Who, in the end, is Alani Bankhead?

Alani Bankhead attracted the glare of the national political spotlight in the final weeks of summer for reasons no U.S. Senate candidate wants.

Democrats and Republicans alike waited to see whether the Democratic nominee would end her campaign to clear a path for independent Seth Bodnar. Many Democrats considered Bodnar the best chance to break Republicans’ grip on Montana’s statewide elections. The GOP has lost only two of 26 contests since 2014, and none since 2018.

Republicans seemed to agree, and pitched in to prop up Bankhead’s campaign. One super PAC better known for supporting Republican frontrunner Kurt Alme went so far as to solicit donations for Bankhead in the days leading up to the race’s withdrawal deadline, and GOP-associated pollsters publicized suggestions that the Democrat had a chance, hoping to undermine Bodnar’s traction. Even so, Bankhead’s campaign entered July with less than $22,000 in the bank.

Instead of withdrawing, Bankhead announced she would finish the race, ramped up campaign events and doubled down on two messages popular with the Democratic base. The first: the possibility of attempting to impeach President Donald Trump — a talking point that has made Democratic Senate incumbents hoping to reclaim a majority uneasy. The second: passage of universal health care, which has generated more than two dozen bills since 2014, but rarely gets a vote and lacks support to overcome a Senate filibuster.

“I think the administration is the biggest national security threat that we have right now, and the response is impeachment,” Bankhead told Montana Free Press in late September, just days before early voting began in Montana.

A retired Air Force special investigator who has also worked on child-sex-trafficking cases for a nongovernmental organization, Bankhead focused early in her campaign on Trump’s association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. She emphasized her status as the only candidate in the race to say she would vote to impeach Trump.

She also proclaimed herself the only candidate to support universal health care, suggesting the issue had become a political fulcrum for long-shot wins in congressional races.

“What you’re seeing around the country is you have populist candidates that are being voted past primaries and are winning, even though they’re grossly underfunded, because the people are saying we want universal healthcare,” Bankhead said.

Bankhead said restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies could be a first step. She has often suggested that military spending and administrative costs — including an end to the war in Iran, which she’s described as unnecessary — could be trimmed to help pay for it.

Bankhead’s healthcare platform dovetails with her religious faith, which she said informs her moral compass on issues such as protecting vulnerable people and feeding the hungry. Bankhead’s campaign has not foregrounded her faith, and she said she’s answered questions about it only when asked, though she acknowledges that faith is core to her current professional work as a Christian life coach.

She has written and published a book, “The Least of Us: How Your Imposter Syndrome Points to Your Greatest Power,” about overcoming self-doubt.

Bankhead’s faith became an issue when Bodnar’s campaign tried to connect her to positions taken by a church she said she hasn’t regularly attended since 1999, and last visited in 2019. The conservative agenda of her book’s publisher, Genesis Publishing House, is part of that critique.

“I’ve seen the damage that institutional religion does,” she told Montana Free Press in an interview on Sept. 30. “That’s why I’m not like [Texas Democratic Senate candidate and seminarian James] Talarico]. My faith has become a part of the conversation, not because I made it part of the conversation, but because somebody else did. Because they have no other dirt on me.”

Bodnar’s campaign suggested Bankhead shared views espoused by the nondenominational McLean Bible Church, which she and her family attended in Virginia. Bankhead’s parents are Puerto Rican, and relocated to the continental United States for her father’s military career. She said her family lived in Virginia while her father was a military police officer at the Pentagon.

Bodnar’s allegation prompted some voters to question Bankhead about whether she is a Christian nationalist, a movement that’s been instrumental in President Donald Trump’s elections. McLean made headlines for hosting Trump on a special day of prayer for the president in 2019. McLean also opposes same-sex marriage and abortion. 

“That’s what they’re concerned about. Because Christian nationalists are taking over the government right now. And my answer to them is no, I’m not a Christian nationalist,” Bankhead said. “I’ve already said I’m impeaching Trump. So if I was a Christian nationalist, I would not say that. I’m a sex crimes specialist. The church,” Bankhead said of the institution in general, “is the single biggest abuser of children.”

Bankhead said she doesn’t share the views of her former pastor.

“It’s the same situation as Obama and his pastor [Jeremiah Wright]. Obama [was] attributed to things that his pastor said, and they’re not the same individual,” Bankhead said. “I never heard anything hateful or homophobic or anything like that from this church. I would not go to a church like that.”

Bankhead’s platform regarding abortion recognizes the procedure as protected by the state Constitution. She characterized abortion decisions as private matters in which the government should have no role.

“My position distinguishes between matters of personal faith and the role of government. I do not believe the government should decide what happens to a person’s body. Those medical decisions belong to the individual, in consultation with their doctor. “That is why I am pro-choice,” Bankhead says on her campaign website.

“As someone who spent my career investigating child sexual abuse, I’ve sat with survivors whose stories most people will never hear — young girls pregnant through rape and incest, carrying unimaginable trauma. It is not our place to tell someone what to do during one of the most painful moments of their life. What we can do is treat people with dignity, compassion and respect, and trust them to decide according to their own conscience, faith, family and doctor.”

Planned Parenthood Action, the political arm of its healthcare provider namesake, is advertising against Bankhead, who didn’t fill out PPA’s candidate questionnaire. The organization has endorsed Bodnar, who did respond. Bankhead’s ability to respond to adverse advertising with resources of her own is limited. The ability of political action committees to overwhelm Bankhead’s own messaging has been the financial story of Montana’s 2026 Senate race.

Two unaffiliated super PACs spent heavily to raise Bankhead’s profile in the primary election. More Jobs, Less Government, a conservative super PAC that spent $22 million to benefit Republican Tim Sheehy in Montana’s 2024 Senate race, spent more than $907,995 on ads promoting Bankhead in the primary, and more than $1 million opposing Democrat Reilly Neill. By law, super PAC spending is conducted without coordination with candidates or political parties.

A second super PAC, Progressive Vet, reported in amended 24-hour independent expense filings spending $2.3 million on primary election ads and services supporting Bankhead and $194,939 opposing Neill. Details about Progressive Vet’s backers are scarce. Most of its money has been attributed to Contours Inc., a newly created corporation registered in Delaware, where it will not have to disclose its officers before March 2027. The PAC’s treasurer is Moffie Funk, a former Democratic legislator from Helena who has hosted a fundraiser for Bodnar. 

“People are fed up with dark money and corporate interests, and Congresspersons being paid off,” Bankhead told MTFP. 

Her platform balances advocacy for personal liberties with support for government services.

Bankhead is a gun-rights advocate who also supports red flag laws, which some states use to temporarily remove firearms from people judged to be a danger to themselves or others.

“I’m pro-Second Amendment, 100% believe in it,” Bankhead said. “But I am someone who protects children for a living, and the founders, when they created this amazing Constitution that we have, could not have anticipated semiautomatic, automatic rifles. And so the big things I would adjust are primarily focused on red flag laws.”

She advocates limiting student loan burdens and allowing students who cannot repay their loans to file for bankruptcy.

“I think Congress needs to cap student loans at very low rates. I think if you need to borrow money, it shouldn’t be that you’re getting charged like 10-plus percent for interest. I think that’s not fair and not right,” Bankhead said. “I think if you’ve done your 10 years, that the rest of that debt should be forgiven, and you should have faith that that will happen.”

Regarding immigration, Bankhead said it is time to evaluate the qualifications of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents recruited during Trump’s expansion of enforcement activities.

She described ICE as “broken beyond repair” and said Congress’ focus should be on investigating what went wrong and rebuilding the agency with safeguards to protect due process and constitutional rights — not simply sloganeering “abolish ICE” without explaining what would replace it.

“This is a polarizing issue because of the D.C. powers that have made it a polarizing issue. There’s nobody I know that doesn’t want a secure border,” Bankhead said. “Everybody wants to be safe. Everybody wants to make sure that good people come in and bad people stay out. And it’s upsetting to me that it’s become a partisan issue in terms of immigration and the border. We need comprehensive immigration reform. The process takes too long, and it goes back to the reminder that we are a country of immigrants, and that’s part of why we’re so powerful as a country.”

Bankhead’s decision to stay in the race has ensured that issues important to the Democratic base remain ini front of voters through Election Day. The forces pressuring her to drop out are in her review mirror. Bankhead is driving to the finish line, telling anyone who will listen that she’s the right person for the job.

“I saw a problem. The problem is we have an ineffective government that doesn’t provide healthcare, affordable housing, gas prices,” Bankhead said. “Groceries are through the roof. I never saw myself in office before, but my thing is, I have the connections in D.C. I understand how D.C. works, and Montana doesn’t have two to three years for a new candidate to figure out how the place works to get relief to Montana.” 

REPORT AN ERROR

BEST PRACTICES

ABOUT MTFP