The op-ed I wasn’t allowed to write

On Oct. 9, The Washington Post ran my op-ed on why a nominee shouldn’t bow out.¹ The editors wouldn’t let me write about my opponents or Montana politics. On Oct. 12, the chair of my own state party resigned and used MS NOW to endorse the independent in my race.² I asked MS NOW for the same space to answer. It never replied. Here is the piece I wanted to write.

In 1899, the copper baron William Clark bought a U.S. Senate seat with envelopes of cash. In 1912, Montanans answered by banning corporate money from our elections.³

The backroom plan

In 2024, Jon Tester raised $98.1 million, nearly twice what any Montana candidate had ever raised, in a race that set a national record for spending per voter. He lost by seven points.^4,5 He blamed the party. In January, a text signed “JT” told Democrats the party had been “poison” in his last two races and praised Seth Bodnar as the man to run. Tester never denied sending it.⁶

The idea wasn’t new. In the summer of 2025, in Anaconda, a Helena consulting firm told Democratic-aligned strategists that Democrats couldn’t win the western House seat and should back independents and moderate Republicans.⁷ On Oct. 30, This American Life reported that the meeting, in August 2025, brought together Democratic politicians and strategists “from Montana and beyond,” who talked about how only an independent could win certain races in the state and how that win “would require getting the Democrat to withdraw.”⁸ Months before Bodnar announced, Way Back PAC paid that firm $20,000.⁹

Before a single Democrat voted on June 2, Bodnar had maximum gifts from Reid Hoffman and Mike Novogratz, a check from Max Baucus’s PAC, and $639,770 spent with a Washington firm on “list acquisition.” Tester’s and Baucus’s PACs have each given him $10,000.¹⁰ By June, Montana Free Press reported, Tester and Baucus were raising money for him, and his campaign was staffed by former members of Tester’s political team.¹¹

ActBlue, the Democrats’ fundraising platform, says it weighs two things before taking an independent: whether a Democrat is in the race, and whether the party has endorsed him. There was a Democrat in the race, and the party never endorsed Bodnar. Montana Free Press reported he “doesn’t appear to clear” either test. ActBlue made an exception for him anyway, from his first week: at least $1.28 million by June 30.¹²

The DSCC has never said when it decided against the Democratic nominee. The record points one way. By the time anyone knew who the nominee would be, the money, the lists and two former senators were already behind the independent.

How the field was cleared

On March 4, Sen. Steve Daines withdrew from his own race three minutes after his chosen successor, Kurt Alme, filed.¹³ The same day, Bodnar filed as an independent, skipping the Democratic primary.¹⁴ And the Montana Democratic Party said its mission “is to support candidates who run as Democrats. Full stop.”¹⁵

On April 27, a new super PAC, Progressive Vet PAC, formed and went on to spend $2.3 million “supporting” me. Its money came from Contours Inc., a nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors. Inside Elections later concluded the PAC’s “true candidate” was Bodnar. Some Democrats speculated it had picked me as the candidate “most likely to withdraw.”¹⁶ Former Sen. Max Baucus has since confirmed it on tape. He told This American Life that people in “some organizations that directed the money” had told him they were going to pick somebody “more likely to withdraw.” “Yes, that’s correct,” he said, and he called it “a mistake.”⁸ A super PAC tied to Daines reported $901,179 “for” me and $1,005,876 “against” my main primary opponent. Its ad called her “too liberal” and told Democrats “Alani Bankhead will work with Trump.” Semafor reported the ad was “aimed at tanking Bankhead with Democrats,” and Montana Free Press called it “a funhouse mirror reflection” of me as a Trump-friendly Democrat.¹⁷ I never asked for it, and by law I couldn’t direct it.

Montana Democrats chose their nominee in an open primary on June 2. They chose me, 43.6% to 33%.¹⁸

The pushing started that week. The day after the primary, Nancy Keenan, a former party executive director, called to congratulate me and asked me to step down.¹⁹ The DSCC’s Montana representative told me the committee would not support me.²⁰ On June 30, Progressive Vet PAC declared “a Democrat does not have a viable path” and shut down. Contours then paid for polls that Inside Elections said had “a clear political purpose ... to put pressure on Bankhead to drop out.”¹⁶ In July, another Contours-funded PAC sent $2.75 million to the super PAC working for Bodnar.²¹ Progressive Vet PAC’s treasurer, Moffie Funk, a former legislator the Daily Montanan calls a Tester ally, co-hosted a fundraiser for him.²²

On July 8, party chair Shannon O’Brien told me the statewide candidate calls were “cancelled.” On July 17, I wrote the executive board and agreed to its review of my service record. She replied to everyone: “We continue to stand with you!”²³ A week later the DSCC told Semafor it “partners with viable campaigns who have a path to victory, which Ms. Bankhead does not.”²⁴

On July 30, she convened the board to discuss leaving the Democratic line empty if I quit. Montana law says the party “shall” appoint a replacement. She requested an Elias Law Group opinion without a board vote, and it laid out ways around that word.²⁵

In early August, our ad agency dropped us. It told us the DSCC had pressured it and “does this all the time.”²⁰ Twenty-two Democratic legislators signed a letter asking me to quit.²⁶ A sitting U.S. senator asked if I would be interested in a different opportunity instead, and described a specific job.¹ A leaked document, “Montana Senate Seat: How to Help,” urged Democrats to lean on my parents, my brother and my underage stepdaughter.²⁷

Five days after the primary, I emailed former Gov. Steve Bullock and offered to buy him a beer. We met twice, and on June 23 I asked for his endorsement. He said he wasn’t ready. On July 30, eleven days before the withdrawal deadline, he called to ask for another sit-down. I didn’t call back. I liked him, and I didn’t want him lumped in with everyone else asking me to quit. In October he endorsed Bodnar, writing that the super PAC that “spent tens of millions of dollars against me in 2020” is “now spending to support her.” It spent $894,909 against him in 2020, and its spending for me ended May 28, before the primary.²⁸

The deadline passed Aug. 10 with my name on the ballot. The next day, the party’s executive director stood with me in Helena and called what had happened “unacceptable.” The party’s spokesperson said money “was being threatened to be pulled.”²⁹ The chair didn’t come.³⁰

When she resigned on Oct. 12, she presented it as a stand for the independent. The reporting points to another reason for the timing. In August her own board had removed her $5,000-a-month stipend over allegations of mismanaging party funds, and when she quit, it was investigating a severance agreement she had signed with a party staffer, allegedly without the board’s approval.³¹

Nebraska’s Democratic nominee agreed up front to step aside if she had no clear path.³² Nobody ever asked Montana’s nominee.

The candidate they passed over

I’m a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. I spent 21 years in uniform and as a federal agent going after terrorists, traffickers and people who prey on children.³³ I’m a gun owner and a Christian who thinks faith means feeding people. I’ve lived in Montana almost five years. Every home before it was picked by the military, and Montana is the one I chose.³⁴

My campaign takes zero corporate PAC money and no AIPAC money.³⁵ I want country-of-origin labels back on beef and antitrust enforcement against the four companies that control about 85% of beef packing. I want public lands kept public, a vote in Congress before we go to war, and an end to the Medicaid paperwork Montana began enforcing Oct. 1.³⁶ In my first call with the state party, I was told to skip the eastern counties. I went anyway.³⁴

Montana Democrats picked that candidate in June. The party’s insiders had picked someone else months earlier, before anyone knew who the nominee would be, and once Montanans made their choice, nobody stopped to ask whether the plan still made sense.

Why not the independent

I honor Bodnar’s service. My problem is the money behind him. Outside groups have now spent $10.69 million for him. The biggest, Independent PAC, has spent $7.05 million. Its reports name billionaire Ron Burkle and Paramount heiress Shari Redstone among its funders, and $1.6 million came from Americans Together, a nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors.³⁷ Reid Hoffman, a maximum donor to Bodnar’s campaign, has put $5.5 million into Government That Works PAC, the PAC that sent $2.75 million to the super PAC working for him.³⁸ In the last week, Bodnar promoted a poll posted on a website whose footer reads “Paid for by Montana Freedom PAC,” that same super PAC.³⁹ At our Oct. 11 debate, Bodnar called for “an immediate end to the dark money flooding our politics.”⁴⁰

On Oct. 12, he and the independents in Nebraska and South Dakota pledged to caucus “with neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party” and “to cast no vote for either party’s Senate leadership.”⁴¹ Democrats were told to abandon their own nominee for a candidate who has promised not to vote for their leader.

What the party has become

After Citizens United, Democrats spent years telling voters that secret money was poisoning our politics. They were right. Eventually, the party began to welcome the dirty money it had spent all those years fighting.

By the end of August 2018, the last midterm with a Montana Senate race, the DSCC had sent the Montana Democratic Party $1,418,082. This cycle, through August, it has sent nothing, and every Democrat below me on the ballot pays for that.⁴² Meanwhile the state party took $125,000 this year from Way Back PAC, which has given $900,000 to the super PAC pushing me out.⁴³

Lincoln said no man is good enough to govern another without that other’s consent.⁴⁴ Montana Democrats gave theirs in June. Ballots went out Oct. 9, and every Montanan gets to give theirs by 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 3.⁴⁵ We beat the copper kings once.

The billionaires may have the money, but we have the many.

Alani I. Bankhead is the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Montana and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.