The Montana Independent Who’s Dooming the Democrats

Seconds into our phone call, Brian Schweitzer, Montana’s folksy Democratic former governor, launched into an analogy about dirt roads. In Montana, he explained, you drive along a two-lane highway until you wind up on a gravel road, which takes you to a dirt road and eventually a dead end. Schweitzer’s been thinking a lot about dead ends lately—because he believes that’s where independent Senate candidate Seth Bodnar is driving Montana’s Democratic Party.

Bodnar, a veteran and former University of Montana president who launched his anti-partisan bid in March, is part of a rising Democratic strategy to win Senate seats in red states: Rather than running as Democrats, opposition candidates are filing as independents. The logic makes sense on paper. Roughly three in five Americans have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, whereas what the party in theory stands for—better health care, lowering the cost of living, and the like—remains very popular.

When I worked in Montana for now-former Senator Jon Tester’s 2024 campaign, I saw that contrast every day. Voters across the state told me that while they might like Tester’s dirt-farm-populist schtick, they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him because they really hated the Democratic Party. If the sole problem with moderate Democrats in red states is that they’re Democrats, running someone with some left-adjacent views who doesn’t have that unpleasant D next to their name on the ballot seems like a great workaround.

Schweitzer, and nearly a dozen other Montana Democrats I spoke with, disagree. The former governor’s main issue with Bodnar is that he thinks the political newcomer has no shot of winning, independent or not. Alani Bankhead, who won the Democratic nomination for Senate last month, has insisted she won’t drop out of the race, despite recent calls from Montana Democratic legislators for either her or Bodnar to exit. Diluting the anti-Republican vote share basically kills any hopes of defeating GOP nominee Kurt Alme. Hence the dead end.

But once you reach a dead end, you still have options. Sometimes, you can turn your car around and head toward a two-lane highway. Other times, you don’t see a dead end sign until it’s too late, and plow right through. Bodnar’s campaign is doing the latter with the state Democratic Party. His candidacy is entirely focused on one short-term win—and if what he’s doing becomes the norm, there might be no rescuing the party from the wreckage.

Bodnar would probably like Schweitzer’s dirt road allegory because he really wants everyone to know he’s all about the old-school Montana lifestyle. Bodnar’s campaign launch video focuses less on the reason he moved to the Last Best Place in 2017—to head the University of Montana—and more on the “oath” and “prayer” he took as a member of the military. The following few minutes cut between images of Montana’s wilderness, small towns, and Bodnar posing next to animals he recently shot, all with a 1980s electric guitar riff running in the background.

Beyond all the Montanan machismo, though, the main thing Bodnar wants his viewers to know is that he’s definitely not a Democrat. Sure, he might be the main opposition to a Republican in a two-party system, but don’t mind that. He tells the viewer that both parties are “failing us” and “to blame” for rising costs and that they all “pit us against each other while they line their own pockets.” “Montanans are an independent people,” he says, and thus “they deserve an independent voice fighting for them.” To drive the point home, his website touts endorsements from noted moderates like former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger.

In a recent interview, Bodnar told me he filed as an independent to fight the system that has caused so many people to feel “politically homeless.” “I’m running against a national political system that has stopped showing up in Montana,” he said.

Despite what his posturing might suggest, Bodnar is very much a Democrat. His campaign is staffed by a bunch of Democratic ex-Tester consultants, he was previously registered as a Democrat, and he says everything past Democratic candidates in the state have said. Tester himself is fundraising for Bodnar, as is former Democratic Senator Max Baucus, who told me Bodnar is “one of the very very best people” to run for office and a “no brainer” endorsement. The only thing not true blue about Bodnar is his party affiliation on the ballot.

Even if his smokescreen isn’t hard to see through, what Bodnar is doing makes sense from a national perspective. The U.S. Senate is so biased in Republicans’ favor that Democrats have to fight for any Senate seat where they can get the slightest foothold, including in places that voted for Donald Trump. But in parts of the country like Montana where Trump has reached almost rock-star status, it’s hard to see a lot of voters suddenly deciding to vote for someone representing the party their president called “human garbage.”

It’s a lot easier to imagine some of those same voters being fed up with politics and going with the “plague on both your houses” guy. Operatives tried this approach in Nebraska two years ago, running independent Dan Osborn against Republican Deb Fischer. Osborn lost by seven points, but he made the race competitive in its final weeks and is running again this cycle. Under a basic nationwide cost-benefit analysis, the strategy seems to give Democrats nothing to lose and everything to gain.

From a local perspective, though, the downsides are clear. Running as an independent probably gives Bodnar a better shot to win in 2026. But such a decision may as well guarantee no Democrat will be able to win in Montana in 2028, 2030, or further down the road. “It destroys, over time, the Democratic Party,” said Mike Jopek, a former Montana state representative.

Jopek’s concern—one shared by a number of Montana political figures and strategists I spoke with—is that Bodnar’s candidacy will kneecap downballot Democrats. Since a Senate race is much higher-profile than, say, a state House race, Bodnar will suck up most of Montana’s political energy and money. If he were a Democrat coordinating with the party, that energy and money would disperse itself across every race on the ballot. As an independent, it all goes to one man, and the rest of the resourceless candidates are left to fend for themselves. Bodnar confirmed this himself, saying while he supports “Montana first” politicians without “blind loyalty to a party,” he isn’t coordinating with any other candidates and his campaign is “focused on our race.”

Jopek says this is partly a consequence of a broader trend. Political power and influence in the state, he explained, have shifted from parties to “out of state” consultants and PACs entirely focused on the immediate national ledger, not the health of the Montana Democratic Party in the long run. “Over time, those PACs … they’ve really kind of consolidated the power away from the parties, both on the Democratic and the Republican side, and so they really are starting to gain a lot more influence on how politics plays in Montana,” he said.

On the one hand, you can’t totally blame those national players. One seat in the U.S. Senate impacts the immediate future of the country much more than one seat in Montana’s House of Representatives. But small downballot victories are important—especially for a minority party—to achieve bigger wins in the future and build more sustainable political power. They’re how you recruit new candidates, get people excited about volunteering for campaigns, and ultimately make voters on the ground realize Democrats aren’t so bad after all. Republicans understand this. In 2010, the GOP launched its national REDMAP strategy, investing in downballot races that helped to grow ground-level infrastructure, win state legislature seats, and ultimately redraw congressional maps in the party’s favor. The holistic approach is still reaping national benefits today, and the Democrats are still trying to play catch-up.

Such long-term thinking is especially essential in Montana, because the state has basically no Democratic infrastructure. In the final weeks of Tester’s campaign, senior staff members offered to pay for anyone around the country to fly to the state to knock doors for the campaign. The campaign even hired me, who grew up around Ivy League professors and lived in D.C., to try to convince voters that I held authentic Montanan populist views. If state Democrats in the past had devoted themselves to ground-level organizing, I’m sure Tester could have found better messengers for his campaign.

Baucus, a Bodnar supporter, said he’s seen the same problem. He doesn’t think the state party has “sufficient resources,” “quality candidates,” or “a message that’s really connecting directly with the average voter in the state.” For what it’s worth, the former senator said that’s part of why he endorsed Bodnar: While he wants to help the Democratic Party “get its act together in Montana,” he cares more about electing “the best person to represent the state.”

The issue with that logic is that Bodnar’s campaign will only exacerbate the problems Montana Democrats face. If you keep telling voters that being a Democrat sucks, sooner or later they’re going to start believing you. “It’s a shame that they’re trying to fool people like this and weaken the party and taking short term over long term,” said local organizer Andy Boyd. “It’s pretty frustrating to watch.”

Bodnar agrees that he’s only focused on the short term—only he doesn’t see that as a problem. He said national Democrats (as well as national Republicans) aren’t “showing up in rural America” and that the two-party system has “stopped working for Montanans.” Bodnar said he just wants to improve conditions for the next generation, even “if that means shaking up the political coalitions in this country.”

“This race isn’t about positioning one party or another for long-term electoral success,” he said. “This race is about positioning this country for long-term success, so our kids could grow up in a country that is in a better state than the one that we lived in.”

But Bodnar’s long-term vision might be shortsighted too. Though we sometimes think about elections as a horse race, there is an end goal beyond winning: One gets elected to pass policies and actually improve people’s lives. It’s not totally clear that Bodnar would be effective at that part of politics.

Bodnar’s campaign website features a collection of policy goals tailored to offend no one. He wants a strong military but more international cooperation, a strict border that also allows for “Montana’s farmers” to get “legal labor,” and improved but still private health care. He hopes to eliminate the national deficit not by doing what the Democrats want (taxing billionaires) or the Republicans want (cutting Social Security). Instead, he “can say what neither party will”: that it’s possible to eliminate the national deficit and still invest in the future simply through “honesty,” whatever that means.

When I spoke with Bodnar, he added a bit more specificity to some issues, saying he hopes to bring a renewed focus to “food security” amid an eight-year gap since Congress last passed a farm bill. But he also tried to stay on everyone’s good side on other topics, like saying he wants an “all of the above” approach to energy policy.

The first-time candidate has also said he won’t caucus with either political party if elected to the Senate—which, while an easy way to show Montanans he’s truly independent, means he’ll have a hard time getting any committee assignments, and thus won’t have any power. “Is he actually so stupid he thinks he can go to D.C. and get anything done without caucusing with the party?” said Jesse Mullen, the 2024 Democratic nominee for Montana secretary of state.

Bodnar said he’ll “negotiate for committees the same way every senator does” and take advantage of his power as just one of 100 votes in a closely divided chamber. But it’s hard to imagine a Democratic or Republican leadership prioritizing him, after he just spent a campaign attacking them, over a member of their own party.

In all likelihood, the logistics of how Bodnar would operate as an independent senator won’t wind up being relevant. Bodnar insists he has a path to victory by combining independents with people from every party (including even “members of the Green Party”). But the polls say different: Bodnar consistently trails Republican nominee Kurt Alme by double digits.

The past says different too. Bodnar-style centrists are why Montana Democrats keep losing in the first place. Regardless of what think tank studies say, candidates who tout the middle, whether independent or Democrat, haven’t won national elections in Montana, or really any Mountain West states, in nearly a decade. Maybe that has more to do with the Democratic brand than anything else, where voters hate the party so much even independents become guilty by association for running against Republicans. But one can’t fix that brand by spending election after election talking about how much they too hate Democrats. That’s a problem locally, where Republicans dominate every aspect of Montana government, and nationally, where small states overrepresented in the Senate just keep getting redder.

Brian Schweitzer, again, turned to a road analogy in explaining the solution to Montana Democrats’ woes: “To run a campaign in Montana, you have to understand that Montana is a small town with a long Main Street.” He said current candidates in Montana, regardless of party label, are “lazy,” not willing to do the hard work of canvassing the entire length of Main Street—the grocery store, the school, the bar—to reintroduce themselves to voters and fix the party’s brand.

Only when they walk that street will Democrats win enough local races and build the power necessary to prove people like Bodnar wrong, by enacting progressive policies that people want to see and giving Montanans and Americans alike a reason to support their party. That path might be slow—a long, winding, bumpy dirt road, if you will—but at least it arrives at a rewarding destination. That’s a whole lot better than trying to take a quick short cut and finding yourself at a dead end. ...