Alani Bankhead is staying in Montana's Senate race, even as Democrats intensify pressure on her to step aside and give Seth Bodnar a clearer path against Republican Kurt Alme. Bankhead said in August, just before the deadline to remove her name from the ballot expired, that she would never bow down and that she was in the race to win through Nov. 3.
The push to clear the field is rooted in numbers that have made this race look increasingly hostile for the Democratic nominee. Since the start of September, four polls with no campaign or partisan sponsor have put Alme at an average of 43.5%, Bodnar at 27.9% and Bankhead at 20.1%. In 11 public surveys since the start of July, Bankhead has not topped 24% and has fallen as low as 12%, while Bodnar has been between 22% and 37% and Alme has not cracked 46% in any three-candidate survey.
That gap is why the argument inside Democratic circles has turned so blunt. Montana has not backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992, and all three of Donald Trump's wins there came by more than 16 percentage points, so the race is being treated as a rare chance to consolidate anti-Republican votes around one candidate. Jon Tester and Steve Bullock have both endorsed Bodnar, along with Max Baucus, Pete Buttigieg, VoteVets, labor unions, Reproductive Freedom for All, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Stephanie Schriock.
Shannon O'Brien made that split impossible to miss when she resigned earlier this month as chair of the state's Democratic Party and endorsed Bodnar in the same letter. O'Brien said there were real questions about Bankhead's commitment to protecting a woman's right to choose, her support of working people and her views of people living in poverty. Bankhead has also faced scrutiny for a podcast remark last year in which she said, 'If you’re poor, it’s because you decided you wanted to be poor,' a comment she later said was aimed at a wealthy client of her life-coaching business.
What is left now is not whether Bankhead will leave. She has said she will not. The question is whether enough voters who might otherwise back her are already shifting to Bodnar to matter by Nov. 3, and whether the break inside the Democratic side hands Alme the one opening he needs in a state where divided opposition has often been enough to decide the outcome.
