Dem
53
Ties
2
GOP
45
The Washington Post has an interesting article about the three-way Montana Senate race. There is Alani Bankhead (D), Kurt Alme (R), and Seth Bodnar (I), all of whom are largely unknown in the Big Sky country. Alme filed to run about 5 minutes before the deadline, just after Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) withdrew his application to run. Voters don't like this kind of stunt. Seth Bodnar, a former Green Beret and former president of the University of Montana filed to run as an independent, but he is more like Sen. Angus King (I-ME) than a true independent.
Bankhead is an Air Force Lt. Col. (ret.) who jumped into the race out of the blue and won the Democratic primary. Polls show that she has no chance at all to win (she is polling at 16%), but she refuses to drop out. Polls show that if she were to drop out, Bodnar might actually beat Alme. So in effect, she is a spoiler whose only role here is to make sure a Republican wins the seat. She makes Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D?-TX) look like a real team player.
The Post article notes that she attended a right-leaning church, voted for John McCain, and self-published a book for a conservative publisher. Her own husband doesn't even know if she has always been a Democrat. She definitely has not always been a Montanan, having moved to the state in 2022. She has raised only $180,000 to Bodnar's $4 million but that doesn't matter since she has been funded by a lot of dark money.
Her campaign website puts Bernie's to shame. She is for affordability, healthcare for all, protecting public lands and against dark money in campaigns (except hers), and data centers. The whole 9 yards. No, make that 10 yards. The DSA would welcome her with open arms (other than the being a closet Republican part). She has been actively campaigning all over the state. When a woman asked her what she would say to Democrats who support Bodnar, she said: "Over my dead body is he going to win." Draw your own conclusions, but we smell rodents reproducing here and it is not a pleasing smell.
If it "works," by which we mean Bankhead and Bodner together get more votes than Alme but Alme wins, this could make politics even worse and dirtier than it already is—and you thought that wasn't possible? In future races, the "other" party could put up both primary and independent candidates whose goal was to split the other team's vote rather than win. The only way to really defeat this is to have ranked choice voting, so in the final round it becomes one Democrat vs. one Republican. (V)