Sen. Tester’s team gets testy over ad depicting him with five fingers

Montana Sen. Jon Tester's team is calling out the National Republican Senatorial Committee on a new ad depicting the Democratic lawmaker getting cozy with lobbyists and Barack Obama.

The web commercial shows the lawmaker's five-fingered left hand open toward the president as the men pat one another on the back. The problem is, Tester only has two fingers on his left hand.

"From the made-up photo to the misleading message, the whole ad is an inaccurate picture of Jon and his record of transparency and accountability," Tester spokesman Aaron Murphy told the Great Falls Tribune.

You can watch the ad below:

Tester, a farmer who was first elected to the Senate in 2006, lost the three middle fingers on his left hand in a childhood meat-grinder accident.

Republicans said Thursday that the hand that appears in the campaign video image belongs to someone in the background and was accidentally kept in the image after the ad's producers had cropped out other figures in the background, the Tribune reports.

Tester is competing in one of the most closely watched Senate races of 2012 as Republicans aim to win a majority in the chamber. The GOP needs just four Senate pick-ups to make that happen, and Montana figures prominently into their strategy.

As a Democratic freshman in a conservative-leaning state, Tester is a major target for defeat and has already drawn a formidable challenge from well-known Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg.

A June survey from Public Policy Polling showed Tester narrowly trailing Rehberg 45 to 47 percent. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.