Ex-Trump cabinet secretary Ryan Zinke wins Montana GOP House primary
Ryan Zinke, former Interior Secretary beneath then-President Donald Trump, has narrowly received the Republican primary for a brand new Montana House seat.
He beat former State Sen. Al “Doc” Olszewski by lower than two proportion factors, in response to preliminary ballot outcomes.
Zinke, who had resigned from his cabinet member put up amid quite a few federal ethics investigations, earned his former boss’ endorsement within the five-candidate primary for the seat that was created because of the state’s inhabitants development.
Zinke stepped down from his position within the Trump administration on the finish of 2018 whereas he was the topic of greater than a dozen investigations — a number of of which concluded with no discovering of wrongdoing.
One probe discovered that Zinke lied to an company ethics official about his continued involvement in a industrial actual property deal in his Montana hometown.
Other candidates within the race slammed Zinke for the investigations and in addition questioned his residency after it was revealed that his spouse declared a home in California as her primary residence on tax types.
His opponents additionally tried to color him as a “liberal insider” regardless of Trump’s endorsement and his conservative report. They claimed he was too comfortable on weapons and did not build the previous president’s US-Mexico border wall.
The outcomes of the Republican primary had been launched days not on time attributable to a county error. Lincoln County needed to hand depend its ballots after a vendor printed the ballots on paper that couldn’t be run by means of a machine tabulator.
Zinke was seen as an incumbent within the primary since he had represented Montana in a special House seat earlier than stepping right down to take the job within the Trump administration in 2017.
He will face Olympic rower and lawyer Monica Tranel, who received the Democratic primary for the House seat, in November.
With Post wires
