U.S. House candidate Gary Buchanan, leading an independent campaign to represent central and eastern Montana in Congress, likely garnered the 8,722 signatures needed to put his name on the November ballot without being nominated by a political party, according to a preliminary tally provided Wednesday by state election administrators.

A report from Montana’s secretary of state, current at 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, says county election officials accepted 13,313 signatures from petitioners supporting Buchanan’s candidacy. Before Buchanan is officially qualified for the ballot, those signatures must also be certified by the Secretary of State’s office.

Buchanan said Tuesday he was excited by the excitement his campaign had generated, but wanted to remain cautious until a final decision was confirmed by the secretary of state.

“I’m not going to proclaim the success of this company until we’re certified,” he said.

The report also says Buchanan’s campaign had submitted 1,628 other signatures that were rejected, most because they were deemed illegible, duplicated or by people who were not registered to vote in the district. This gives the first review of Buchanan’s signature collection a rejection rate of 11%.

For Buchanan to miss the ballot qualification threshold, the secretary of state would have to declare 4,592 of the 13,313 tentatively accepted signatures invalid, a rejection rate of 34 percent.

Buchanan, a financial adviser to Billings, is running against incumbent U.S. Representative Matt Rosendale, a Republican, in Montana’s new eastern congressional district. The race also includes three other Republicans, two active Democrats and three Libertarians. The party-affiliated candidate fields will be narrowed to one candidate for each party in the primary election scheduled for next Tuesday, June 7.

Independent candidates for state and federal office are rare in Montana, with most general elections involving Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian candidates. More recently, independent Caron Cooper made an unaffiliated bid for a seat on the Montana Public Service Commission, the state’s utility regulatory board, in 2016, placing third behind Democratic candidates and republicans.

Successful independent campaigns for Congress have also been exceedingly rare in modern American politics. A Wikipedia chart, for example, lists just five members of Congress who have served as independents since 1961, four of whom were first elected with support from the Republican or Democratic parties. (The only exception is U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who was elected to represent Vermont as an independent in Congress in 1991.)

Buchanan has held economic development positions in the state under both Democratic and Republican governors and campaigned with the support of old-guard politicians from both parties, including former Republican Governor Marc Racicot and Democrat Dorothy Bradley. He was highly critical of Rosendale, who is seeking re-election after his first term representing the existing statewide congressional district of Montana, arguing that the Republican’s hardline record in Washington, D.C. has been too extreme to effectively represent Montana’s interests.

Rosendale’s campaign responded by arguing that Buchanan would not provide the state with staunchly conservative representation to push back against the political agendas advanced by Democratic President Joe Biden.

Buchanan said this week that if he does go to the polls, his next step would be to consult with volunteers who collected signatures on his behalf, using what they heard from potential voters to refine a political agenda for the campaign. general election.

“There’s a hell of a lot of excitement being generated from where we’re sitting,” he said.