HELENA – Republican Ryan Zinke, a retired Navy SEAL commander and former state senator from Whitefish, was elected as Montana’s next congressman on Tuesday night.
The Associated Press at 10:24 p.m. Tuesday declared Zinke the winner in his race against Democrat John Lewis of Helena and Libertarian Mike Fellows of Missoula.
With 354 of 697 precincts partially counted, unofficial results showed:
• Zinke, 54 percent, 134,498 votes.
• Lewis, 42 percent, 104,823 votes.
• Fellows, 4 percent, 9,919 votes.
Zinke’s victory keeps the state’s lone U.S. House seat in Republican hands, as it has been since after the 1996 election. He will succeed Republican Rep. Steve Daines, who was elected to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday night.
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The last Democrat to win the seat was former Rep. Pat Williams in 1994.
“It’s been a good night, and now the work begins,” Zinke said in a telephone interview.
He attributed his victory to having an excellent campaign team, hard work and a slogan that encapsulated what the campaign was all about: “More leadership and less politics.”
“Now I’m going to do exactly what I say,” Zinke said. “I think Montana’s ready for it. I probably will ruffle some feathers in Washington, D.C.”
That will be part of his job he said.
He said the margin of victory was close to what his team expected and their polls showed.
“It was a reflection of the team we had,” the congressman-elect said. “We worked harder, put more miles on and shook more hands.”
In a speech to supporters in Whitefish, he said it’s up to Republicans nationally, who will now control the Senate as well as the House, to come up with a definitive plan on how to deal with the five biggest issues facing the nation.
“I’m an optimist,” he said. “I think that this country can remain exceptional. We’re going to put a little bit more Montana in Washington, D.C., and a whole lot less of Washington in Montana.”
Lewis, interviewed earlier Tuesday night before the race was called for Zinke, said, “We’re giving it everything we’ve got. That’s all we can do.”
He added, “We have done it with integrity and run an issue-oriented campaign, the kind of campaign we’ve wanted to see for the House seat for some time.”
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Zinke, 53, retired as a commander in the Navy SEALs after a 23-year career and then started a small business in Whitefish, where he was raised.
He was elected to the state Senate from Whitefish in 2008 and served in the 2009 and 2011 sessions. In 2012, Zinke was running mate in Neil Livingstone’s campaign for governor, but they lost in the primary.
Zinke eked out a narrow win in the five-way Republican primary in June to win the House nomination.
Lewis, 36, was born in Billings, grew up in Missoula and now lives Helena. He worked 12 years as an aide to Sen. Max Baucus, both in Washington and later in Montana. He was Baucus’ state director, based in Helena, from 2010 until he resigned in August 2013 to run for the House.
In June, Lewis easily won a two-person Democratic primary for the House nomination.
This was Lewis’ first race as a candidate, although he had worked on several Baucus campaigns.
Fellows, who said he’s about 55, lives in Missoula where he is self-employed in preparing video presentations and doing odds and ends.
He is a state chair of the Montana Libertarian Party and has run unsuccessfully for statewide and local races every two years since 1996 on the Libertarian ticket.
