Alani Bankhead, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Montana, should end her campaign and clear the path for independent Seth Bodnar to consolidate the votes of the state’s non-Republicans. Bodnar is polling better than Bankhead in head-to-head matchups against Republican candidate Kurt Alme and probably has a better chance of winning. And a Bodnar win could be critical, potentially denying the Republicans the 50th seat they need to control the Senate.
This shouldn’t just be a strategy for one Senate race in Montana. Democratic leaders, strategists, and ultimately voters need to start regularly backing independent candidates in very red places, at least for the next few election cycles. This may not work. But we should test every possible approach to keep politicians nominated by today’s radical, anti-democratic Republican Party out of power, and running independents has real potential to do just that.
The reality is that Democratic candidates simply can’t win races in many states and districts right now. (And the same is true for Republicans in very blue areas.) It’s hard for Democrats to accept this reality, because they remember the exceptions to this rule. Alabama’s Doug Jones, Montana’s Jon Tester, Kansas’s Laura Kelly, Louisiana’s John Bel Elwards, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, and Kentucky’s Andy Beshear are among the Democrats who have won in very red areas over the last decade. But those are outliers, usually with some specific explanation. (Manchin and Tester were incumbents who had first been elected in less polarizing eras. So had Beshear’s father, Steve. Jones’s Republican opponent was accused of sexually assaulting underage girls.) The overwhelming majority of Democratic candidates in those states and other red places lose.
These candidates aren’t losing simply because they are too liberal. (Tester lost his 2024 reelection bid, and Manchin almost certainly would have been defeated if he had run as a Democrat for another term two years ago.) Democrats who take conservative stands, such as opposing abortion rights, run all the time and still lose in red states.
What’s plaguing them is the label Democrat. Today, much more so than in the past, many voters and therefore entire districts and states almost never will back a candidate from the opposite party, no matter their policy stands. The party brands eclipse any individual. Swing voters exist. But their ranks are small. So both parties can win statewide races in Michigan or Wisconsin, but Republicans almost always win in Kentucky, as do Democrats in Massachusetts.
But shunning the party label seems to help shake up this state of affairs. In 2022, Never-Trump former Republican Evan McMullin ran for a U.S. Senate seat in Utah as an independent, even though he was as critical of MAGA Republicans as most Democrats. He lost by 10 percentage points. Two years later, an anti-MAGA candidate who ran as a Democrat lost by 30 in a Utah Senate race. Nebraska’s Dan Osborn, a mechanic and union leader, ran for the Senate in 2024 and by lost seven. In that same election, Kamala Harris ran 20 points behind Donald Trump, and in Nebraska’s other U.S. Senate race, a Democratic candidate lost by 25 to a Republican. In both McMullin and Osborn’s races, the Democratic Party didn’t really run anyone, allowing the independent candidates to get all Democratic votes without having to use the party’s label. Osborn is running again this year and effectively tied in polls against Republican incumbent Pete Ricketts.
In Montana, polling also suggests the value of an independent candidacy. The Democratic-leaning firm GQR released a survey this week showing the Republican Alme at 41 percent, the independent Bodnar at 27, and the Democrat Bankhead at 21. (There is a Libertarian candidate getting a small percentage of the vote too.) If the independent Bondar is not included in the poll, Republican Alme leads 44-40 over Democrat Bankhead. But if the Democrat Bankhead is not included, the independent Bondar has a 44-40 lead over Republican Alme.
We are talking about a fairly small advantage—independent Bondar leading by four, while Democrat Bankhead is down by four. This poll alone does not give assurance that the independent Bondar would certainly win, that the Democratic Bankhead would certainly lose, or that Bondar would do better than Bankhead against the Republican. But the long record of Democrats losing Montana and other red states and the better showings by independents in other states in that region make me think that Bondar would be the superior candidate. And one thing is for certain: having them both run guarantees a Republican victory.
I would normally be reluctant to ask a candidate to stand down. Bankhead ran in a competitive primary and won. She has earned the right to be on the ballot and force Bodnar and Alme to beat her. We aren’t in normal times though. A Senate without a GOP majority could be a critical bulwark against Trump, most notably in stopping the appointment of more ultra right-wing judges. If one of the conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court dies or suddenly can’t serve because of health reasons, I want a Trump nominee to get confirmed only if he can win the votes of some non-Republican senators. So Senate seats really, really matter right now. Bodnar has committed to not joining the Senate Democratic Caucus if elected. But he will not join the GOP either. More importantly, he would not be an automatic vote in favor of Trump’s agenda, as outgoing senator Steve Daines is and Alme likely would be as well.
There are four real shortcomings to this independent strategy. First, it may never work in actually defeating a Republican candidate in a red state. McMullin and Osborn were the more liberal candidates in their races and tacitly backed by the Democratic Party. And that likely limited their ability to appeal to stalwart Republican voters, the majority of the electorate in red states. Bodnar, who is backed by Tester and other prominent Democrats in Montana, will also likely be seen as essentially a Democratic candidate by many Montana voters, complicating his path to victory.
Second, if Osborn and/or Bodnar make it to Washington, they won’t be full-fledged Democrats. If 49 Republicans, 49 Democrats, and Osborn and Bodnar are elected to the Senate this fall, the Republicans would likely remain in charge of the chamber and determine the agenda, because JD Vance would be the 50th GOP vote. And Osborn and Bodnar would probably try to cast high-profile votes with Republicans and against Democrats to solidify their independent bonafides. Think of Manchin or Kyrsten Simena—but maybe worse. These senators would be formally independent from the Democratic Party.
Third, this strategy weakens the party in the long term. In pursuing this course in Utah, Nebraska, and now potentially Montana, Democrats are essentially announcing that their party brand is toxic and can’t win in certain states. That’s certainly true right now. But that admission reinforces that weakness. This is not how a confident party would act. It also denies the party opportunities to get stronger in red states. Perhaps Nebraska’s Osborn would win fewer votes by running as a Democrat, but he might convince more union workers or mechanics to join the party if he were running under its banner.
Same for Bodnar. “His candidacy is entirely focused on one short-term win—and if what he’s doing becomes the norm, there might be no rescuing the party from the wreckage,” former Tester aide Nick Perkins wrote in a recent TNR essay.
Fourth, I suspect that this independent strategy will unfairly prop up white male candidates and diminish women and people of color. McMullin, Osborn, and Bodnar are white men. Bodnar is attempting to push aside a female candidate in Bankhead. McMullin, Osborn, and Bodnar’s supporters likely assume they can win over Republican voters in part because of their race and gender. I worry that liberal-leaning women and people of color in the South or West who seek broader support for their independent candidacies won’t get it and that women and people of color who win Democratic nominations will increasingly get shunted aside for white male independents.
That, I admit, is a lot of shortcomings. This strategy is kind of sexist and racist, weakens the Democratic brand, and will at best send Joe Manchin-types to Washington. But I still want to see this independent experiment tried widely. And that’s partly because of where I live. Here in Kentucky, Democratic candidates just have no chance. Beshear aside, Republicans win virtually all statewide races by 15 percentage points or more. But on policy, this is not an ultra-conservative state. Voters rejected recent ballot initiatives designed to outlaw abortions and create an expansive school voucher program. Voters in the state’s rural areas truly hate the Democratic Party though. I suspect we can have semi-competitive elections and occasional victories by non-Republicans only if alternative candidates are running as independents instead of Democrats.
In Montana, Bankhead, the Democratic candidate, insists she won’t drop out by the August 10 deadline. And the state’s Republican secretary of state says that the Democratic Party would have to choose another candidate if she left the race. But ideally, the party would replace Bankhead with someone who isn’t really running and essentially concedes the Democratic vote to Bodnar. Even if all that happened, the Republican Senate candidate not winning in Montana, which Trump carried by 20 points in 2024, is a long shot.
It’s a shot worth taking, creatively and yes, independently. A Senate with Seth Bodnar in it will be 1 percent less pro-Trump—and we need every percent we can take to fight our authoritarian president. For now, a winning Democratic Party will be one that tries to win in a few less places.
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