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February 29, 2024
We don’t know if incumbent Montana Congressman Matt Rosendale had a secret reason for dropping out of the race for U.S. Senate only six days after he launched his campaign, and chances are you don’t either.
But that lack of knowledge hasn’t stopped legions of readers, social media posters, sources of various degrees of authority and even candidates for governor from speculating rampantly, and publicly. The speculation reached its peak (so far) when former Democratic U.S. North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, speaking this week on a podcast popular with politicos and lapsed politicians, dropped a bomb: “Just to gossip a little bit,” she said, Rosendale dropped out of the Senate race, and may even resign his House seat, because he’d allegedly, according to what Heitcamp called “rumor,” impregnated a 20-year-old congressional staffer.
At least part of Heitkamp’s rumor is easy to disprove: Rosendale announced his candidacy for re-election to the House this week. Rosendale emphatically denied the rest of the rumor and threatened legal action against Heitkamp. His wife, Jean, went on television to publicly support her husband’s denial. But the rumor, which had been floating around in various formulations for weeks, never with evidence attached, had officially entered the news cycle.
Capitolized is aware that some politicians lie and that some politicians cheat, sometimes with young women whose reputations take a back seat to the power that elected officials hold — and to the power plays and whisper campaigns that power subjects them to. We also know that no one has presented anything approaching proof of such an affair, and neither has has anyone taken responsibility for spreading the rumor. It’s not as if the truth doesn’t matter. It’s just that the only known person with a claim to firsthand knowledge of the truth is Matt Rosendale, and he says it didn’t happen. We have no way of knowing otherwise, and neither does anyone else who has so far fanned the speculation, either privately or publicly.
We have a pretty good idea, though, of how a political rumor of this magnitude takes root.
“I was one of the first 25 people to hear the rumor,” said Abra Belke, a Montana attorney and former lobbyist who’s worked for lawmakers in both Washington, D.C., and Helena. “I happened to be in D.C. on the day it started circulating, and when there are no details, it’s just kind of a piece of hot political gossip. Everyone is going around the bars, saying, ‘Did you hear about Rosendale?’ Not anything more than that. But by the next day, enough people have heard the rumor that it’s a race to name the person who’s allegedly involved [in the alleged affair], and that’s when it gets really messy. There’s three different names, six different versions of the story. People are being named on Twitter, in the comment section of news articles.”
The news media initially kept its distance. There are standards for publishing or even just referencing unsubstantiated rumors, especially considering the logical prospect that such a damaging allegation is being wielded as a weapon, and even more especially given the possibility of a romantic relationship between people with vastly disparate degrees of power. Such a story requires multiple sources presenting consistent accounts, some kind of documentary evidence supporting the allegation, and a clear-eyed negotiation of the prerogatives of truth and the moral imperative to do no unnecessary harm. Capitolized was unable to meet those standards, and so we didn’t write about the rumor.
Meanwhile, different iterations of the rumor were spreading on social media and through political circles. One social media account posted an image of a staff listing for a woman they believed was a participant in the alleged affair.
“It’s really ridiculous that the only people who seemed to be showing some restraint are the people who would normally be jumping on these rumors like catnip, and that’s the press,” Belke said.
The restraint calculus changed when Heitkamp took to the air. Though she may have been forcibly retired from the Senate in 2018, both she and the venue through which she launched the rumor carried enough legitimacy for reporters to seek a response from Rosendale. When Rosendale publicly denied the rumor and threatened legal action against Heitkamp, and when Rosendale’s wife went on television to defend her husband, the rumor was transformed into a legitimate news story.
“It definitely was a coordinated kind of way to spread this,” according to Jessi Bennion, a political scientist at Montana State University who said she first heard the rumor almost as soon as Rosendale dropped out of the Senate race.
As both Belke and Bennion described the dynamic, it begins with a game of telephone initiated by someone with an interest in seeing the rumor get out. Calls and texts circulate in isolated groups in Helena and Washington. The story gets relayed on social media and in the bars, ballooning on peoples’ desire to be — or seem — in the know. The reach of the rumor becomes more important than its accuracy.
“People want to be able to walk in a bar in D.C. and say, ‘I worked a campaign with so and so and they told me this,’” Belke said.
All the while, questions swirled around Rosendale, whose political future was, until his House announcement Wednesday, unclear. As his decision was pending, more candidates were entering an already crowded Republican primary to replace him, including former Montana Congressman Denny Rehberg. The rumor could have, in theory, swayed donors away from Rosendale, or otherwise muddied the race’s waters. By the time Rosendale announced his re-election bid, many candidates who might have been expected to back off in favor of the incumbent had already begun campaigning.
The rumor, she said, may have “created a very contested, very expensive primary.”
At no point did anyone produce any evidence of an affair, much less an affair with a staffer that led to a pregnancy. And the official explanation for Rosendale’s departure from the Senate race — that former President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Rosendale’s primary opponent Tim Sheehy effectively foreclosed the possibility of an already far-from-certain victory — seemed to hold logical water.
Regardless, the reporting on Heitkamp’s claim only elevated the rumor’s profile. One account’s X post repeating the claim has garnered more than 51,000 likes.
Even one candidate for statewide office joined the speculative scrum, with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ryan Busse joking in a post that Rosendale would file for divorce.
Contained in much of this chatter was laughing contempt for Rosendale from his political opponents. Contained in almost none of it was any degree of regard for the young women described as co-conspirators in various versions of the rumor.
“You’re holding two things at once,” Bennion said. “The biggest Senate race in Montana history in one hand, and you’re also holding the significance of an actual human being, a young woman who this is about.”
Many congressional staffers work for little pay and even less recognition.
“I was making less than my brother who worked for Home Depot,” Belke said of her time as a congressional staffer. “These people are in their early-to-mid 20s. Someone who’s 29 is considered a veteran.”
Regardless of the truth or falsity of the rumor, the reputation of those employees can become collateral damage of the claim.
“It’s something unique to politics,” Belke said. “You never get out from under the stain of the people you worked for.”
We may never know the bald truth about who began spreading the Rosendale rumor, or why. But it’s unfortunately easy to see who, besides Rosendale, may end up damaged by it.
—Arren Kimbel-Sannit
Verbatim
“I think Matt should have done what he set out to do and win the primary and general. He waited way too long and now is scrambling the plans of a lot of fresh folks who deserve a chance now. All’s fair in love, war, and politics, but it’s unfair what he did.”
—State Sen. Jeremy Trebas, R-Great Falls, on X, expressing his frustration that Congressman Matt Rosendale terminated his nascent Senate campaign only to announce a re-election campaign for the House seat he currently holds.
Rosendale, Zinke split on Continuing Resolution
The U.S. House of Representatives Thursday passed another stopgap funding measure to keep the government open, this time for about a week for some federal agencies and a week more for others.
Montana’s Matt Rosendale is among the 97 Republican representatives who voted against the continuing budget resolution, which otherwise carried the support of a bipartisan bloc of 320 members, among them Rosendale’s fellow Montana Republican Ryan Zinke.
“I’ve been telling you for quite some time now that Congress is completely broken,” Rosendale said in a video posted to X. “Here we are after only two short days of work in Washington, D.C., Congress passed another CR to fund the government for another six days because they haven’t been able to pass the 12 appropriation bills to fund the government transparently and responsibly.”
Rosendale and many of his colleagues on the GOP conference’s right flank have consistently opposed temporary government funding measures, insisting that Congress must pass a full suite of budget measures in normal order — something that it’s rarely able to do before the start of a new fiscal year. He’s also said that Congress should not fund the government if the government doesn’t “shut down” the southern border.
Congressional leaders have reached deals on some of the full appropriations bills. Passage of the continuing resolution allows negotiations on the others to continue.
“A 7-day extension prevents a pointless government shutdown and makes it possible to pass individual appropriations bills that have a lot of great Montana funding and policy priorities included,” Zinke spokesperson Heather Swift told Capitolized. “As a member of the Appropriations Committee, Congressman Zinke had a leading role in shaping the Transportation and Interior appropriations bills and has more than $30 million in dedicated project funding for Montana teed up for approval next week.”
She added that according to House rules — which “every Republican in the House voted for” — members must have 72 hours to review a bill prior to a vote, further justifying the extension granted by the continuing resolution.
— Arren Kimbel-Sannit
On the Move
Gov. Greg Gianforte on Thursday announced that he is appointing State Sen. Bob Brown, R-Thompson Falls, as director of the Montana Lottery. Brown will take office March 1.
“With his extensive experience in the legislature, Bob will lead the Montana Lottery well” Gianforte said in a statement. “I am confident he will build upon the Montana Lottery’s progress that has more than doubled the amount of money transferred to the general fund and improved experiences with the games.”
Brown served in the state House from 2015 to 2019, and was elected to the state Senate in 2021.
Brown’s appointment clears up a potentially contested primary race involving state Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson. The two incumbents were funneled into the same district through the recent legislative redistricting cycle.
—Arren Kimbel-Sannit
On Background
Return of the party boss: How Montana’s Daines took charge of GOP Senate primaries: This story from the Washington Post shows how Steve Daines, Montana’s junior U.S. senator and the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, helped broker a meeting between Senate candidate Tim Sheehy and former President Donald Trump that landed Trump’s endorsement of Sheehy, driving Matt Rosendale out of the Senate race.
Congressman Matt Rosendale’s wife addresses affair rumors, legal action: Jean Rosendale took to NonStop Local this week to deny rumors of an affair by her husband.