Can Montanans be persuaded by Seth Bodnar’s anti-partisan platform?

Since the start of his campaign for Montana’s open U.S. Senate seat, Seth Bodnar has insisted that there’s political space between Republicans and Democrats where a candidate might find or form a core of Montanans defined and driven by frustrations with partisan conflict and rising costs.

“Our goal here is to build a broad coalition, to give voice to the largest voting bloc,” the race’s independent candidate told Montana Free Press shortly after qualifying for the ballot in June with the help of 30,000 petition signers. “We believe we can build what we call the sensible majority.”

Polling conducted for Montana Free Press by Rutgers University’s Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling showed 42% of registered Montana voters identifying as independent in early May. The next-largest group, 39%, identified as Republican, while 19% identified as Democrat.

The polling suggested that both major parties — Democrats especially — need the same independent voters Bodnar is courting to assemble their own winning coalition. Republicans characterized Bodnar as a Democrat in disguise, while Democrat Alani Bankhead told him to drop out and give his donations to her.

“I’m a true independent,” Bodnar said during the sole debate featuring all four candidates, sponsored by the Montana Broadcasters Association in Bozeman. “I’ve said again and again that I will not caucus with either party. I will be an independent voice for the United States Senate — an independent senator who has the power to say no to the party bosses on either side, who has the ability to work with either party when it makes sense for Montana.”

Bodnar grounds his claim of independence in a biography shaped largely outside of partisan politics. He is a Green Beret and Iraq War veteran who finished first in his class at West Point, where he also taught economics; a Rhodes scholar and Truman scholar with two graduate degrees from the University of Oxford; and General Electric’s first chief digital officer. From 2018 until earlier this year, he was president of the University of Montana in Missoula.

Bodnar said he registered to vote as non-declared in Florida in 2014 because partisan association was discouraged among military leaders during his 10 years of service. Voters in Montana don’t register by party.

“When you’re leading a platoon from the 101st Airborne Division and you’re outside a door of a suspected terrorist safe house waiting to kick it down, you know what question never comes up? ‘What party do you belong to.’ We’re focused on the mission, focused on taking care of each other and getting the job done. That is the spirit of veterans. They are country first, and we’re running a campaign that is a true Montana-first campaign,” Bodnar said.

The Bodnar campaign has enlisted strong support from Montana’s former Democratic U.S. Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester, as well as Nancy Keenan, the former state Democratic Party leader and former president of the abortion-rights group NARAL. Four of the Montana Democratic Party’s five most recent chairs have endorsed Bodnar, including Shannon O’Brien, who resigned as chair Oct. 12 in conjunction with her endorsement announcement. 

Bodnar’s Republican supporters include former Republican National Committee Chair and Montana governor Marc Racicot, former state Republican Party Chair Susan Geise and former Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois. 

Running as an independent means Bodnar has had to both attack and defend himself on two fronts, a dicey proposition for a candidate who needs to attract voters from both camps.

Bodnar has framed both of his major-party opponents — Bankhead and Republican Kurt Alme — as products of a “broken political system,” equally beholden to party machines. He has accused Alme of benefiting from what Bodnar describes as a plot by incumbent Sen. Steve Daines to choose a successor while boxing out would-be primary challengers.

“You know the soaring costs we’re seeing are direct results of a broken political system, a system where our politicians think they can rig primary elections to get people onto the ballot, and then those politicians are accountable to the big corporate interests,” Bodnar said in the Oct. 11 debate. “They enable corruption that enables soaring costs.”

(Alme has framed his surprise candidacy as the result of a phone call from Daines, just two days before the candidate filing deadline, asking him to run in Daines’ stead so the two-term incumbent could retire.)

Bodnar has also argued that Alme would be a rubber stamp for the agenda of President Donald Trump, particularly regarding the war with Iran, which Alme has said he supports.

“My Republican opponent would just give a blank check to continue that war with no accountability,” Bodnar said during the debate.

(Alme, who considers the war necessary, short of putting U.S. troops on Iranian soil, did not directly address Bodnar’s criticism, lumping Bodnar in with Bankhead as “my two liberal opponents.”)

Bodnar has also questioned whether Bankhead is a genuine Democrat, noting that her former church’s pastor once observed a special day of prayer for Donald Trump and invited him onstage to pray for his success. McLean Bible Church also opposes abortion, as does the Christian publishing house that published Bankhead’s 2023 book, “The Least of Us: How Your Imposter Syndrome Points to Your Greatest Power.”  

(“They literally have no other dirt on me, other than piecemealing quotes from things and misinterpreting what I say,” Bankhead told MTFP in late September.)

Alme and Bankhead have both questioned whether Bodnar could secure influential committee assignments without caucusing with either party, since caucus leaders generally determine those assignments.

Bankhead called it “incredibly naive of anybody to say they’re not going to caucus with anybody.” Alme said “Montana will be seriously underrepresented” by a senator who doesn’t caucus with either party.

The Senate’s two incumbent independents, Sens. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, and Angus King, of Maine, both caucus with Democrats.

Outside of the partisan crossfire, Bodnar has laid out detailed policy positions that he says would restore the balance of power between Congress and the president, stabilize Montana’s rural economy and refocus Montana’s priorities in the Senate.

Regarding congressional war powers, Bodnar’s sharpest difference with Alme is about the Iran war, which the independent candidate has called “senseless and illegal.” Bodnar argues that Congress has surrendered its constitutional authority to check military action by presidents of either party.

“Article I talks about Congress,” Bodnar told MTFP on Oct. 2. “Article I, Section 8, gives the power to declare war, the power to negotiate trade arrangements with foreign nations, to Congress.”

Diesel prices exceeding $6 a gallon and rising fertilizer costs are consequences of the war, Bodnar said, and he links them to broader inflation trends. Bodnar insisted the Senate needs to “force the commander in chief to make the case” before committing U.S. forces to conflicts.

Central to Bodnar’s appeal to right-leaning voters is responsible spending. The $40 trillion national debt is evidence of what he calls a “moral failure” by both parties and proof of congressional dysfunction. Republicans raising debt concerns only when a Democrat is president is a symptom of the problem, he said.

“Washington, D.C., is spending like drunken sailors,” he said, adding that future generations will bear the costs.

Republican members of the Joint Economic Committee estimated on Oct. 8 that the national debt had been growing by $76,992.58 per second and had increased by $2.39 trillion in the 12 months ending Oct. 9, 2026, a period that doesn’t account for deficits created by tax cuts and spending in the One Big Beautiful Bill passed in July 2025.

Bodnar supports changing the federal tax code to reduce what he considers disparities between wage earners and people drawing high incomes from sources other than payroll jobs. He said wealthy taxpayers can exploit loopholes that result in lower effective tax rates on investment income than payroll employees pay. Federal income taxes account for more than half the revenue that funds the U.S. government. 

He also supports more aggressive enforcement of antitrust laws, suggesting that monopolies in meatpacking, healthcare, technology and fertilizer have driven up costs, particularly for Montana farmers.

“I’m a capitalist,” Bodnar said. “But capitalism requires competition, and that requires leaders willing to enforce the law.”

He supports mandatory country-of-origin labeling for beef and said the United States needs to end its trade war with Canada, Montana’s largest agricultural trading partner.

Farmers need stability, he said. “The worst thing for a business is uncertainty,” he added, pointing to fluctuating tariffs and delayed farm bill negotiations.

Bodnar’s economic agenda also extends to Social Security. He has proposed lifting the cap on income subject to payroll taxes for employees making $184,000 a year or more, citing a projection that the trust fund will become insolvent in 2032. He said high-income earners currently reach the Social Security contribution cap early in the year, while middle-class workers pay all year. “That’s not fair,” Bodnar said. 

He estimates that adjusting the cap would protect retirees from a projected 22% cut in benefits if Congress fails to act. 

On federal healthcare policy, Bodnar said Americans should have access to a public insurance option as well as market choices that spur competition.

“That’s the type of long-term reform that we need. But we have urgent crises that we have to address at the same time,” Bodnar said on the debate stage Oct. 11. “We need to restore the [Affordable Care Act] subsidies, the elimination of which caused premiums to spike by almost 30% this year.”

“We need to protect Medicaid expansion, and we need to reverse the silly paperwork traps that were part of the Big Beautiful Bill last year, that are estimated to cause 30,000 Montanans to lose access to healthcare,” Bodnar said.

Bodnar said those Medicaid cuts had “decimated our rural hospitals.”

Regarding reproductive rights, Bodnar said the government shouldn’t interfere in decisions that rightly belong to women and their doctors. He has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood Action and supports Montana’s constitutional protection of reproductive freedom.

On gun rights, Bodnar supports the Second Amendment. 

“I’m a gun owner myself. I support the Second Amendment right of every American, and I don’t believe that we need to infringe on the rights of law-abiding Montanans. Now, what I do think is that we need to take action and make sure that we’re doing the things we can to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and people experiencing a mental health crisis, but we need to do that while ensuring and protecting due process rights.”

Any policy supporting the temporary removal of firearms from a person in a mental health crisis is a deal breaker for major gun rights groups like the NRA, Gun Owners of America and the National Association for Gun Rights.

On energy and climate issues, Bodnar said he supports an “all-of-the-above” energy policy. Incumbent Sen. Steve Daines’ has long espoused the same. Bodnar argued that Montana needs baseload power and shouldn’t “turn off carbon-based energy overnight.” He supports developing wind and solar energy projects to lower utility costs.

Bodnar said ideology-driven federal policy changes over the past two years have resulted in canceled wind projects and even payments to stop development. He advocates for an impartial review of projects based on “engineering, technology, science, not ideology.” He also argued that China’s push for renewable energy development makes energy affordability a national security issue.

An emphasis on impartial review also figures into Bodnar’s immigration policy. He proposes strong borders, protection of civil liberties and comprehensive reform of legal pathways to citizenship. Most Montanans agree with all three when the issues are presented together, he said.

Bodnar opposes “masked, untrained, unaccountable paramilitary forces” operating in U.S. cities. Immigration enforcement must respect due process rights, he said.

Taken together, those positions reflect Bodnar’s effort to draw support across ideological lines rather than fit neatly within either party’s platform.

Whether that space between parties is large enough to carry Bodnar to the Senate remains the central test of his candidacy.

With absentee ballots already in voters’ hands and the Nov. 3 election less than a month away, Bodnar closed his Oct. 11 debate performance by returning to the anti-partisan argument at the center of his campaign.

“Today, Washington, D.C., is filled with cowards — cowards who answer to their party bosses and their corporate donors. They spout party-line talking points, like you’ve heard on this stage today. They work for the insiders, but not for you,” Bodnar said. “We have a chance in Montana to tell Washington, D.C., that neither party owns this state and that nobody gets to take us for granted. Because you know what? Montana is my party, and I hope all of you will join me.”

REPORT AN ERROR

BEST PRACTICES

ABOUT MTFP