“Montana Democrat Kathleen Williams is raising her party’s hopes for a long-shot House gain in a Republican-tilting state,” Bloomberg reports.

“Republican Greg Gianforte is seeking his first full term in office after he won a 2017 special election to his at-large seat after Representative Ryan Zinke was appointed to become President Trump’s Interior secretary. Yet Gianforte, with less than a week to go, has yet to put away the race, according to recent polling.”

“That the result is even close at all is remarkable in a state that Trump won by 20 percentage points in 2016. However, if House Democrats are competitive in states like Montana — and especially if Williams wins — it raises questions of how broad Democratic gains may be on election night.”

“Unhampered by being charged with the assault of a reporter just 24 hours earlier, Republican Greg Gianforte on Thursday won the special election to fill Montana’s empty seat in the U.S. House by 7 percentage points,” the Billings Gazette reports.

“The Bozeman technology entrepreneur, who did not appear publicly after the assault until his victory speech late Thursday, traded leads with Democrat Rob Quist as early results came in, but by 10 p.m. he took a lead Quist could not recover from.”

The polls in Montana’s special congressional election race between Greg Gianforte (R) and Rob Quist (D) are now closed.

Nate Silver: “Yeah, my back-of-the-envelope math is that Gianforte is winning the early vote by somewhere in the high single digits (5-9 points). Which might qualify as a moral victory for Democrats, but makes an actual one something of a long-shot for Quist.”

David Wasserman: “The truth is, we’ll never really know where the race stood yesterday, only a messy combination of where it stood pre- and post-slam. That said, I think a 4-8 point Gianforte victory would still be a good sign for Democrats nationally, considering they haven’t come that close in a Montana House race in two decades.”

For members: A Loss In Montana Wouldn’t Be Terrible for Democrats

“The Republican candidate for Montana’s congressional seat slammed a Guardian reporter to the floor on the eve of the state’s special election, breaking his glasses and shouting, ‘Get the hell out of here,'” The Guardian reports.

“Ben Jacobs, a Guardian political reporter, was asking Greg Gianforte (R), a tech millionaire running for the seat vacated by Ryan Zinke, about the Republican healthcare plan when the candidate allegedly ‘body-slammed’ the reporter.”

Listen to the audio here.

BuzzFeed reporter Alexis Levinson tweeted that she saw it happen: “Ben walked into a room where a local TV crew was set up for an interview with Gianforte. All of a sudden, I heard a giant crash and saw Ben’s feet fly in the air as he hit the floor.”

“Campaign spending in Montana’s U.S. House race is surging in the final days with significant amounts placed on getting out the vote,” the Helena Independent Record reports.

“Campaign spending has surged deep into record territory, with at least $17 million flowing into the race from the campaigns and outside groups hoping to influence the nationally watched contest. Republicans are significantly outspending Democrats, according to donation and expenditure reports filed in the last weeks of the campaign.”

Politico: “It’s a recurring nightmare of a pattern for Republicans around the country, as traditional GOP strongholds prove more difficult and expensive for the party to hold than it ever anticipated when President Donald Trump plucked House members like Ryan Zinke, the former Montana Republican now running the Interior Department, for his Cabinet. Gianforte is still favored to keep the seat red, but a state Trump carried by 20 percentage points last year became a battleground in the past few months.”

For members: Special Election Upset Brewing in Montana?

A new Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group (D) poll in Montana finds Greg Gianforte (R) leads Rob Quist (D) by six points in the congressional special election, 49% to 43%.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is investing an additional $400,000 in Rob Quist’s (D) campaign to fill the Montana congressional seat left vacant when former Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) was sworn in as the interior secretary, the HuffPost reports.

“The new donation brings the DCCC’s total investment in Quist to $600,000. On April 20, the DCCC invested $200,000 in the folk singer, which was used to buy political ads for Quist’s campaign. According to Kelly, the additional money will be invested in a program aimed at getting likely independent and Democratic voters to vote by mail, which accounts for approximately 60 percent of Montana’s voters, as well as to buy more TV ads.”

New York Times: “After a hard-fought campaign to fill a House seat in the Atlanta suburbs fell just short of outright victory on Tuesday, the House seat in Montana vacated by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is up next, and a groundswell of new activism on the left is demanding attention.”

“Democrats have now chalked up a closer-than-expected loss in a House special election in Kansas this month and a near miss in Georgia, leading logically to discussions of how hard to play going forward — not only in the June 20 runoff between their first-time candidate Jon Ossoff and the Republican Karen Handel in Georgia, but also in looming House races in Montana and South Carolina.”

“But grass-roots liberals are not about to let party leaders lapse back into traditional red state, blue state assumptions. Instead, the Democrats’ enthusiastic base is demanding to compete on terrain that once seemed forbidding, a formula for disputes now and in 2018 about where to put the party’s money and field operations.”

“Republican leaders may have been caught off guard by the weakness of their candidate in the Kansas special election, but they won’t let it happen again in Montana, where another House election will be held May 25,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Congressional Leadership Fund, the House GOP leadership’s super PAC, will spend ‘at least $1 million’ on advertising and a paid get-out-the-vote effort… In addition, the National Republican Congressional Committee’s advertising arm is buying $148,000 in television airtime for a flight of campaign ads starting Friday… The GOP group is also spending $125,000 for digital ads starting Thursday.”