both parties have been digging for us,” Forstag said, urging support for a kind of Democrat “that could actually improve your life, and is actually going to prioritize doing so, because I know what it’s like on a day-to-day basis.”