The supposed Republican frontrunner in the U.S. Senate race is off to a timid start. The independent candidate in that race vows not to resort to namecalling. Two of the candidates for the U.S. House make no such promise. A national Conservative group is working hard to defeat moderate Republicans running for the Legislature. And the Gianforte administration reconsiders its ban on weekend rallies at the Capitol.
Campaign Beat is MTPR's weekly political analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined Montana political scientist Christopher Muste, and Seaborn Larson, Senior Reporter at Lee Newspapers’ Montana State News Bureau.
Sally Mauk Chris, it's been over two weeks since U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme filed for Sen. Steve Daines' seat with Daines' blessing, and we haven't heard a peep from him since. No interviews, no videos begging for money. This has to be the most timid campaign rollout I've ever seen from who is supposed to be the front runner.
Christopher Muste It's pretty mellow so far. He is a first-time candidate for elective office. He does actually have a campaign website. It's quite anodyne and has a single page posted, mostly biography describing his education, work experience. It's a basic introduction to Montanans, trying to define who he is and not so much what he would do if elected though. There's really precious little about his stands on policies, but he does highlight his service under former Governor Judy Martz and current Governor Gianforte, and his long stint in the U.S. Attorney's Office, and first working on white-collar crime and then violent crime and drug trafficking during the first Trump administration. There's not much there, but he's got a lot of work to do. Someone who may not have been sure that he was going to run for office, who filed at the last minute, has a lot of catching up to do in terms of simple fundraising. You have to be, as far as I know, a declared candidate in order to be able to raise funds for a federal office. And so, he's probably doing a lot of that with large donors, with large PACs and setting up a campaign staff. So, there's got to be a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes that we simply don't know about.
But it is interesting. He's really not even reaching out to the news media or holding small campaign events. There's no news in small newspapers around Montana about him going and talking to Republican county committees or anything of that nature. And he really is an unknown factor, not just to most of Montana voters, but even to a lot of people in the Republican party. So, he doesn't have serious primary opponents, but he's not taking advantage of the time between now and the June primary election to really introduce themselves to voters yet.
Sally Mauk And that's not a lot of time left to actually when you think about it for someone who the majority of Montana still don't know who the heck he is.
Christopher Muste Yeah, and he probably wants to get out there and try to do more of that self-definition before the Democrats start taking potshots at him or Democratic-aligned PAC groups.
Sally Mauk Meanwhile, Alme's presumed main opponents, Democrat Reilly Neill and independent Seth Bodnar have been busy with social media and appearances. Bodnar especially has been all over the place, including a national interview with CNN. He continues to dodge questions about whether or not he supports President Trump, and here's what he said in a recent interview with KTVQ.
Seth Bodnar 'I'm not about criticizing leaders. I'm about policy. I'm talking through what's good for Montana. And the fact is there are common sense solutions out there. And we see our political leaders too often engaging in name calling, slogans, beating each other up, working to fight and defeat each other, rather than working to make life better for Montanans. That's what I'm focused on.'
Sally Mauk That's an admirable stance, Seaborn. We'll see how long it holds up.
Seaborn Larson Bodnar has hit the national circuit, and he's done some interviews here in the state, but I thought this interview covered a lot of ground. His response to not slinging mud like regular politicians makes me think back though to his first day as an official candidate when Daines swapped out with Alme. Bodnar was throwing around words like sleazy and corruption in a video that night, so he's not entirely above the food fight. I'm curious to see how the tone of this campaign changes when Alme becomes a little less idle.
But the comparison, I think, between the two rollouts can go right down to how they filed for office. Alme's was very much done in secret. The campaign for Bodnar made a splash when he signed paperwork to run for office at the state Capitol. He invited some reporters. It's on the last day of filing, and it's after weeks of rumors flying around about his campaign, which really primed the moment. Now, in the last two weeks with Bodnar, we've heard a lot of the same things, although I'd say people are mostly asking different versions of the same question, which is essentially trying to bait him into saying he's a Democrat or that he holds any partisan beliefs. When it came to Trump in that KTVQ interview, Bodnar did say he supports the idea of enforcing immigration laws and removing violent criminals. That aligns with what we hear out of the Trump administration, even when reporting has shown that a lot of nonviolent people are being swept up in this crackdown. But Bodnar also did say that tariffs are being used more like toys than tools and noted how that's going to cause some harm to Montana's agriculture producers. So, there I think he shows a little daylight between him and Trump.
Sally Mauk Speaking of name-calling, Chris, candidates in the U.S. House race have no such qualms. Here is what Republican Aaron Flint said in a recent interview with KGVO.
Aaron Flint "This Western congressional seat here is incredibly important. If we cede this ground to these far-left socialists, they're going to try to take the whole state down with them. And you know what they're going to do when they get back to Washington. The first thing they're to do is try to impeach Donald Trump and try to jack up the price of everything like they did under Joe Biden and the Democrat reign already before."
Sally Mauk And here's Democrat Ryan Busse.
Ryan Busse 'He's a right-wing shock jock, been on the air for eight years. And if there's a horrible – that's him right there in the 'coal' shirt. Yep, that, that's the guy – If there's horrible, divisive, hateful, terrible idea in the last eight years, oh man, he loves it.'
Sally Mauk So, Chris, we have a far-left socialist versus a right-wing shock jock. These two guys are fine with name-calling.
Christopher Muste They certainly seem to be. They're both pugnacious campaigners. Flint's a pugnacious talk show host and in Busse's race for governor before he definitely demonstrated his willingness to criticize other candidates. I think one of the things they're doing in strategic terms is they're trying to separate themselves in these primaries where they both have serious primary opponents and have to win the primary before they get to face each other in the general election. They're already trying to jump to the general election, to establish themselves as the sort of de facto nominee of their party and to show themselves to be the party's standard bearer without actually having to work right now on separating themselves in policy terms from the other candidates they're running against for their primaries. So, it's a little bit of theater, but it's also strategic theater. They're really trying to make us start to think, and voters start to think, oh, well, those are the people who are really standing for their party and sort of squeeze some of the air out of the media space when we have limited tolerance, most of us, for our political news and especially name calling.
Sally Mauk 'Strategic theater'. I like that phrase. Switching to legislative races, Seaborn, the national conservative group Americans for Prosperity is running negative ads against Republican members of the so-called Solutions Caucus who are running for reelection. And this is an ad against state Sen. Shelley Vance.
AFP Ad "Montana families have a clear choice. Senator Shelley Vance stands with bigger government. More spending, higher taxes, less accountability. That hurts our communities. Caleb Hinkle knows Montana can't afford wasteful spending or backroom deals. He'll push back on government overreach and fight to keep Montana affordable. This election comes down to priorities, strong families or bigger government."
Sally Mauk And Americans for Prosperity, Seaborn, think Vance and her colleagues aren't Conservative enough.
Seaborn Larson Yeah, Americans for Prosperity has really gotten involved in the legislative Republican primaries this year, Sally. And the folks on the receiving end of this campaign, or whether you want to call them Solutions Caucus or the Nasty Nine, which gained some fame over in the Senate, I kind of tend to think of these as the coalition Republicans who will partner with Democrats or the governor on key votes like property taxes or Medicaid reauthorization. And so, for months, AFP has been hammering these mostly moderate GOP lawmakers with mailers and digital ads blasting them for votes they took in that '25 session. Last week, our reporting highlighted how these materials are also being pumped out more than 60 days before ballots are mailed to voters. So, they don't fall under Montana's campaign disclosure laws. At the same time, AFP is targeting these same moderate Republicans who are being excommunicated by the state GOP, which claims that they betrayed the party last session. AFP says they're not coordinating with the Republican Party officials on this campaign and GOP Chairman Art Wittich declined to comment for our story. There are many moderate Republicans from the House or the Senate that are switching chambers this year, but Shelley Vance is the only one running for her same seat from that group in the Senate, the 'Nasty Nine'. So that 60-day window, by the way, began on March 9th, so this video targeting Vance will have to be included in upcoming campaign finance reports, and we'll begin to see what kind of money AFP is throwing around in these primaries.
Sally Mauk Lastly, next weekend is another national protest against the Trump administration called the No Kings Rallies and there are events planned around the country, including several here in Montana. There is a protest planned for the Capitol in Helena, but it may or may not be allowed to take place on the Capitol grounds, Seaborn.
Seaborn Larson Yeah, and you know, this week, Misty Ann Giles, director of Gianforte''s Department of Administration, said her office had ended permitting for rallies at the state Capitol complex because it was a staffing issue. Giles was talking to a legislative budget committee when she said protests have gotten larger since COVID-19 and that was putting a strain on her personnel. It's a wise move, I think, if the department is looking for some leverage to get more funding from lawmakers next session. But she said in her home state of Georgia, weekend events at the Capitol are not permitted. I looked yesterday at the state of Georgia's building authority website. And that calendar has no weekend events, at least through June. Giles said Montana is an outlier when what she described as a come one, come all, hang-out-all-day sort of attitude toward events at the Capitol. But Giles did concede that the administration missed the mark on this decision, which was first reported by the Montana Free Press. She did not appear to be throwing the doors back open entirely. It does sound like there will be more restrictions than there were previously.
Sally Mauk And this is for weekend rallies, right? (Answer: yes). Well, I've covered several protests held both inside and outside the Capitol, sponsored by groups from all over the political spectrum, and often on weekends when they can get the biggest turnout, obviously, and suddenly banning them, Chris, is not a very good look.
Christopher Muste No, it really isn't. This is an important campaign, an election year, so that doesn't just include the candidates, but people do have the right to assemble, the right to speak, to petition their government, and where better to do that than at the state Capitol. So, it does have the scent of restricting very fundamental First Amendment rights at an important time in the country. So, I'm not surprised they've walked it back a little bit. I'm a little surprised that they haven't made more of an effort to say, yes, you know, we're going to roll back things and go back to the way they were. But it remains to be seen what they decide to do about that.
Sally Mauk And it probably will boost turnout at the rally, is my guess.
Christopher Muste Oh, absolutely. And it will be fodder for a lot of efforts to make the rallies in other parts of Montana that much larger.
Sally Mauk Well, we'll continue to follow that, but for now we're out of time. Chris and Seaborn, thanks.
Campaign Beat is MTPR's weekly political analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined Montana political scientist Christopher Muste, and Seaborn Larson, Senior Reporter at Lee Newspapers’ Montana State News Bureau.
