Tester Tops Burns In Montana

Democrat Jon Tester Projected To Unseat Incumbent Conrad Burns

(CBS/AP)  CBS News projects that Democrat Jon Tester has won the Montana Senate race against Republican Sen. Conrad Burns. The victory would give Democrats 50 of 100 U.S. Senate seats – leaving Virginia as the only Senate race still in question.

Tester held a 3,128-vote lead over Burns with only one county left to count its votes. That county had fewer than 1,000 votes to report.

It was unclear when final results could be announced, as Yellowstone County election officials said voting machine problems and errors made in their tabulation forced them to start their count over, delaying the reporting of votes.

Tester declared his own victory on television Wednesday afternoon and asked Burns to concede the race.

Tester, 50, the state Senate president and a farmer, had sounded confident in early morning television interviews.

"We really figured this would be a horse race," he told CBS News' The Early Show. "We haven’t lost a poll yet, we're not gong to lose this one. We're looking in good shape."

When asked if he thought the support he won represented votes against President Bush rather than votes for his candidacy — exit polls show that 82 percent of Tester's supporters disapprove of the President's performance — Tester told CBS News correspondent René Syler, "Well, I think there's probably a little bit of both going on, but the truth is, it really is proof-positive that Montanans are ready for a change."

"We need to take some Montana values back to Washington," he said, "like ethics, honesty, respect — those kind of things."

During the campaign, Tester hammered the 71-year-old incumbant Burns for his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and what Tester called the "culture of corruption" in Washington. Burns was a top recipient of campaign contributions from Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in January to corruption. Burns has since returned or donated about $150,000, and has maintained he did nothing wrong and was never influenced by Abramoff.

Tester resisted help from the national party, saying he wanted to run his campaign his way. He brought in few national party figures, instead relying on rallies with popular Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Sen. Max Baucus.

Burns, meanwhile, was joined on the trail over the past few weeks by GOP luminaries including President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Burns, first elected in 1988 as a folksy, backslapping outsider, suffered because of his own gaffes during the campaign — including an incident in which he cursed at firefighters.

Tester surprised many in the state when he beat a better-financed and better-known Democrat in the June primary.

This time around, it was Tester who portrayed himself as the Washington outsider — a Western moderate Democrat who owns guns, opposes gay marriage and has a libertarian's suspicion of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act.

Tester stood out, with his scuffed cowboy boots and flattop haircut. One of his hands lacks three fingers, lost long ago in an accident with a meat grinder.

Burns focused his campaign on his ability as a veteran senator to bring federal money to the state, and portrayed Tester as a liberal who wants to raise taxes and "cut and run" from Iraq.

Burns took heat after confronting members of a wildfire-fighting team at the Billings airport in late July and saying they had done a poor job, according to a state report and the U.S. Forest Service. The Hotshot crew had traveled from Virginia to help dig lines around a fire east of Billings.