By Bill Lombardi
Montana’s modern identity is forged from a gritty libertarian toughness conjured from personal freedom, self-reliance and rugged individualism that sneers at those who cave to collective thought and bow to the powerful establishment.
So, welcome to the 2026 U.S. Senate race in Montana.
When former University of Montana President Seth Bodnar decided to run as an “independent” for the U.S. Senate, he and his team made a grave strategic error – they failed to account for human nature in politics.
Bodnar derides Democrats and Republicans as beholden to some mysterious cabal of insiders, elites and party bosses who he alleges pull the strings of partisans. Bodnar’s team, ironically, is composed mostly of Democratic insiders, elites and party bosses.
Other than opposing party politics, Bodnar has failed to outline what independents stand for. Meanwhile, a handful of Democratic establishment figures have tagged the Democratic Party brand as toxic. They unilaterally made the decision to wave the flag of political surrender and run from the Democratic Party to win by dressing their candidate – Bodnar – in independent garb.
The result: Bodnar and his backers angered a significant slice of Democratic voters and workers who have fought for decades for Montanans and now will never vote for him.
The physics of emotion holds that if you insult and hit someone, expect to be insulted and hit back. And expect not to be liked. Politics is driven as much or more by emotion rather than logic and reason.
The heart in politics is stronger than the mind; it’s the engine room that beats strongly enough to keep political hope alive. Changing the hearts and transforming the minds of Montana Democrats is something that can’t be done without the political spadework – persuasion and grassroots organizing – that Bodnar folks failed to do.
After disparaging partisanship as bad, Bodnar supporters chose to aggressively bully the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee and her supporters to try to force her to drop out of the race and back him.
Democrats who backed Bodnar assumed that more Montana Democrats would simply roll over, without question, and commit to support an independent while rejecting the Democratic nominee. The arrogance of these Bodnar supporters made Democrats recoil and strike back, and to refuse to go along with this insider political trading powered by billionaires, Dark Money and trickery.
Bodnar and his supporters now have resorted to tearing down the Democratic nominee to try to gain Democratic votes in an election landscape that’s now favorable to the party.
But enough Montana Democrats pushed back in disgust, and most importantly, Senate nominee Alani Bankhead, refused to capitulate to these ham-handed bullying tactics and remained in the race.
As one national journalist remarked, “I like Montana Democrats: They’re feisty.”
And, whether you like it or not, Bankhead won the Montana Democratic Senate primary.
As part of some national experiment, Democrats in other states – Nebraska, Idaho and South Dakota – surrendered, and candidates who won the Democratic primary stepped aside for so-called independents who were former Democrats. They gave up – quit.
Bodnar’s strategy won’t work in Montana, where citizens revere freedom and exhibit a populist streak of independence from the elites and outside powers.
Why? Because it’s hard to whack a Montana Democrat in the head and expect them to like you – and, no less, vote for you. They’d rather fight than quit.
Stay feisty, my Democratic friends.
Bill Lombardi lives in Seeley Lake.
What I am afraid is that both Bankhead and Bodnar split what would be the Democrat/Liberal vote and Alme slips in.
Bodnar entered the race on March 4 while Bankhead entered the race in July. Yes she (Bankhead) did win the Democratic primary while Bodnar has been running longer. If any of this matters, I don’t know.
At the end of the day I would prefer either of them over Alme. But……
The key sentence in this well written analysis is this:
“Bodnar and his supporters now have resorted to tearing down the Democratic nominee to try to gain Democratic votes in an election landscape that’s now favorable to the party.”
Now favorable to the party! That’s it! All a candidate had to do to win was to be the anti-trump candidate! And the pieces would fall into place. Trump is so hated even by former magas, that victory was basically assured. The suffering amongst the populace has reached the point that they were willing to finally abandon the cult for their own good. The writing was on the wall for all to see, except the folks in the DC mafia elite. And really. Marc Ratco? For many of us there could be no bigger insult than to drag Marc out of the deepest recesses of the dark money swamp! That was not a genius move. A Mr. Dereg endorsement was assured to drop you automatically ten points in the polls!
Besides, we’ve tried special forces guys before in Zinke and Sheehy, and we’ve come to the realization that being in a special unit doesn’t mean shit any longer to us. So why fall for that again even though this candidate professes to be not like those other two? Why take that chance? You begin to think that special military training does NOT automatically translate into the qualities we want in a candidate. ie. The ability to connect with the people and represent their interests. And to be quite honest, a university president from Missoula has very little in common with the average Montanan. He ain’t no Mike Mansfield!
Hence, we discussed endlessly for hours on end how this could possibly have happened, for it made absolutely no sense! Not only that, but this could very well destroy the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future. Finally, since we could arrive at no reasonable answer, we just got madder than hell. Why the hell didn’t the guy just run as a dem? Problem solved? But to pull a half assed stunt like this will go down in Montana history as the biggest f u in our history. It will be studied and debated long after we’re gone. And who came up with this idea. Somebody did. Why can’t we know? And what exactly was the process they used to arrive at this cockamamie scheme?
But unfortunately not just in Montana , for the significance of this jive ass move will reverberate throughout the country. The Bodnar affair will become part of the political vocabulary. Tester and Bodnar will be infamous. They will used as an example of how NOT to run a campaign. So in essence, I guess there will be some good out of this. Scholars might suggest that a good bad example can be a great learning experience and have some benefits. So maybe we should be thanking Tester and Bodnar for the example they will provide for future campaigns! But, me personally, I would not want my offspring to go through life stuck with label of being one of the infamous Bodnar/Tester clan! I couldn’t do that to them!
And final note. The more we learned about Alani, the more we realized that she’s a fantastic candidate. She’s smart, personable, charismatic and motivated! And that made it all the more painful to see the situation that were in. And then to realize that it could have easily been avoided if the mafia hadn’t pulled a wise guy move!
Excellent points, Larry! And Bill’s piece is spot on on.
Nothing personal against Bodnar but he seems like he’d be Baucus 2.0. If the political insiders and operatives who concocted this scheme actually could read the room, they’d have recruited an
economic populist type independent, rather than a Manchian-backed corporate Dem.