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Daines exits; Bodnar leads Montana race

3 min read

16:18UTC

Steve Daines withdrew from the Montana Republican Senate primary; independent candidate Seth Bodnar leads Q1 fundraising in the state's first open Senate race since 1976.

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Key takeaway

An open seat plus an independent fundraising leader breaks the two-way frame Cook still uses for Montana.

Senator Steve Daines withdrew from the Montana Republican primary, vacating the seat ahead of first-quarter fundraising disclosures. Independent candidate Seth Bodnar, the former president of the University of Montana, led Q1 fundraising in what is now Montana's first open Senate race since 1976, according to Daily Montanan reporting. Daines endorsed Republican Kurt Alme, the US Attorney for Montana, on his way out of the primary.

Montana's open seat removes the incumbency advantage that has historically dominated the state's Senate calculus. Montana voted for Trump by 20 points in 2024, but Daines's withdrawal eliminates the incumbent factor that polling models built around incumbent-versus-challenger frames had priced in. Bodnar is running as an independent rather than seeking a major-party nomination; in Montana, that places him on the November ballot directly without a primary, while Republicans contest their open primary among Alme and several second-tier candidates.

A three-way contest is structurally different from a two-way one. Cook Political Report did not include Montana in its 13 April Senate rating shifts . The forecaster's models price Montana as a Republican-likely seat on the assumption that any well-funded Republican holds against any Democratic challenger. An independent leading Q1 fundraising disrupts that assumption without converting Montana into a Democratic-likely seat. Counter-view from Republican strategists: Bodnar's fundraising lead is a single-quarter snapshot, Alme has institutional advantages still to deploy, and the historical record on independent Senate candidates winning in red states is thin. Either reading makes Montana more competitive in May than it was in March.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Republican senator Steve Daines withdrew from the Montana Republican primary, opening the state's Senate race for the first time since 1976. Independent candidate Seth Bodnar, the former president of the University of Montana, is leading early fundraising. Montana voted for Donald Trump by 20 points in 2024, so it should be a comfortable Republican hold. But with no incumbent and an independent in the lead on fundraising, the race is less predictable than it appears on paper.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Daines's withdrawal reflects the same electoral pressure visible in Tillis's SAVE Act vote: Republican senators in states where Trump's margin is declining face a primary-versus-general calculation.

Daines, as the National Republican Senatorial Committee chair, had structural reasons to avoid a primary that might expose him to a Bodnar-type independent in the general while also damaging his NRSC credibility. His withdrawal redirects the question to whether Alme, a US Attorney without statewide name recognition, can build the committee infrastructure and donor network to beat an independent who enters the race already leading on fundraising.

What could happen next?

Opportunity
A competitive Montana three-way race would force the National Republican Senatorial Committee to defend a seat it had not budgeted for, pulling resources from Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio, the three states Cook moved toward Democrats in mid-April.
Risk
Bodnar's independent candidacy without major-party infrastructure may collapse in the final two months of the campaign, when television advertising and ground operations require scale that Q1 fundraising does not guarantee.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Angus King's 2012 Maine independent Senate run provides the most structurally similar recent precedent: King was a former governor, led fundraising, ran in a state with a strong independent-voter tradition, and won. Montana's independent-voter tradition is stronger than most states outside New England; Jon Tester held the seat as a Democrat in three elections Trump won. Bodnar as a former university president shares with King the "familiar respected non-partisan" profile.

Counter-parallel: Dan Lipinski's 2022 independent run in Illinois after losing a Democratic primary raised $4 million in Q1 but received 6% of the November vote. Former senator Evan Bayh's 2016 Indiana return as a Democrat (not independent) illustrates that name recognition alone does not overcome structural disadvantages in red-state Senate races. Bodnar lacks Tester's agricultural credibility and union coalition.

Consensus view: Sabato's Crystal Ball's senior analysts note that incumbent withdrawal plus an independent fundraising leader is the structural combination most likely to produce a genuinely competitive three-way race in a nominally safe Republican state.

MIT Election Data Lab's research on independent candidates in Senate races finds that independents who lead Q1 fundraising in open seats have historically won 0 of 8 such races, but four of those eight made the race competitive enough to affect national Senate composition.

Counter-view: Republican strategists at the American Action Network argue that Montana's 2024 Senate result (Daines held by 15 points in a Trump-voting state) demonstrates a resilience in Republican Senate performance that a single fundraising quarter cannot dislodge. Bodnar's independent status removes the major-party infrastructure advantage that fundraising advantage alone does not compensate for.

Key tension: Whether Bodnar's fundraising lead translates to ballot-access, ground-game, and media-coverage advantages that competitive major-party challengers typically receive from their national party infrastructure, which independent candidates must replicate entirely from their own resources.

Sources:Daily Montanan

Mentions:Cook Political Report →Donald Trump →Maine →Sabato's Crystal Ball →England →Steve Daines →Seth Bodnar →Montana →Daily Montanan →Kurt Alme →Angus King →

First Reported In

Update #4 · Calendar versus court

Daily Montanan· 28 Apr 2026

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