The 2026 primary results yielded a couple of surprise congressional candidates for Democrats. Republican congressional candidates won as expected. Legislative races pitting conservative versus moderate Republicans ended with mixed results. And Republican primary voters turned out in much bigger numbers than Democratic primary voters.
Campaign Beat is MTPR's weekly political analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined by Rob Saldin of the University of Montana’s Mansfield Center and Political Science Department, and Seaborn Larson, Senior Reporter at Lee Newspapers’ Montana State News Bureau.
Sally Mauk Seaborn, some of the primary results, I think, surprised a lot of people, including Alani Bankhead's easy victory in the Democratic Senate primary. She not only won over the favored Reilly Neill, but she won by 10 percentage points.
Seaborn Larson Right. The margin here was enormous, I think, compared to what a lot of people expected. What really made the difference was all this mysterious outside spending that popped up late in the race to support Bankhead. It was about $3 million for a candidate who had $13,000 to her campaign in the last FEC report, someone who was totally unknown until she filed for office in January. That's perpetuated this suspicion that Bankhead is going to back out of the race to support Seth Bodnar. He's that independent candidate in the Senate race who doesn't have a significant chance in this race if a Democrat is with him on the general election ballot. But Bankhead has been resolute, after winning the primary, that she will not withdraw to clear the way for Bodnar to go head-to-head against Alme.
Sally Mauk We'll keep an eye on that for sure, but Rob, safe to say Neill has not taken the defeat well. First, one of her staffers wrote a tongue-in-cheek tweet supporting Republican Kurt Alme. Then Neill herself said she will not be endorsing Bankhead.
"I don't know her. I have not seen any evidence of her commitment to Montana or Montanans. I don't know when she moved here. She's provided no record of her military service. I have no idea who this person is," Neill said.
Sally Mauk She's right, Rob, that Bankhead is still somewhat of a mystery, but safe to say those mysteries will be revealed as the general election campaign unfolds.
Rob Saldin They will, Sally, and the frustration for Neill really comes through in that clip. To an extent, it's understandable. Seaborn, as you noted, without that PAC money, Neill's the nominee. And Neill is also right that we don't know a lot about Bankhead. And again, if it hadn't been for the PAC money we would never know much about Bankhead.
As for Neill's refusal to support the party's nominee. That's a real striking thing to not support your own party's nominee after a primary, and it demonstrates how much ill will there is at this point. Part of that, no doubt, has to do with all those things Neill ticked through there. But it also has to with all of the speculation that you referenced, Seaborn, that Bankhead, willingly or not, is part of an effort to clear the field for Bodnar. If that was the plan, it seems as though Bankhead might not have gotten the memo because she has been just absolutely Sherman-esque in insisting that she is not dropping out. And as for Bodnar, the guy who wasn't on the ballot this week, you look at where he is, so much has fallen into place for him. The national political environment, Daines dropping out, his own fundraising success, Neill's defeat in the Democratic primary. You just couldn't have dreamed up a better scenario for him. And yet the thing hanging over all of this remains that if a Democrat is on the ballot pulling a significant number of votes in November, it's just very hard to see how Bodnar can be in the hunt.
Sally Mauk The other primary result that surprised a lot of people, Seaborn, was Sam Forstag's win in the western House district Democratic primary. Forstag had a close race with Ryan Busse, but he beat him at the last minute by four points.
Seaborn Larson Right. Forstag's win in the western district was a barn burner. I talked to more than one person who went to bed believing Ryan Busse had won it but woke up to find Forstag was up by 3,000 votes. He campaigned on a working-class message and picked up a lot of momentum in the last month or so. We saw that in his fundraising numbers and had a rally with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Missoula five days before the election. On Tuesday it was Missoula voters who pushed him into the lead over Ryan Busse, but you can't attribute all of that to AOC though. The Progressive Turnout Project spent about $77,000 on field organizing and door knocking in the last weekend before the election, and another $150,000 on door knocking over Memorial Day weekend. I think that helps explain his late push. He ended up with 37% of the vote over Busse's 33%. Russell Cleveland came in at 22%, and Matt Rains had 8% when it was all done.
Sally Mauk Rob, this western district Congressional race between Forstag and Republican Aaron Flint is going to be a stark contrast between a left-leaning progressive and a right-leaning Trumper, and each is going to paint the other as too extreme. Here's what Flint had to say to Nonstop Local News on election night:
"I'll tell you what, we have got to unite and fight to save western Montana, because whoever comes out of this Democrat primary, they're going to try to turn western Montana into one of these west coast cities that they've absolutely destroyed."
Sally Mauk . Rob, he's already called Forstag 'Socialist Sam'.
Rob Saldin Right. These are formulations we've heard from Flint before, and it sounds like we'd better get used to them. It was a really impressive victory for Flint, right? I mean, certainly not a surprise by any stretch, but it was a convincing win. He got over 50% of the vote against two fairly well-known candidates. Flint shouldn't have any trouble getting the party to fully coalesce behind him. You can bet he's going to take it to Forstag. Flint's a skilled communicator. He's got some good material to work with, too, as we talked about. Forstag's endorsements and appearances with Bernie Sanders and AOC, while definitely helpful in launching his campaign and in the context of the primary, those things place him within that progressive DSA wing of the party. And Flint is as excited about that as Forstag is. Flint's going to hammer away on multiple fronts, including ginning up the dystopian images of Portland and San Francisco every chance he gets.
Sally Mauk Seaborn, as Rob mentioned, the winners of the Republican primaries, Flint and Kurt Alme, as expected, easily beat their challengers.
Seaborn Larson Yeah, the Republican primary for the western House district was the total opposite of that Democratic primary. I was on the phone with Flint not long after the Associated Press called the race for him and he mentioned it was still light out. That was a resounding victory, as Rob said, with 50% in a four-way primary. I mentioned that quarter million spent on get out the vote efforts for Forstag. Flint had the most outside spending help in that primary, with about $1.4 million in total. But the reason Flint was always the frontrunner here is because of an endorsement from President Donald Trump who gave Flint the thumbs up on the second day of his campaign and posted a video endorsing Flint a week out from the election and then reiterated that endorsement a third time on social media the day before the primary, sort of catching Republican voters at regular intervals of engagement with his primary.
Alme, as expected, took the Republican nomination with about 76% of the vote. He's got the backing of Trump, as well as Steve Daines, the U.S. Senator who lined Alme up to replace him. Even for as low key as a primary as Alme had, he's been campaigning really hard. He has been really visible, and I think we see that campaign trying to define Alme and shake off that narrative we've talked a lot about here, where Daine's had that cunning move to clear the way for Alme. Troy Downing over in the eastern district is going to face Brian Miller, a Democrat who emerged out of that primary, and Miller's going to have an uphill battle in that race in November.
Sally Mauk I do wonder if President Trump will come to Montana to stump for either Aaron Flint or Kurt Alme. What do you think, Rob?
Rob Saldin It wouldn't be the first time. He doesn't have someone like Tester who he's really looking to take out. That would be the big difference
Sally Mauk The other contests we were closely watching, Seaborn, were the state legislative races featuring moderate versus conservative Republicans, and those outcomes were a mixed bag for the two Republican camps.
Seaborn Larson Yeah, a lot of people told us these Republican legislative primaries were sort of a wash, although there's a couple ways to look at the results. The Montana Republican Party under Chairman Art Wittich has been working against its more central lawmakers in this primary. It did knock off a handful of Republican incumbents, but in the most consequential races, the leaders of these coalition Republicans held onto their seats. The party's top target this cycle, Representative Llew Jones of Conrad, eked out a win against Zach Wirth, a two-term lawmaker from Wolf Creek who was backed by the party. Jones is a really powerful figure at the Legislature. He's led coalitions of moderate Republicans and Democrats into majorities that will sometimes kick into gear to run the Legislature on major fiscal policy, and he's done that for a long time. Jones and a lot of Republicans in his circle won their re-election bids. At the same time, 6,000 people voted in that district, and Jones only won 250 votes. It's been really interesting to see Democrats taking the glass half full or half empty approach on these GOP races. Jesse Mullen, he's a pretty vocal Democrat, said this week it's terrible that half these moderates lost their races. It's a total disaster, he says. Cora Neumann, on the other hand, a state Democratic legislator, put out a video talking about how inspired she was that half of these hard right candidates had lost. So, I guess it depends on who you are, but as far as these Republicans, the people actually involved in these races, 'a wash' is how they're talking about it.
Sally Mauk It'll be interesting to see how it plays out in the '27 legislative session.
Seaborn Larson I definitely think there's going to be some hard feelings after this one, Sally.
Sally Mauk Rob, as usual, more Republicans than Democrats voted in the primary, and that's not a good omen for Democrats heading into the general election. They have got to pick up some Republican votes to have a chance.
Rob Saldin Yeah, overall, Republicans have to feel pretty good. I mean, in a very tough cycle, they still drew a lot more votes than Democrats did. You look at that Senate primary on each side - 168,000 Montanans cast a GOP ballot, while just 111,000 turned in a Democratic ballot. So that's a difference of 57,000 total votes. That's a big gap.
Sally Mauk And as we talked about before, Rob, the PAC money spent in the primary was millions of dollars and that money is only going to balloon as we head into the general election.
Rob Saldin Yeah, you can count on that. One place I'll be especially interested to watch on that front, Sally, is that western congressional race. To me, that's the most intriguing. One of the things that stands out on the Democratic side is they've chosen a candidate with a particular theory of the case about what's ailing the party. And that will lead to a lot of money coming in, I think, because they want to show that you can have a candidate associated with that Bernie Sanders/AOC wing of the party who can be competitive outside of places like Vermont and Queens. Picking off a seat in Montana, a red state, would be a huge feather in the cap of Bernie and AOC and that whole wing of the party, which has a theory of the case that what you really need to do to shift the balance is not go for a moderate or a centrist candidate who's going to just replicate politics as usual, but you need a candidate who's going to bring in people who haven't voted before. Young people, so on and so forth. We're going to get a real experiment here of whether that vision, which runs counter to what we've seen from prominent Democrats like Jon Tester and Steve Bullock, whether that theory has legs.
Sally Mauk And the national interest in that congressional race is going to be huge.
Rob Saldin I would think so. We'll have to see how the campaign develops, but if Forstag proves that he can raise some money and gain some traction and the polling reflects some momentum, absolutely.
Sally Mauk With the primary election over, this is our last Campaign Beat until the fall campaign season begins. And I want to give a big thanks to our behind-the-scenes producers, Chris Moyles and Edward O'Brien, for helping us sound good every week. Thanks guys. And Seaborn and Rob, thank you for taking time from your real jobs to keep us all enlightened. It's been a pleasure as always.
Campaign Beat is MTPR's weekly political analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined by Rob Saldin of the University of Montana’s Mansfield Center and Political Science Department, and Seaborn Larson, Senior Reporter at Lee Newspapers’ Montana State News Bureau. Tune in on-air Fridays at 5:45 p.m. during All Things Considered, or Saturdays at 9:45 a.m., before Weekend Edition. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
