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WILMINGTON, Del. The Democrats made one thing clear with the virtual pageantry of their convention last week: They are united to defeat President Trump in November. The festivities also foreshadowed another looming fight, this one between the moderate and progressive wings of the party.

The convention sketched out a policy agenda for Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, in broad strokes, showcasing his big-picture priorities without citing many dollar figures. That helped Democrats appeal to as wide a universe of voters as possible. It also allowed them to skirt the policy disagreements that still exist between moderates like Mr. Biden and the progressive wing of the party, which has claimed a number of notable victories in congressional primaries this year.

Its not that weve changed our opinions on what is necessary, Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington and a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said after the convention. Citing the crisis facing the country, she predicted that Mr. Biden is going to be pushed by the times to be bold.

We have to do some immediate things, and the task will be to make them as progressive as possible, with the platform being sort of the floor and not the ceiling, Ms. Jayapal said.

Heres a guide to the policy vision that was outlined at the convention and the disagreements that may flare up in the future.

Democrats used the convention to further a message that propelled their candidates to success in the 2018 midterm elections: The party wants to expand health coverage while Mr. Trump and the Republicans want to take it away. Mr. Biden, the former vice president, is a capable messenger on the issue, having been at President Barack Obamas side when the president signed into law the Affordable Care Act.

But in the Democratic primary, no major issue showed a starker division within the party than the future of Americas health care system. Mr. Biden made the case for expanding on the Affordable Care Act and offering a government-run insurance plan known as a public option. Other Democrats, particularly Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, advocated Medicare for all, a government-run health insurance system under which private coverage would be eliminated.

That debate continues to this day. Mr. Sanders acknowledged it in his convention speech, saying, Joe and I disagree on the best path to get universal coverage. Instead of dwelling on that point, he made note of Mr. Bidens plans to expand coverage, reduce the cost of prescription drugs and lower the age of Medicare eligibility to 60, from 65.

Ady Barkan, a progressive activist who was diagnosed with the terminal neurodegenerative disease A.L.S., also spoke at the convention in support of Mr. Biden and kept up the pressure to make big changes to the countrys health care system. Mr. Barkan supports Medicare for all and has focused on health care advocacy after his diagnosis. With a compassionate and intelligent president, he said, we must act together and put on his desk a bill that guarantees us all the health care we deserve.

There may be more disagreements to come. If Mr. Biden wins and Democrats control both houses of Congress, and if he moves ahead with trying to enact a public option, there are many variables in how exactly it could be structured.

As wildfires tore across California and as the Gulf Coast faced the threat of potential hurricanes, Democrats made climate change a central theme of the convention and Mr. Biden named it among the four historic crises confronting America.

His plan calls for spending $2 trillion over four years to escalate the use of clean energy. It sets a goal of eliminating planet-warming emissions from the power sector by 2035, as well as upgrading four million buildings and weatherizing two million homes over four years to increase energy efficiency. In a parallel policy plank that Mr. Biden issued around environmental justice, he set a goal for disadvantaged communities to receive 40 percent of the benefits of spending on clean energy and other areas.

Its not only a crisis, its an enormous opportunity, Mr. Biden said in his speech accepting the nomination on Thursday night. An opportunity for America to lead the world in clean energy and create millions of new good-paying jobs in the process.

It is a stance that has gotten more aggressive since the start of the Democratic primary race, during which rival candidates, along with young activists, accused him of being insufficiently committed to dealing with climate change. Activists on the left credited themselves and the pressure they had put on Mr. Biden for making the issue a core element of his first speech as the Democratic nominee.

But his policy still leaves some progressives unhappy, particularly when it comes to the shale drilling technique known as fracking. Many of his rivals in the primary including Senator Kamala Harris of California, whom he selected this month to be his running mate have called for a national ban on fracking.

Mr. Biden has said he supports a moratorium on new leases on federal lands but not a full ban. He also has pushed back aggressively on Trump campaign statements that seek to tie him to calls for a ban. It is a particularly sensitive issue in swing states like shale-rich Pennsylvania, which Mr. Trump won in 2016 by less than one percentage point.

It was notable then that Michelle Lujan Grisham, the governor of New Mexico, one of the countrys largest oil and gas producing states, was chosen to speak during a segment on climate change at the convention. Like Mr. Biden, Ms. Lujan Grisham has walked a fine line on natural gas enacting stricter regulations on the industry while still remaining supportive of it.

Ms. Lujan Grisham did not mention fracking. Instead, she stuck to Mr. Bidens theme, which links cutting emissions to creating clean energy jobs.

Central to Mr. Bidens campaign pitch is the promise that he can respond to the coronavirus crisis in a competent manner and steer the economy back on track.

In his acceptance speech, Mr. Biden ticked off his plan for confronting the virus head-on, including expanding testing, giving a megaphone to public health experts and mandating that people wear masks.

Precisely how Mr. Biden, if elected, would address the viruss economic toll is hard to game out, because it will depend on the conditions in the country next winter.

One open question, for instance, is the size of an economic package Mr. Biden might seek next winter, and what steps the federal government should take to provide financial assistance to Americans. Before she was picked as Mr. Bidens running mate, for example, Ms. Harris teamed up with two colleagues, Mr. Sanders and Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, to propose giving $2,000 monthly cash payments to Americans throughout the crisis.

Mr. Biden has signaled that he is open to big policy solutions to revive the economy. But they might not be big enough for some progressives.

Last week offered a potential preview. Ted Kaufman, the former senator and longtime Biden adviser who is leading his transition team, suggested in a live interview with The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Biden would not significantly increase federal spending.

The pantrys going to be bare, Mr. Kaufman said. When you see what Trumps done to the deficit in terms of just forget about Covid-19. All the deficits that he built with the incredible tax cuts. So were going to be limited.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading progressive who symbolically nominated Mr. Sanders at the convention, called that assessment extremely concerning.

The pantry is absolutely not bare, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. We need massive investment in our country or it will fall apart. This is not a joke. To adopt GOP deficit-hawking now, when millions of lives are at stake, is utterly irresponsible.

Over the course of the week, Democrats mentioned a variety of economic proposals, including raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, investing in infrastructure and expanding access to affordable child care. And in his convention speech, Mr. Biden said that we dont need a tax code that rewards wealth more than it rewards work.

Im not looking to punish anyone, far from it, Mr. Biden said. But its long past time the wealthiest people and the biggest corporations in this country paid their fair share.

In the primary campaign, Mr. Bidens plans to raise taxes were smaller than those of his top rivals. For example, he has not called for creating a so-called wealth tax an annual tax on the fortunes of the superrich that was a central plank of Ms. Warrens presidential campaign and was also promoted by Mr. Sanders.

There are other areas, too, where Mr. Bidens economic plans are more limited than what some in his party would like to see. While he moved leftward on the issues of free college tuition and student loan forgiveness this year, his proposals on those topics are narrower than what some on the left have called for. And Mr. Biden has no detailed plan on Wall Street regulation.

The convention also put a significant focus on racial justice, an issue that Mr. Biden has emphasized following the killing of George Floyd while in police custody.

During the conventions opening night, Mr. Biden was shown saying, Most cops are good, but the fact is, the bad ones have to be identified and prosecuted and out, period. That comment was troubling to some activists at a time when progressives are seeking transformational changes in the nations criminal justice system.

Mr. Biden has longstanding ties to police unions, and he has not gone as far as some on the left in his comments on how policing in America should be changed. He has rejected the defund the police movement, though he has expressed openness to reallocating some funds, and he has proposed increasing funding for community policing.

Like others in his party, he supports tighter gun control measures, but he has not called for a national licensing program or mandatory gun buybacks, as some of his primary rivals have. He has not endorsed legalizing marijuana, a move that is widely supported by Democratic voters.

In addition, he has not expressed support for decriminalizing illegal border crossings or abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And it remains to be seen how Mr. Bidens administration would approach issues like border security, deportations and funding for the Department of Homeland Security, especially given the criticism Mr. Biden has faced over the number of deportations that occurred during the Obama administration.

Mr. Biden has called for a 100-day moratorium on deportations, but what happens after that is unclear.

In his convention speech, at least, Mr. Biden did not shy away from embracing big plans. For a historical parallel, he reached back to Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Stricken by disease, stricken by a virus, F.D.R. insisted that he would recover and prevail, and he believed America could as well, Mr. Biden said. And he did, and we can as well.

Thomas Kaplan reported from Wilmington, and Lisa Friedman from Washington.

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The Democrats Are United to Fight Trump, Tensions on Policy Are Looming - The New York Times

The state of Monroe County politics on the Democratic side of aisle is a mess.

For starters, who is in charge?

In some respects, that matters less with the splintering of the Democratic caucus on Wednesday into two separate groups. The ramifications of that need some explanation.

And then there is the uncertainty around what happens next, as a majority of Democratic legislators bypassed their colleagues' objections and voted Thursday to appoint Jackie Ortiz the party's next Democratic elections commissioner.

Why is all this important? Because County Executive Adam Bello is the first Democrat to hold that seat in more than a quarter century and was, until Wednesday one vote shy of a majority in the Legislature. And what aspects of his agenda weren't already derailed by the pandemic could be wrecked by what is happening this week.

Monroe County Office Building in Rochester, NY.(Photo: Brian Sharp/@sharproc)

"I think it ultimately plays out with the implosion of the Monroe County Democratic Committee, and then it's going to be done and Adam is going to be done."

Those are the words of Minority LeaderVince Felder, D-Rochester. Except he isn't minority leader, according to the majority of his caucus. Except he insists he is. And Legislature President Dr. Joseph Carbone isn't recognizing anyone as minority leader for the moment. And now there is a vote scheduled on the Democratic elections commissioner Thursday morning. Which Felder says will be illegitimate as well.

To help make sense of what has happened, and what is about to happen, here goes:

Democrats metprivately ahead of Tuesday evening's special meeting of the Legislatureto discuss a potential settlement in a Sheriff's Office lawsuit and review agenda items for the meeting. Felder was asked to put forth the Ortiz appointment and, by differing accounts, either refused to do so or asked, "Why?"

Felder has objected to the process for selecting Ortiz, and maintained he would not carry it forward.

Felder said the meeting then descended into chaos, and he ended the call asLegislator John Baynes, D-East Rochester/Perinton, made a motion toappoint Legislator Yversha Roman, D-Gates/Greece/Rochester,as leader, which was seconded. Felder said he had already pushed the button ending the Zoom call as Baynes spoke up. Legislators then voted by email, Roman said.

"The vote can only take place at a meeting called by me," Felder said.

Said Roman: "Many of us were concernedwith the direction county government was going. That is ultimately one of the reasons why there is a new minority leader."

Carbone cited the dispute in leadership when he abruptly ended the Legislature meeting, saying he wouldn't pick sides. The Zoom call was cancelled as Legislator Rachel Barnhart, D-Rochester was heard calling for a vote.

"The technology was abused twice," Barnhart said of the day's events."If we had in-person meetings, you would not be able to do that. In an in-person meeting they would have had to kick everyone out of the room ... in a Zoom meeting they just hang up the phone call."

Some technical notes:Ortiz was not on the Legislature's meeting agenda, officials said, and could not have been added at that late stage. Also, the Democratic caucus has no bylaws, so there is no set process for a transfer of power.

Democrats control 14 of the Legislature's 29 seats, and align behind a minority leader as the Democratic caucus with its own staff office.

That group is divided 9-5, split largely along racial lines that have coalesced around selection of the Democratic elections commissioner. The Board of Elections is jointly overseen by a Democratic and Republican commissioner and their staff.

Felder is part of the five, which have aligned with Republicans to override a Bello veto of legislation increasing BOE staffing.The other four in Felder's camp, announced formation of the Black and Asian Democratic Caucus during a Wednesday news conference, and laid out an agenda focused on social services and social justice issues. They took no questions. Legislator Ernest Flagler-Mitchell is leader of that group, which also includes legislators Sabrina LaMar, Calvin Lee and Frank Keophetlasy.

Background: Breakaway faction of Democrats circles back to LaMar, Morelle clash

The split allows them to amplify the issues important to city residents, they say. But itweakensthe Democratic minority as a voting block, and thus weakens Bello.

The county executive, in a statement, directed his criticism at Carbone, for allegedly putting politics over community and "grinding legislation to a halt" that would benefit the community. Carbone fired back with a statement of his own, saying "Bello needs to get his own house in order," and blaming the county executive for leading Democrats "down the destructive road they are on today."

Bello has not responded to multiple interview requests from the Democrat and Chronicle over the past two weeks. As for the legislation being held up,nothing much changed as matters require approval of the full Legislature, which has its next regularly scheduled meeting on Sept. 8.

Legislation authorizing the additional caucus includes a provision to fund its staff office by reallocating money from the existing Democratic office. Money would be appropriated based on the caucus' percentage representation in the Legislature. If approved, Democrats will lose more than one-fourth of their current allocation of $228,676. The legislation could be taken up by the full Legislature at its next meeting on Sept. 8.

"(Thursday) morning we will convene as a caucus to appoint Jackie Ortiz," Roman said. "I will be calling that meeting as the leader," Roman said in an interview Wednesday.

That vote was 9-0, with only the majority faction attending the virtual meeting. Ortiz is expected to be sworn in Thursday afternoon, and could take office this week, or attempt to. Ortiz did not immediately respond to a messages seeking comment.

Felder hasinsistedthat any appointment vote would be illegitimate;same as the one to replace him. He reiterated that in a letter to Carbone on Wednesday, writing "As I am still leader, you should not receive any appointments to positions from anyone or correspondence regarding the responsibilities given to the minority leader per the County Charter."

All of this seemed to be sorted out two weeks ago when state Supreme Court Justice John Ark said there was no legal reason the Legislature couldn't vote to install Ortiz, and encouraged them to do so.

Ark is scheduled to have all parties back in his courtroom on Friday. But Ark's previous directive hasn't changed much.

Pressing Felder on what he meant by Bello being done, he explained: "If the people walk away from him, he is not going to get re-elected."

And if he can't get things passed through the Legislature, Felder added, he isn't going to get anything done.

Contact reporter Brian Sharp at bdsharp@gannett.comor at 585-258-2275. Follow him onTwitter @sharproc.This coverage is only possible with support from our readers. Sign up today for a digital subscription.

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Trying to make sense of this week in Monroe County Democratic politics - Democrat & Chronicle

Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar came within 3.4 percentage points of unseating former Rep. Duncan Hunter in 2018, despite receiving minimal help from national House Democrats.

This time around, as he squares off with former Rep. Darrell Issa in the same 50th Congressional District, hell get much more support.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee the campaign arm of House Democrats announced Wednesday that it was adding Campa-Najjar to its Red to Blue program, which focuses on candidates and races where Democratic strategists believe the party has the best opportunity to flip Republican seats.

The program provides candidates access to additional fundraising, training and strategy.

For example on Wednesday, The Hill reported that the DCCC made a $960,000 ad buy in the Philadelphia broadcast market, where two of their Red to Blue candidates are trying to flip seats.

Campa-Najjar, the 31-year-old East County native, and New York congressional candidate Nancy Goroff were the two candidates added to the program Wednesday, joining 31 other Democratic contenders.

This designation raises the profile of a community that has long been forgotten by Washington and for that Im grateful, Campa-Najjar said by text. Together Americans from all political stripes must meet this moment to ensure our government works for working people and not the special interests that have divided us for far too long.

The buy-in from the DCCC, which sat out the the 50th District race in 2018, comes as polls have tightened and suggests that national Democrats now believe they have real chance of flipping the longtime red district, which includes East and North Inland San Diego County, as well a small southern portion of Riverside County.

The 50th District seat now sits vacant because Hunter, an Alpine Republican, resigned in January after being convicted of a felony related to misusing campaign funds.

With his departure, a highly competitive primary emerged in which Campa-Najjar and Issa edged out conservative radio host Carl DeMaio for the two tops spots. Now polling suggests the competitive primary was not an aberration.

Earlier this month Politico reported that a poll conducted by J. Wallin Opinion Research on behalf of the conservative-leaning Deputy Sheriffs Association of San Diego County showed Campa-Najjar with 42 percent support and Issa with 39 percent.

According to Politico, the poll of 400 likely voters was conducted from May 29 to June 2, and had a 4.9 percentage point margin of error, leaving the candidates in a statistical tie.

The Deputy Sheriffs Association has endorsed Issa in the race.

Another poll conducted July 22-26 for the Campa-Najjar campaign by Strategies 360 had the Democrat trailing Issa, with 43 percent compared to the Republicans 47 percent. About 10 percent of voters were undecided in the poll, which also had a margin of error of 4.9 percent.

Issas campaign did not respond to a Union-Tribune inquiry about the DCCCs increased role.

However, the former congressman, who served in the House for nearly two decades, previously said he was not worried about the polling. He noted the Wallin poll did not include the entirety of the congressional district and specifically pointed to the absence of the districts portion of Riverside County, home to 19,238 registered Republicans and 14,171 registered Democrats.

Polling isnt how you do things, Issa said. Im not going to change stances based on polling.

Election Day is Nov. 3.

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Democrats national campaign arm throws weight behind Ammar Campa-Najjar in race for the 50th District - The San Diego Union-Tribune

The Democrats' chance of wresting control away from Republicans has increased over the last few months. They are clearer favorites to take back Congress' upper chamber, though the race for Senate control is still well within the margin of error.

To gain a majority of seats, Democrats need a net pickup of between three seats (if Biden holds onto his lead over President Donald Trump, as his vice president would become the tie-breaking vote) or four seats (if Trump wins).

Democrats now have a little more than a 7-in-10 (70%) shot to win at least 3 seats and a little more than a 6-in-10 (60%) chance of winning at least 4 seats. In early May, it was 3-in-5 (60%) for at least a 3 seat gain and 1-in-2 (50%) for a 4 seat shift.

Democratic chances to win in a number of these races have gone up since May.

Specifically, Democrats are doing considerably better in a number of races that were either tossups or previously leaning toward the Republicans:

Beyond those four races, Democratic odds have not gone up greatly in any state.

Democrats, though, are now favorites to win four Republican-held seats: Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina. If they won all four, they'd be in a strong position to take control. In all of them, Democrats have at least a 2-in-3 (67%) chance. None of these are done deals by any stretch, though, and you could easily imagine Republicans winning a number of them.

Indeed, Republicans have worse than a 1-in-10 chance (10%) in every other Democratic held seat.

Democrats, on the other hand, have multiple, even beyond the ones we've already listed.

Next up is Kansas, where Democrat Barbara Bollier has about a 1-in-4 (25%) chance in a state that hasn't elected a Democratic senator in nearly 90 years. The big question mark in this historically red state remains who her fall opponent is. If it's arch-conservative Kris Kobach, Kansas' former secretary of state, Bollier's chances rise. If it's someone else (probably Roger Marshall), they go down.

Three other traditionally states on the outer radar for Democrats are Alaska, South Carolina and Texas. Republican incumbents are favorites in all three, though Democrats have roughly between a 1-in-10 (10%) and 1-in-7 (about 15%) in all of them.

Overall, though, the picture is rosier for the Democrats than it was a few months ago. The fight for the Senate leans in their direction. Republicans maintain a clear pathway to a Senate majority, but it's narrower than it was in May.

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Democrats are stronger favorites in tight race for Senate control - CNN

Follow our latest coverage of the Biden vs. Trump 2020 election here.

BOZEMAN, Mont. In the deeply polarized election of 2016, every state that supported President Trump backed Republican senators and each state that Hillary Clinton carried voted for a Democratic Senate candidate.

But four years later, Democratic hopes for gaining a clear Senate majority depend in part on winning in conservative-leaning states where Mr. Trump may also prevail, even as he sags in the polls. In states like Alaska, Iowa, Georgia and here in Montana, Democrats are hoping their Senate candidates can outperform Joseph R. Biden Jr., their presumptive nominee.

Thats the dynamic Gov. Steve Bullock is counting on in Montana, where ticket-splitting is as much a way of life as fly-fishing.

Montanans have supported Republican presidential candidates, with one exception, for over a half-century. In that same period, though, they have elected a series of Democratic governors and senators. Senator Steve Daines, whom Mr. Bullock is challenging, was the first Republican elected to the Senate seat that he holds in over a century.

Yet as he faces off against Mr. Bullock, whose popularity has risen as he leads the states coronavirus response, Mr. Daines is counting on Montanans to act a little more like voters everywhere else and stick with one party as they make their way down the ballot.

The race here will measure the political impact of the pandemic many governors have grown in stature for their handling of the virus, and Mr. Bullock is the only sitting governor running for the Senate. It will also test Montanas iconoclastic identity in a time of encroaching red-and-blue homogeneity.

But for Democrats, going on the offensive in a red-leaning state in an age of polarization is no easy task. By nominating the more moderate Mr. Biden, they hope they can at least lose more closely, if not win outright, in states where Mrs. Clinton was thrashed and her partys Senate candidates went down with her.

The reason he was so strong in 16 is because you could go up and down here Democrats and Republicans would both tell you they hate Hillary, Jon Tester, a Democrat who is Montanas senior senator, said of Mr. Trump over an afternoon beer in Great Falls.

Even as Mrs. Clinton lost Montana overwhelmingly, though, Mr. Bullock still managed to get re-elected as governor.

A Helena-reared lawyer who made a foray for president last year, Mr. Bullock has won statewide office three times, first as attorney general before he became governor.

Montanans know me, he said in an interview, explaining how hed overcome Republican claims that hed abet liberal voices in Washington. Ive worked with Republicans to get things done.

Winning a federal race, in which the issues are more national in scope, is difficult enough for a Democrat in a red state. But Mr. Bullock made that task harder by leaving Montana for half of 2019 to run for president, drifting to the left on some issues and repeatedly insisting he would not fall back to seek the Senate seat.

Without prompting last week, though, he noted that he had stood up to President Barack Obamas administration on environmental policies he thought were harmful to Montanas agriculture and energy sectors.

Such talk was notably absent from his White House bid, when he sought the Democratic nomination by edging to the left on gun control and deeming Mr. Trump a lying con man from New York with orange hair and a golden toilet.

Asked if his ridicule of Mr. Trump was over the line, he suggested some regret.

By Washington standards, not at all, Mr. Bullock explained. By my typical standards, stronger than things that I would typically say.

Navigating Mr. Trump is a delicate issue for Montana Democrats, who must energize their liberal base without alienating the states ticket-splitters. Mr. Tester aired ads in his 2018 re-election campaign trumpeting his work with the president, which helped blunt the impact of Mr. Trumps four trips to the state that year.

Few G.O.P. senators have so happily linked themselves to Mr. Trump as Mr. Daines, a chemical engineer by training who represented Montana as its lone congressman before winning his Senate seat in 2014.

In an interview in his Bozeman campaign office, he said he was eager for the president to return to the state and revealed that Mr. Trump had asked to come, too.

However, just as Mr. Bullocks ill-fated bid for president has complicated his attempt to run again in Montana, the coronavirus has created headwinds for Mr. Daines.

Mr. Trumps standing here has fallen, as it has elsewhere, because of his ineffective response to the outbreak. Some Republican polling this summer suggests he is leading Mr. Biden only by single digits in Montana.

Asked to assess the presidents performance on the pandemic, Mr. Daines largely sidestepped the question, stating that he supported letting states and localities have primacy.

Further muddling matters for Mr. Daines: Any effort by him to embrace the national Republican strategy of pinning the blame on China for the viruss spread in America is complicated by his years of work for Procter & Gamble in China. Democrats are already airing commercials highlighting the senators work in the country.

More than anything, though, the health crisis has created challenges for Mr. Daines by delaying the parry-and-thrust of the campaign, allowing Mr. Bullock to enjoy what his opponent called a rally around the flag bounce.

Mr. Daines acknowledged that his role was more of constituent service specialist than candidate and that the virus was foremost on the minds of voters.

These are third-generation business owners that are crying on the phone to me, saying: Steve, Im losing everything, he recalled. And so in that moment youre not thinking so much about, Well, Steve Bullock got an F on guns and I got an A+. Its not the discussion.

That was easy enough to see as the two officials made their way across this sprawling state, where the metric for a candidates sweat equity is in tires changed, not shoes replaced.

In the Flathead region, near Glacier National Park, Mr. Bullock visited a food bank. As he toured a nearby timber facility, the governor was joined by an employee, a Trump voter now dejected by the countrys state of affairs, whose stepmother had contracted the virus.

Closer to Great Falls, Mr. Daines was similarly confronted with fallout from the pandemic.

He visited a small agricultural equipment dealer who thanked him for the paycheck protection loan that he had received through Congress. It was a big help, said the dealer, Steven Raska, explaining that he had been able to pay a few employees for over two months with the money.

Demonstrating his clout with the Trump administration, Mr. Daines also convened a round-table event for ranchers and farmers that featured Bill Northey, a top administrator at the Department of Agriculture. The growers gave both men an earful about how the virus had upended their livelihoods.

Covid could not have hit the sheep industry at a worse time, said Leah Johnson, who runs the Montana Wool Growers Association.

With the virus spiking in the state, Mr. Bullock finally issued a mask mandate on July 15 for any county with four or more active cases.

Former Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat who represented the state in Congress for nearly 40 years, said the pandemic had initially lifted Mr. Bullock.

But the trouble with Covid is you cant get out and shake hands, and that would help him compare himself to Daines, said Mr. Baucus, explaining that he had overcome Montanas national Republican leaning by cultivating individual voters. My main approach to the state was: people, people, people.

The uncertainty surrounding the virus, and Montanas heterodox political nature, were on display Thursday in Bozeman. A few dozen protesters in Trump gear hoisted signs and marched down the citys commercial center in opposition to the mask order.

They passed a number of storefronts that even before the mandate had asked customers to wear masks a reflection of the changing nature of Bozeman. Theres now a Lululemon, sitting across the street from a coffee shop plastered with anti-racism signs that could have been pulled from the most liberal college campus (De-Prioritize White Comfort).

Few places have as strong a sense of place as Montana, where politicians routinely invoke how many generations their families go back in the state. This focus on rootedness and the states sparse population have helped perpetuate its independent streak as races remain more about the individual.

We have six people per square mile and three times as many cows as people, so that makes for a lot of reliance, said Marc Racicot, a former Republican governor. The social connection is a little richer and not so contaminated with only electronic communications.

Yet even as it treasures its status as The Last, Best Place, one of its slogans, Montana, which has about one million people, is being reshaped by transplants. And nowhere more so than Bozeman, a community cherished for its proximity to Yellowstone Park that locals now call Bozeangeles.

Traditionally, Democrats won statewide by winning or breaking even in the county surrounding Billings, the population center of Montanas Republican-dominated east. Thats changing, though, because of the rising population in Gallatin County, which includes Bozeman and is the fastest-growing jurisdiction in the state.

Mr. Testers trajectory in Gallatin County tells the story of Montanas transformation: Over three elections, Mr. Tester has gone from winning 49 percent to 51.5 percent to 59.4 percent there.

Once rooted in labor, the Democratic coalition here increasingly reflects the national party, with its twin pillars of upscale whites and working-class minorities (Native Americans in the case of Montana).

These urban spaces are growing dramatically, and these spaces are becoming the heart of the Democratic base here, said David Parker, a Montana State University professor who wrote a book on the 2012 Senate race.

At the same time, though, Republicans are winning their heavily rural base by even larger margins today: Even Mr. Tester, a descendant of homesteaders who is the only working farmer in the Senate, has seen his support sag in sparsely populated counties since he first ran in 2006.

It adds up to a shrinking pool of persuadable voters.

Its not quite like what it was, Mr. Racicot acknowledged, before hinting at why so many people want to move to Montana. But its a lot closer to that ideal than the rest of the nation.

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Why Montana Is a Test Case for Democrats Winning the Senate - The New York Times