Winning in 2022: Candidate spotlight on Monica Tranel

This is part of an on-going series focusing on Democratic candidates I’m interviewing on my SiriusXM show as Democrats fight to keep the House and Senate, and even gain seats, in the 2022 midterms.

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In Montana’s 1st Congressional District, a newly-recreated district that encompasses a third of Western Montana, including several liberal college towns, Moncia Tranel could beat Donald Trump’s former interior secretary and scandal-plagued grifter Ryan Zinke.

Monica Tranel @MonicaTranel

Supporting families means bringing good jobs with fair wages to Montana. I am fighting for you, not billionaires' interests.

A recent poll showed the race tied. Tranel has burnished her reputation fighting on behalf of the people of Montana as an environmental attorney taking on Big Oil, corporate monopolies and utility companies, while also standing up for the rights for Native peoples.

Zinke, a former at-large House member from Montana, served as Trump’s Secretary of the Interior but resigned in January 2019 in the midst of a blizzard of ethics investigations, including using government aircraft for private travel and spending $139,000 on his office doors. Reports released this year by the Inspector General’s Office found Zinke lied to investigators.

Dave Wasserman @Redistrict

Rating change: #MT01 moves from Likely R to Lean R at @CookPolitical. Keep in mind, this new Missoula/Bozeman seat is much less red than MT as a whole. Still, Monica Tranel (D) wouldn't be in the game at all if not for Ryan Zinke's (R) high negatives.

cookpolitical.comHouse Rating Change: MT-01 Moves From Likely to Lean RepublicanMontana’s House seat has been Democrats’ white whale: since 1996, they’ve come within single digits of winning it five different times, most recently in 2018, but never succeeded. However, the creation of a brand new western seat that unites the college towns of Missoula and Bozeman, combined with G…

Political analysts, who for a long time said Zinke was the strong favorite to win, have moved their projection of the race toward the Democrats — showing they truly don’t know what will happen and are engaging in some CYA. Per the Daily Montanan:

A poll commissioned and released earlier this month by the Big Sky Voters PAC showed Zinke with a 41 percent lead to Tranel’s 40 percent, Lamb’s 8 percent, with 11 percent undecided. The poll of 840 interviews was conducted by Victoria Research, which counts Democratic organizations and candidates as clients, and it noted a 3.4 percent margin of error, according to a memo from the firm.

It also said Zinke had a 49 percent unfavorable rating and 41 percent favorable rating; it said Tranel had a 37 percent favorable rating and 32 percent unfavorable rating, with an opportunity to still introduce herself to 31 percent of voters.

“Zinke is underperforming the general partisan leaning of this district significantly,” said the memo from Victoria Research. “Voters in the survey say they prefer a generic Republican candidate over a Democratic one by five points: 47 percent to 42 percent.”

I interviewed Tranel last week on my SiriusXM show and she exhibited the reasons why she’s been able to close the gap, speaking clearly about her agenda and why she’s a theat to Zinke and the GP.

You can check her out here and help out if you can. And you can listen to the full interview above. Let us know your thoughts!