How Republicans Might Lose Montana

Perhaps the weirdest Senate race in the country is happening in Montana.

It’s a three-way race between Republican Kurt Alme, Democrat Alani Bankhead, and independent Seth Bodnar. Bankhead is a pretty standard Democrat, Bodnar is a reasonable libertarianish moderate, and Alme is a Trumpian swamp creature, grafted onto the ballot through an arcane last-minute legal shenanigan.

In two-way polling between Alme and Bankhead, Bankhead is getting crushed. In a three-way race, Bankhead is getting even more thoroughly crushed—Alme is winning by around 14 points. And in some polls, things are even less close. It’s Montana. The Democrat isn’t going to win. But the independent, Seth Bodnar, might very well win if Bankhead isn’t splitting votes. He’s roughly tied in a two-way race.

Thus, Bankhead should drop out and the Democratic party should elect nobody to replace her. While there’s some legal dispute about whether this is legal, it’s pretty likely to be legal, and something similar has happened before. When the Montana Libertarian candidate in 2020 dropped out, the libertarian party opted not to have anyone replace her. For Bankhead not to appear on the ballot, her removal must happen by August 10th. If she drops out after, her name will still be on the ballot; all will be lost. The deadline is soon.

Third parties have done well in deep red states before. In 2016, Evan McMullin got almost as many votes as Clinton in the presidential election in Utah. The gap between McMullin and Clinton was a lot smaller than the gap between Clinton and Trump. Had Clinton dropped out, McMullin might have won Utah. An even more dramatic example can be found in Nebraska, where no Democrat was in the race. The independent Dan Osborn overperformed the Democratic presidential ticket by about 13%, making it fairly close. In Alaska in 2014, the Democrat + independent combined ticket managed to win!

Having a moderate independent is a heck of a lot better than having a MAGA Republican who will vote along party lines. For this reason, I hope Bankhead drops out and is not replaced. And Bodnar is pretty good on a lot of issues: he’s left-of-center on healthcare, moderate on immigration, and opposed to tariffs. Now, in a sane world we wouldn’t applaud politicians for opposing economic instruments whose undesirability we’ve known about since the days of Adam Smith, but we’ll take what we can get. Bodnar is also a Rhodes scholar, veteran, and chill guy all around. He’s way above replacement as far as candidates from Montana go.

If, like me, you think that the Trump administration is one of the most corrupt and nefarious political institutions in recent memory—a threat to Democracy, institutions, foreign aid, farmed animals, the entire future, immigrants, and more—then you should regard Bankhead’s remaining in the race as totally unacceptable. It’s more than a bit reminiscent of the decision Biden almost made to stay in the race. More party elites should pressure her to drop out. See here for a doc describing actions that can be taken to get her to drop out—if you’re in Montana, do the stuff in the doc. If not, tell people in Montana to do it.

To the extent that Bankhead remains in the race, she’s doing something extremely terrible by the light of her own values. She knows that she hasn’t the faintest hope of winning a three-way race. If, as she claims, she cares about Democratic party priorities, rather than her own cynical political advancement, she ought to act like it and drop out of the race.