Alani Bankhead on the Issues — U.S. Senate, Montana
Alani Bankhead is a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in Montana. Her positions on the issues are below. Enable JavaScript for the full interactive, searchable version.
Government Accountability
Show up, and answer for the work. For twenty-one years I was accountable for life-and-death decisions, and I never got to hide from the outcome. Washington shouldn’t get to either.
Housing
A Montana paycheck should buy a Montana home. A Montana paycheck should be able to buy a Montana home. Right now it can’t, and longtime owners get taxed just for trying to move.
Healthcare
We already know universal healthcare works. Millions of Americans already get their care through TRICARE, the military’s own government-run program, and we can pay to expand access by cutting Pentagon waste, not anyone’s care. And we keep rural hospitals open by protecting the Medicare and Medicaid payments they depend on.
Protecting the Vulnerable
A record of putting child predators in prison. I’ve spent more than two decades on the front lines of child protection, building the cases that put child sex abusers in jail. I’ll bring that same fight to the Senate.
Relief for Our Seniors
A lifetime of work shouldn’t end in poverty. Montanans who spent a lifetime working shouldn’t be taxed out of the homes where they raised their families.
Reproductive Freedom
Reproductive freedom: trust people, not the government. Let me be direct: protecting a woman’s right to choose helps all Montanans. In 2022 the Supreme Court took away a constitutional right for the first time in our history, and Montanans answered by voting to enshrine the right to make our own pregnancy decisions in our state constitution.
Public Lands
Public lands stay public: period. No selling of public lands ever. No opening up public lands for exploitation ever. I support corner crossing. Period.
Education
Schools worth the next generation. Montana has the lowest starting teacher pay in the nation, about $36,682, dead last. That’s how you lose the next generation of teachers, and the next generation of kids right behind them.
Agriculture
Stand with the people who feed the country. Montana agriculture feeds the nation, and family operations are getting squeezed out by rising costs and consolidation. I’ll have their back.
Bringing Down Everyday Costs
Lower the price of a normal life. The price of groceries and gas is a national security issue. What’s the point of protecting our borders if families can’t afford to live behind them?
Tribal Nations & Native Priorities
Sovereignty, safety, and keeping our word. Our nation’s history with Indigenous people is one I’m passionate about helping to heal. On this campaign we don’t ask anything of the tribes; we support, and keep supporting, until our Native American neighbors decide we’re worthy of their trust: by listening, keeping promises, and matching our…
Data Centers
Montanans decide what gets built, and no one gets to spy on them. AI and large-scale data centers on public lands are a “no” for me: period. Everywhere else, they’re built by some of the richest companies on earth, chasing the biggest tax breaks they can find, and no one has required honest environmental studies or full disclosure of what they’ll cost us in…
Guns & Community Safety
A gun owner who takes safety seriously. I own guns, I use guns, and for twenty-one years I carried one for a living. I respect what firearms mean in Montana, for hunting, for sport, and for protecting your own family. That is not up for debate with me.
Environment & Conservation
Conservation isn’t partisan; it’s a responsibility. I’m a third-generation protector of life, and I can’t stand a bully, and right now, Montana’s environment is being bullied. My husband spent his career as a federal agent, including with the EPA, and refused to be part of rolling those protections back. I bring that same conviction.
Immigration & Border Security
Secure the border, fix a broken system, treat people like people. I double-majored in Latin American Studies and Criminal Justice because I wanted to take down drug lords for a living. My family was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá during the Escobar years, and I saw up close how America’s own drug demand, and our government’s meddling in the region,…
Accessibility & Disability Rights
Nothing about us without us. I don’t come to this from a briefing binder; I come to it from showing up, even when it’s inconvenient, and listening directly to disabled Montanans and their families about what their lives actually require.
Courts & Judicial Reform
Restore trust in the courts. A Court that accepts undisclosed gifts and overturns long-settled rights has lost the confidence of many Americans. I support real reform to restore that trust.
National Security & War Powers
Congress must reclaim its war powers. The founders made going to war hard on purpose; it was meant to take Congress, and the whole country, deciding together. Over the decades we’ve drifted away from that, into a country that can stay at war for twenty years on a single vote most people never debated.
LGBTQ+ Montanans
Live and let live, and that applies to everyone. Every human being deserves basic dignity and respect. This is about human rights, and I will never tolerate hate of any kind, projected at any group of people.
Veterans
I know what veterans have sacrificed, and we have a duty to keep our word. I gave twenty-one years to the Air Force. I know what this country asks of the people who wear the uniform, and I’ve seen how often it comes up short when they take it off. I won’t stay quiet about that.
Israel & Palestine
Not our wars: stop underwriting the suffering in Gaza. I spent my career protecting children from the worst things adults do to them, so I am not going to look away from this. What is being done to the children of Gaza is not an accident of war. A United Nations commission has found it deliberate, and found that it meets the definition of genocide…
Energy
Affordable, reliable, Montana-made, with real choices. Montana’s electric cooperatives were built on a simple idea: neighbors banding together to power the places the big utilities wouldn’t. That same spirit should guide our energy future, and my first priority is keeping power affordable and reliable. Rural families and farmers already stretch every…
Special Education
Keep the promise Washington made to our kids. Every parent of a child with an IEP knows the drill: fight to get the services, then fight again to keep them. Washington promised to pay 40% of the cost and pays about 13%, so that fight lands on Montana classrooms and Montana families.
Jobs & Wages
A day’s work should cover a day’s life. Nobody working full-time in Montana should live in poverty, and right now too many do. Work should pay enough to keep a roof overhead and food on the table. That is not radical; it is the deal this country used to keep.
Iran
Not our war: an illegal one Montana is paying for. I am completely opposed to this war. Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified that the intelligence community assessed Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. The President overrode his own intelligence chief and took us to war anyway, with no imminent threat and no authorization from Congress…
Foreign Aid
Foreign aid is cheap security, and Montana grows it. Let me say the quiet part out loud: foreign aid is one of the cheapest, most effective national-security tools we have. It heads off wars, famines, epidemics, and mass migration before they ever reach us or cost us a single soldier…
Foreign Policy
America first, not America alone. America First has to mean an America that leads, not one that walks away. Our strength has never been just our military; it has been our allies and the respect we earned by doing right by others. We protect ourselves by protecting them…
Trade
Fair trade, actually enforced. Our job in the world is not to stop other countries from using or trading their own resources. It is to make sure trade is fair, that nobody is cheating, and that Montana producers are positioned to win in an open market…
Technology & National Security
Lead on the tech that will decide the century. The next century will be decided by who leads on artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotechnology, and I do not intend to hand that lead to China. I spent my career keeping our most sensitive technology out of our adversaries’ hands…
Corruption & Financial Crimes
Follow the money. If you want to catch the worst people on earth, you follow the money. That is not a slogan for me, it is how I did my job. Going after the financial-crimes angle was the single most effective way to take down traffickers and the people who abuse children…
Rural Montana
Out here, an emergency is a math problem. How far, how fast, and is anyone coming. In too much of Montana the honest answer is getting worse. We are losing the ambulances, the air service, and the hospitals that decide whether a heart attack or a car wreck two hours from a city is survivable. I am not going to let Washington treat those as luxuries to cut…
Rule of Law
No one is above the law. Checks and balances, and equal justice, are not partisan. No one, at any level, gets to put themselves above the law.
Elections
Free, fair, and local. Montana runs Montana's elections. Protect the right to vote, restore the Voting Rights Act, and keep the president out of your voter file and the machines.
Dental, Vision & Hearing
Your body doesn't come in separate plans. Put dental, vision, and hearing into Medicare, and require real coverage in private plans too, not skimpy add-ons.
Mental Health
We don't hide our struggles. We treat them. Treat mental health like the health care it is: real coverage, enforced parity, and providers who can actually reach rural Montana.
Insurance Denials
Doctors decide, not algorithms. Care your doctor ordered shouldn't be denied by an algorithm. Open the black box, and hold insurers accountable when appeals overturn their denials.
Women's Health
Women's health is not "DEI." It's medicine. Cutting women's health research and care doesn't save money; it costs lives. Fund it and treat it as the medicine it is.
Clean Water & Polluters Pay
Polluters pay, not you. Montana's water is not for sale or for dumping. The people who profit from pollution clean up their own mess, not taxpayers.
Tar-Sands Pipeline
For Montana oil. Against being Canada's tar-sands doormat. I'm for the Bakken and Montana energy. I won't trade our rivers to be a transit corridor for Canada's dirtiest crude.
Medicaid Work Requirements
Don't lose your healthcare to a paperwork trap. So-called work requirements are red tape that kicks working people, caregivers, and the sick off coverage. Montana already learned that lesson.
Wildfire & Forest Health
Back the people who fight our fires. Pay wildland firefighters like the career professionals they are, do the science-based fuels work, and treat prevention as seriously as suppression. Do the fuels work where it protects people, not where it profits: cut fire risk in the forests next to Montana’s towns using the tools the roadless rule already gives us, instead of opening millions of acres of remote backcountry to roads under a wildfire banner.
Privacy & Data Rights
Your data is yours. It's not for sale. Montana wrote privacy into our constitution. Take that standard national: one clear privacy law, a warrant before the government tracks you, and an end to your every move being bought and sold.
Child Care
Child care is the smartest investment Montana can make. 59% of Montana counties are child-care deserts. Fund care where it doesn't exist, cap what families pay, and pay the people who do the work. That's not a handout; it's a return.
Government That Works
Fix the government, don't break it. DOGE faked $110 billion in savings, fired the watchdogs, and copied 300 million Americans' records. Investigate the damage, restore the inspectors general, and do real efficiency, not vandalism with a spreadsheet.
Civil Rights
The law still protects you. Someone has to enforce it. Nobody repealed the Civil Rights Act. They just fired the people whose job is to defend it. Rebuild the offices that enforce your right not to be discriminated against.
