Clearly you do not understand Montana history. (Of course, why should you?)
Montana has only reelected ONE Republican Senator, Conrad Burns, in its entire history.
John Tester beat Burns in 2006...
Only three reasons why that happened:
1) Harry Reid launched an Ethics Investigation on Burns shortly after his re-election campaign started. (Of course that "Investigation" got cancelled as unnecessary right after the election....)
2) There is now and has been a state of absolute and total love and affection for all things democrat by the Lee Newspapers (biggest chain of 'papers in the state) followed in lockstep by most of the state's radio and TV outlets.
3) The night of the election, Tester was actually running behind Burns until just enough late votes magically appeared to swing the count to Tester's favor. Some time later, then-Governor Schweitzer got recorded bragging to supporters about how he'd placed the calls to the counties that had then "found" those votes but the whole subject of vote fraud got whitewashed by the good folks mentioned in 2 after those supporters all swore that it was all just "Good Ol' Brian telling his jokes again".
In short, if Tester didn't have a slavish media, massive funding and support from outside the state and vote fraud by his "buds", he'd still be back doing his organic farm gig or teaching school.
....or don't I understand Montana history either?