HELENA — With his flat-top haircut, Jon Tester looks like a high school gym teacher ready to blow his whistle to demand some push-ups from his students. Instead, starting Jan. 3, the Big Sandy farmer with the twinkling eyes and the big smile will be presiding over the first Montana Senate controlled by Democrats in a decade.

Humbled last week after his Democratic Senate colleagues unanimously chose him to be the next president of the senior legislative body, Tester said, "It's time for us to step up to the plate. People are going to be watching very intensely.''

As presiding officer, Tester first must oversee the hiring of about 50 administrative and security employees before the session. Starting Jan. 3, he will be sitting in the president's chair and be his party's chief spokesman, although Majority Leader Jon Ellingson, D-Missoula, will lead the debates.

The man Tester will replace as Senate president, Republican Bob Keenan of Bigfork, had kind words about his successor.

"Jon Tester is a good man,'' Keenan said. "He's honest. He's always been pretty straightforward. As one human being to a different human being, we obviously interface. We play on different political teams.''

Added Keenan, "He's not an aggressive fire-breathing partisan by any means. Believe me, that's a good thing. In the president's seat, you're doing some refereeing. You're kind of a player-coach, as opposing to being the quarterback on the floor.''

With a Democratic Senate and Democrat Brian Schweitzer set to take over the governor's office, Tester can hardly wait. Schweitzer is the first Democrat elected governor in Montana since 1984.

"There is not a person in the Senate on the Democratic side that doesn't want him to succeed,'' Tester said of the governor-elect.

Tester has been in the Senate since 1999, moving his way up the ladder and serving as minority leader in 2003. Democrats hold a 27-23 margin in the Senate, while the House is nearly equally divided, 50 Republicans to 49 Democrats, plus one Constitutional Party member, whose two-vote victory over a Democrat will prompt a recount.

He's not one to gloat, noting he will be presiding over the entire Senate, not just Democrats.

"I want to be more inclusive and less partisan,'' Tester said. "The partisan fights will happen on the floor, and that's all. We've got to have good debates to find out the strong points and weak points of proposed policy.''

Tester said he's seen some of the Senate's professionalism slip since his first session in 1999 after the loss of the most senior members through term limits. Then, he said, senators stuck to the issues and treated colleagues with respect. Since then, Tester said he's heard senators call attorneys "bottom-feeders'' and make other derogatory remarks. He hopes to reverse that.

The Democratic leader recounted what former Senate Majority Leader John Harp, R-Kalispell, told him : "The Senate is a great body. You need to make sure you don't compromise the body.''

"Decorum is important to me,'' Tester said. "We need to be civil, and we need to dress and act appropriately. We're doing the people's business.''

To help get more Democrats elected, Tester crisscrossed the state with House Minority Leader Dave Wanzenried, D-Missoula, and House Minority Whip Monica Lindeen, D-Huntley, to hear Montanans' ideas on improving the economy.

"I have enjoyed getting to know this guy more than any other person I've known,'' said Wanzenried, a trucking company executive. "He's so humble and so grounded and so caring. His heart is as big as he is. He understands the difference between taking yourself seriously and taking yourself too seriously.''

He joked that Tester is "a larger version of Johnny Unitas,'' the flat-topped Baltimore Colts' quarterback of the 1950s and 1960s.

Wanzenried, whose been around the Legislature since the mid-1970s as a state government official and later chief of staff to Gov. Ted Schwinden, said Tester is a throwback to the giants who served in those days.

"He has the same kind of common sense, down-to-earth view of the world as Francis Bardanouve,'' Wanzenried said, referring to the legendary Harlem farmer-rancher who served in House for more than three decades. It must have something to do with sitting on a tractor all of those hours, day after day, with plenty of time to think, Wanzenried said.

Looking ahead, Tester said school funding will be "the premier issue'' facing lawmakers. The Montana Supreme Court upheld a District Court decision that found the state's school funding system unconstitutionally inadequate.

"We've got to take appropriate steps to get this problem solved because education is so important,'' the one-time music teacher said. "It's the foundation of our democracy. I think it's the single most important issue if we're going to turn our economy around.''

In the dozens of meetings he conducted with the other Democratic leaders around the state, Tester said the four issues raised by Montanans in order were: lack of health insurance, funding for K-12 and higher education and high residential property taxes.

Aiming high, Tester wants the Legislature to address all four of these issues.

"If we get those four issues down, I'll tell you what I'll be turning cartwheels down Montana Avenue,'' he said. "I think Montana wants to see change.''

He acknowledged that Republicans have their vision of how this should happen and Democrats have theirs. But Montanans want solutions, he said.

"As I went door to door when I was running and as I did some doors this year for other candidates, they never come to the door and say, ‘Are you a Democrat or a Republican?' '' Tester said. "All had the same concerns.''

Born in Havre, Tester grew up on the farm his grandparents homesteaded and now farms there himself. He and his wife, Sharla, began switching to organic farming in 1987 because "we were becoming the smallest persons out there, and the small guys were leaving.''

They now raise organic wheat, barley, lentils, peas, millet, buckwheat, alfalfa and hay.

Tester attended Big Sandy schools and was elected student body president his senior year. He graduated from the University of Great Falls with a music major. He played the trumpet and returned to the Big Sandy area to farm and teach music part-time in town.

When Tester decided to run for the Senate in 1998, he announced it to a group of local Democrats. He told the audience he had dreamed of running for office since his senior year in high school. He had been inspired by the government day speaker a well-respected, veteran lawmaker from the area, Sen. Dave James, now deceased.

Tester looked out in the audience and saw one woman crying. He learned afterward it was Dave James' daughter.

Profile

Name: Jon Tester.

Office: President of Montana Senate, effective Jan. 3.

Political party: Democratic.

Age: 48.

Birthdate and place: Aug. 21, 1956, in Havre.

Home: Big Sandy.

Education: Graduated from Big Sandy High School, 1974; received bachelor's degree in music, University of Great Falls, 1978.

Family: Wife, Sharla, and daughter, Christine, and son, Shon.

Occupation: Organic farmer.

Political experience: Served on Big Sandy School Board. Elected to Montana Senate in 1998 and re-elected 2002. Served as Senate minority whip in 2001 and minority leader in 2003.