Some Montana Democrats have spent the last few weeks blaming Jon Tester and the old guard for splitting the party between Seth Bodnar and Alani Bankhead.
That's convenient. It's also wrong.
The real problem is the establishment: the Montana Democratic Party's Executive Board, new Executive Director Emily Marburger, and out-of-touch activists who have spent more energy attacking Bodnar than attacking Kurt Alme. They are the ones who have deluded themselves into thinking Bankhead has a real chance to win in November, despite years of results telling them otherwise.
I helped Democrats flip five legislative seats in 2018. I watched Tester win statewide with more than 50% of the vote. It was a great night to be a Montana Democrat, and I was proud to be part of it.
But we understood something the party's current leadership refuses to accept: that was one of the last elections where Democrats could win statewide. The people who have moved to Montana over the last 15 years have skewed conservative. I hate to break it to you, but math matters in elections whether we like it or not.
The results back it up. Democrats lost every statewide race in 2020 by an average of 13.7%. In 2024, every Democrat running statewide not named Jon Tester lost by 18% or more.
If you can't accept the reality on the ground, you can never build a successful campaign strategy. That is exactly what the establishment has done. They have convinced themselves that a weak candidate (Bankhead) with $23,000 can somehow win statewide. When Tester lost in 2024, it was the most expensive political race in Montana history. So how is Bankhead supposed to get her message out to voters when she barely has enough money to pay a full-time staffer, let alone the kind of statewide operation that employs dozens of people?
Bankhead is running a campaign better suited for the state Legislature, not the U.S. Senate. She will not win in November. She will never be a U.S. senator. You can click your heels all you want, but Bankhead isn’t waking up in D.C. as Montana’s next senator.
Sadly, it seems the inmates are running the asylum at MDP’s headquarters. These people are more interested in ego, ideology and playing the victim card than winning. I’ve heard these same people say for years that Democrats need to campaign the way the GOP does.
Fine. Here's your chance to prove it. Convince Bankhead to drop out and rally around Seth Bodnar.
The Republican Party has given us a new war in the Middle East, higher gas prices, a housing crisis, and an American dream that has been redefined as just surviving. Montanans watched Steve Daines pull out at the last possible moment like the coward he is and handpicked Kurt Alme as his successor. People across this state are sick of watching this kind of corruption happen in plain sight. Voters want someone different — and it’s not a longshot Democrat.
Here's my question for Alani Bankhead and the Montana Democratic Party: If Democrats fall one seat short of retaking the U.S. Senate, ask yourselves if you can live with that, knowing full well there was never a pathway to victory. It could mean Trump getting to replace Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court with another far-right justice for decades, further gutting union rights, abortion rights, and protections for our public lands, while a Republican Senate keeps rubber-stamping an agenda that hurts working families.
Will you own that? Or will you find someone else to blame?