Independent Bodnar bid leaves Montana Democrats divided  

The “blue wave” that flipped so many U.S. Senate seats for Democrats on election night never reached the red shoals of Montana’s Senate race, in which the Democratic candidate won a meager 12% of the vote.

The poor showing didn’t discourage party loyalists from insisting on social media that victory would have been theirs if only there hadn’t been an independent candidate in the race — or, more to the point, if independent Seth Bodnar had run as a Democrat. The party’s state director, Emily Marburger, agreed in an interview, calling the nationwide wave of independent candidates a bust.

“Really, what I’m looking at now is Seth Bodnar should have run as a Democrat if he wanted to run,” Marburger said Wednesday. “He should have looked at the playing field. What ended up happening was a split ticket. We saw this movement for Democrats across the country who were ready for change, and we could have had that here in Montana.” 

The ticket that was “split,” in the view of the state party director and other partisans, is the combined vote share of Bodnar and Democratic nominee Alani Bankhead. It doesn’t include the 2% of the vote secured by Libertarian Kyle Austin. The 49% of the vote that went to Republican winner Kurt Alme — just a statistical whisker away from half the electorate — also isn’t part of the equation.

As of Wednesday afternoon, with 92% of the vote counted, Bodnar had received 171,327 votes, or 37%, as ballots continued to be tabulated. Bankhead had received 54,982 votes. Together, the two candidates had racked up a collective 226,309 votes — more than Alme’s 223,427.

But the calculus of what could have been isn’t as easy as combining the vote shares of two candidates, said Kevin Smith, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska who has studied back-to-back independent Senate runs by Dan Osborn, who lost his race against a Republican incumbent last night. Osborn has done better as an independent than Nebraska Democrats have in decades. The party’s candidates in 2024 and 2026 dropped out to clear a path for Osborn.

“I get where this comes from — add Bankhead’s 12% to Bodnar’s 37% and it’s game on, right?” Smith said. “The issue I see here is that I suspect Montana is similar to Nebraska in the sense that the Democratic Party brand is still seen very negatively by some of those voting for the independent.”

Wavering Republicans in Bodnar’s base might be willing to vote for someone perceived as a genuine independent, Smith said. That doesn’t mean those voters were willing to vote for someone with a D beside their name on the ballot.

“I sure think it would have been closer if Bankhead were not in the race, but close enough to push Bodnar over the winner’s line? Maybe, but probably not,” Smith said.

Looking at county-level returns Wednesday, Jeremy Johnson, head of the political science department at Carroll College in Helena, observed that Bodnar had picked up more votes in several rural counties than Democrats had in previous elections.

“Even in the most Republican counties, he’s doing better than Democrats did two years ago, significantly so,” Johnson said. “Even though Republicans are still winning overall.”

Several nonpartisan issues on the midterm ballot did well, Johnson said. Public initiatives to curtail corporate spending in state elections and to protect the public’s ability to make law through initiatives both won 65% of the vote. Another initiative to keep Montana’s judicial races nonpartisan received 68% approval. The winner of Montana’s Supreme Court race, Amy Eddy, campaigned on the virtues of not being associated with a political party. Her opponent, Dan Wilson, embraced his association with the Republican Party.

Nancy Keenan, one of several former Montana Democratic Party chairs who endorsed Bodnar, said Democrats will have to choose whether to “vote blue, no matter who,” or find alliances that advance their progressive values.

“The path forward for Democrats is not about abandoning our democratic values. It’s finding better ways to advance them and with candidates that share them,” Keenan said.

Coalitions must become a way of life for Democrats, who simply don’t have the numbers to go it alone, Keenan said. Polling by Montana Free Press has consistently shown that Montana voters who identify as Democrats make up between 19% and 22% of the electorate, while voters who identify as independents make up 42%.

Keenan said this year’s Democratic Senate primary didn’t include a candidate capable of winning the Senate race. Four of the candidates had only a few thousand dollars to campaign on and no experience as elected officials. Reilly Neill, a former state legislator, had about $300,000. But all five candidates struggled with name recognition.

Polling by MTFP the week before primary voting began showed that 60% of voters were unfamiliar with Neill. The rest of the Democratic primary field was unfamiliar to 70% of voters.

“The fact is that I don’t think any of them coming out of that primary could have won it statewide, could have beat Alme. He would have been, I think, well over 50%,” Keenan said.

Until minutes before the candidate filing deadline, the assumption was that incumbent Republican Steve Daines would seek a third term, which was enough to keep more capable candidates from running, Keenan said. Then Daines withdrew and threw his support behind Alme. The only candidate with the staff and funds of a conventional Senate prospect was Bodnar.

“I think people on both sides of the aisle are wanting somebody that is not just so strict, one side or the other, that they’re not willing to solve problems and figure that out as an independent,” Keenan said. “I think he met that test. But again, you know, voters are looking for something that says, ‘What are my values?’ and for an independent candidate, I think he did extraordinarily well, and I think we have to be very open to what that looks like down the road here.”