HELENA, Mont. -- Montana's convenience-store owners are targeting Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., with newspaper and TV ads criticizing him for his 2011 effort to delay new limits on debit-card "swipe fees" charged by banks, according to a report in the Billings Gazette.
The TV ads, which began running on stations across the state on Aug. 12, say Tester "led the charge for big Wall Street banks" to undo the reforms and allow them to increase fees. The newspaper ads ran this past weekend.
Tester has maintained that the swipe-fee limit would unfairly cut a key revenue stream for small-town banks in Montana.
"This was another issue where Jon Tester worked across party lines to protect small businesses and consumers in rural Montana," campaign spokesman Aaron Murphy told the newspaper.
The Montana Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association bought the ads, but declined to say how much it spent. Tester's campaign estimated the ad cost at $232,000, which is a substantial buy.
While Tester is in the midst of a high-profile re-election campaign against U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., a spokeswoman for the association said the ads are not intended as campaign pieces against Tester and that the group has not endorsed a candidate in the U.S. Senate race.
"This is about our disappointment in (Tester's) support of big bank and credit card companies," said Ronna Alexander. "We don't consider this as getting involved in the race, but raising an issue."
The convenience store group includes Montana businesses and some regional businesses that have stores in Montana, Alexander said.
The ads refer to Tester's 2011 sponsorship of an amendment to delay for two years a pending Federal Reserve Bank rule limiting debit-card swipe fees.
The Federal Reserve had estimated that banks charged about 44 cents per transaction on debit cards, or allegedly much more than their cost. Its initial rule would have limited fees to 12 cents per transaction, but it later adjusted the ceiling to about 23 cents per swipe, an amount retailers say is still too high.
Tester's amendment needed 60 votes to clear a procedural hurdle; it had only 54.
Banks with less than $10 billion in assets are exempt from the limit, thus exempting most Montana banks. But Montana banks argued they'd have to lower their fees to compete against the bigger banks, so that the limit would apply to them, too.
Alexander said merchants in Montana consider the new rule a success, and that association members have ended up paying lower fees and passing the savings on to customers, according to the report.
Click here to view the TV ad.
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