Democrats Yield Ground to Independent Senate Candidates in Idaho and Montana

Idaho Democrats gave up their own Senate nomination this week. Montana Democrats spent the same days refusing to do it. Two states that have not sent a Democrat to the United States Senate in decades have become the working test of a tactic the national party will not put its name to on the record: standing down so that independent Senate candidates can run at Republican incumbents without a party label attached.

David Roth, who won Idaho's Democratic Senate primary on May 19 with 29,534 votes, ended his campaign on July 28, according to reporting by The Spokesman-Review and Roll Call. His exit leaves Todd Achilles, a former state representative running without a party, as the only funded challenger to Senator Jim Risch. In Montana, where the withdrawal deadline falls on August 10, Democratic nominee Alani Bankhead and independent Seth Bodnar have each declined to leave a four-candidate field that public polling suggests delivers the seat to Republican Kurt Alme. Together they show how far Democratic operatives will go to convert unwinnable ground, and how the tactic collapses when a nominee refuses to cooperate.

Roth exit leaves Achilles alone against Risch

Roth carried 61.9 percent of the Idaho Democratic primary on May 19, taking 29,534 votes against 14,863 for Brad Moore and 3,344 for Nickolas Bonds, out of 47,741 cast. Risch won the Republican primary the same day with 156,140 votes, or 67.3 percent of 232,146 ballots, ahead of Josh Roy at 33,188 and Joe Evans at 32,636. Turnout in the Republican primary was nearly five times the Democratic figure.

Pressure on the nominee began in writing. On July 8 the Ada County Democratic Central Committee sent Roth a letter demanding that he raise $50,000 and produce a campaign plan within one month, and warning that it would otherwise consider endorsing another candidate. The committee told him it was "seriously concerned" his campaign was not positioned for the contest, according to The Spokesman-Review, which obtained the letter. Ada County chair Jared DeLoof told the paper there was "a really strong possibility that we can defeat Risch," a judgment that pointed at Achilles rather than at the party's own nominee.

Roth read the sequence as an organized push. He told the paper that many precinct captains and county leaders in Ada County were "strong supporters of Todd Achilles" and described a "concerted effort within some within the party to force me out of the race." Larry LaRocco, who represented Idaho's first district in the House from 1991 to 1995, was blunter, telling the paper there was no chance Roth would improve on the record of his three previous statewide and legislative defeats.

When he quit, Roth framed the decision around the rest of the ballot. He said he had concluded he could "make the greatest difference" by helping Democrats win races down the ballot, and described the choice as difficult. He did not endorse Achilles. Under Idaho election law he must file a formal withdrawal by September 4 to keep his name off the November 3 ballot.

Achilles responded by claiming national status for the contest, telling reporters it was "now one of the most competitive Senate races in the country." Risch's campaign answered with a single line aimed at his opponent's registration history: "Changing your party label doesn't change your record. Idaho voters won't be fooled." Two minor candidates remain on the ballot. Libertarian Matt Loesby took roughly 2 percent in the 2024 race in Idaho's first congressional district, and independent Natalie Fleming drew close to 3 percent against Risch in 2020.

Achilles brings a Republican registration history to his bid

Achilles, 58, served as a United States Army armor officer from 1992 to 1995, commanding a tank platoon. He holds a bachelor's degree from Claremont McKenna College, a master's degree and an MBA from the University of Washington, and a master's in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley. He spent more than two decades in telecommunications and technology, with executive roles at T-Mobile USA, HTC and Hewlett-Packard, and served as chief executive of the Boise broadcaster Evoca from 2017 to 2022.

His party history is the detail Risch's campaign keeps returning to. Achilles was a registered Republican until early 2024, changed his registration to Democratic, and was appointed by Governor Brad Little on February 17, 2024, to a House seat in District 16B vacated by Colin Nash. He resigned that seat on July 1, 2025, and launched his Senate campaign as an independent. His campaign literature rejects what it calls the left and right divide in favor of a framing built on economic power. He has been endorsed by the Forward Party. Risch carries endorsements from President Donald Trump and AIPAC.

Money and polling separate the two Idaho campaigns

Federal filings covering the period through June 30 show the gap. Risch reported $4.43 million raised for the cycle, $3.09 million spent and $3.54 million in cash on hand. Achilles reported $692,245 raised, $506,311 spent and $194,227 available. Roth had raised roughly $8,600 by the end of April, finished June with about $1,000 on hand and carried more than $10,000 in debt, figures that made the Ada County committee's $50,000 demand functionally impossible to meet.

Polling has been inconsistent, and the spread across three surveys is itself part of the story. Public Policy Polling, in the field March 16 and 17, put Risch at 48 percent and Achilles at 34 percent with 18 percent undecided. Bullfinch Group, polling in early June, found Risch at 40 percent and Achilles at 36 percent head to head, Risch at 50 percent and Roth at 33 percent in a two-way test, and Risch at 41 percent with Achilles at 18 and Roth at 15 in the three-way field. Peak Insights, surveying June 6 and 7, put Risch at 55 percent, Roth at 15 and Achilles at 7.

The Bullfinch numbers are the ones the case for independent Senate candidates rests on. In that survey Achilles gained 18 points the moment Roth was removed from the question, while Risch's share moved by one point. Every major forecaster still rates the seat solid or safe Republican, and none had changed that by the end of July.

Montana standoff running into an August 10 deadline

Montana produced the year's sharpest piece of filing-deadline choreography. On March 5, with the window closing at 5 p.m., Kurt Alme filed at 4:52 p.m. Senator Steve Daines withdrew three minutes later and endorsed Alme at 5:02 p.m., leaving no time for another Republican to enter. Alme served as United States Attorney for the District of Montana from 2017 to 2020 and returned to the post in 2025. Officials in both parties criticized the timing.

Bodnar had moved first. He resigned the presidency of the University of Montana in January 2026 after eight years in the job and launched his campaign on March 4, a day before the Daines exit. Bodnar is a former Army Green Beret and a Rhodes Scholar, and he built his announcement around institutional failure, telling Montana Free Press that the country was in crisis and that "our national political parties are failing us." Running outside the primary system, he needed roughly 13,000 valid signatures by May 26 and filed 21,284.

The June 2 primaries produced the deadlock. Alme took 128,716 votes, or 76.1 percent, over Lee Calhoun at 23,872 and Charles WalkingChild at 16,474. On the Democratic side Bankhead, an Air Force lieutenant colonel and leadership coach, won 48,772 votes, or 43.6 percent, over Reilly Neill at 36,880, Michael Black Wolf at 14,678, Christopher Kehoe at 7,108 and Michael Hummert at 4,305. Libertarian Kyle Austin edged Tom Jandron 1,819 to 1,592.

Fundraising through June 30 inverted the usual party hierarchy. Bodnar reported $3,238,150 raised, ahead of Alme at $1,984,860. Austin, the Libertarian, reported $262,194. Bankhead, the major-party nominee, reported $58,829. Progressive Vet PAC spent heavily on her behalf during the primary and stopped after it, and several Democratic organizations have since declined to fund her general election campaign.

Alme holds endorsements from Trump, Senator Tim Sheehy, Governor Greg Gianforte, the National Rifle Association and Americans for Prosperity. Bodnar has assembled a bipartisan roster of former officeholders: Democratic former senators Jon Tester and Max Baucus, former West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, former Republican governor Marc Racicot and former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger.

Ballot replacement statute narrows Montana options

A survey by GQR for the nonprofit Contours, in the field in late July, tested several configurations. In the current four-way field Alme led at 41 percent. Against Bodnar alone, Bodnar led 50 to 44. Against Bankhead alone, Alme won 52 to 44. Elections analyst G. Elliott Morris, applying an average polling error of 7.2 points drawn from Senate surveys since 2014, calculated a 3 percent chance Alme loses the current four-way race, an 80 percent chance Bodnar wins a straight contest against him, and a 71 percent chance Alme loses a field containing Bodnar and the Libertarian but not Bankhead.

Those numbers set off an open pressure campaign. Democratic state legislators sent a letter in early July calling for a consolidated race. Carol Williams, a former Democratic leader in the Montana Senate, publicly asked Bankhead to withdraw. Breitbart News reported on July 26 that Bodnar's campaign was circulating opposition research on Bankhead's older social media posts and that an allied super PAC was sending texts urging her to leave the ballot, while also reporting that Bodnar himself was weighing an exit if she stayed.

Bankhead has refused in categorical terms. She told Montana Television Network that she would never consider dropping out, and pointed to the primary result: "Over 48,000 people voted for me; zero people voted for" Bodnar. She has said Bodnar and Tester created the split rather than her campaign.

Montana law then removes much of the flexibility both sides assumed they had. A spokesperson for Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, a Republican, told Semafor that if a party's nominee withdraws, that party is required to appoint a replacement, adding that the requirement is "the law, not a suggestion." A withdrawal by Bankhead before August 10 would therefore not clear the field for independent Senate candidates; it would produce a different Democrat on the ballot unless party lawyers can establish that the state committee may decline to name one. Attorneys advising the Montana Democratic Party have argued that declining is permissible, a reading the secretary of state's office rejects.

Recent margins in two of the reddest states

Both seats sit well outside the competitive tier by any historical measure. Idaho last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 1974, when Frank Church won his fourth term. Registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats by more than five to one. Risch first won the seat in 2008 by 24 points, and in 2020 defeated Paulette Jordan 63 percent to 33 percent. Trump carried Idaho in 2024 by more than 35 points.

Montana is more recently contested but moving the same direction. Tester held his seat through three cycles before losing in 2024 to Tim Sheehy, 52.6 percent to 45.5 percent, with Libertarian Sid Daoud at 1.2 percent. Trump carried the state in 2024 by 19.9 points, 58 percent to 38 percent, widening his 2020 margin of 16.4 points. Daines won reelection in 2020 by roughly 10 points. No Democrat has won a Montana Senate race since Tester's 2018 victory.

The most useful precedent is neither Idaho nor Montana. In Nebraska in 2024, independent Dan Osborn ran against Senator Deb Fischer with no Democrat on the ballot and finished several points above the ceiling recent Democratic nominees had reached in the state. Osborn, the template for the 2026 crop of independent Senate candidates, is running again against Senator Pete Ricketts, and Democratic nominee Cindy Burbank withdrew to give him a clear lane. A Lake Research Partners survey put Ricketts at 48 percent and Osborn at 47.

Arithmetic of a Democratic majority

Republicans hold the Senate 53 to 47, and Vice President JD Vance breaks ties. Democrats therefore need a net gain of four seats for a working majority, and none of the four can come from a defensive collapse elsewhere. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has described the path as "clear and strong." Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Kirsten Gillibrand told Fox News Digital she was "optimistic that we have a shot to take back the majority." The committee has announced a $40 million Win The Senate program.

The named targets are conventional. Former Governor Janet Mills is running in Maine, the only Republican-held seat in a state Kamala Harris carried in 2024. Former Governor Roy Cooper is the nominee in North Carolina. Former Senator Sherrod Brown is running in Ohio against appointed Senator Jon Husted. Former Representative Mary Peltola is challenging Senator Dan Sullivan in Alaska, where early surveys showed a statistically tied race. Those four, if all break the same way, produce the majority without Idaho, Montana, Nebraska or anywhere else.

That is the arithmetic that makes the independent strategy an insurance policy rather than a centerpiece. Each additional competitive seat lowers the number of the four core races Democrats must sweep. It also introduces a complication the party has not resolved in public: independent Senate candidates who win do not automatically join the Democratic conference. Bodnar has said he would not caucus with either party, a position that would leave him without the committee assignments that flow from caucus membership. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the chamber's current independents, both caucus with Democrats.

The pattern has spread beyond Senate contests. In Alaska, Democratic House candidate Matt Schultz dropped out to consolidate support behind independent Bill Hill against Representative Nick Begich, in a state that uses ranked-choice voting. In South Dakota, Democratic nominee Julian Beaudion has refused to yield to independent Brian Bengs in the race against Senator Mike Rounds, telling KOTA Territory News he is "not in this to play political games." Beaudion has been backed by former President Joe Biden. In Kansas, pastor Adam Hamilton has weighed an independent run against Senator Roger Marshall, with the Democratic primary scheduled for August 4.

Strategists divided over clearing the ballot

Nathan L. Gonzales, the elections analyst at CQ Roll Call, framed the calculation as a concession about brand damage, writing that some states are "so red" and the national party image "so damaged" that Democrats have to get creative. Morris has argued the same case from the polling data, contending that association with the national party creates a floor of resistance no Democratic nominee in these states can talk past, which makes strategic withdrawal in favor of independent Senate candidates a better return on effort than a conventional campaign.

The counterargument is procedural rather than ideological. Bankhead's position, that 48,772 primary voters chose her and none chose Bodnar, is a claim about the legitimacy of nominating contests, and it applies with equal force to Roth, who won his primary by 30 points and was then pushed out by a county committee that never appeared on any ballot. Roth's complaint about a "concerted effort" to force him out is the same objection stated from the other side of a state line.

There is a structural cost as well. A party that vacates statewide races loses the organizing infrastructure those races generate, including volunteer lists and coordinated turnout operations that legislative and county candidates rely on. Republicans have pushed the opposite line, with the National Republican Senatorial Committee framing the Montana maneuvering as an attempt to disguise a Democratic campaign under an independent label.

Neither approach has produced a Senate win yet. Osborn's 2024 Nebraska campaign, the model for all of this, lost. What it demonstrated was that the ceiling for a candidate without a party label sits meaningfully above the ceiling for a Democrat in the same electorate, a finding the 2026 cycle is now testing in four states at once.

Dates that decide both contests

August 4 brings the Kansas Democratic primary, which determines whether an independent bid there has room to develop. August 8 is the date Bodnar and Bankhead have both been pointed toward in negotiations, and August 10 is the statutory deadline for either to withdraw from the Montana general election ballot. Under the secretary of state's reading, a Bankhead withdrawal on or before that date obligates the Montana Democratic Party to name a replacement, which would preserve the split rather than end it.

September 4 is Roth's deadline to file a formal withdrawal in Idaho. If he misses it, his name appears on the November 3 ballot alongside Achilles, Loesby and Fleming, and the Bullfinch data suggests that alone would cost Achilles most of the consolidation his backers spent the summer engineering. Quarterly federal campaign finance reports covering July through September are due on October 15, the last full disclosure before voting, and will show whether outside money followed the independent Senate candidates into either state after the summer maneuvering.

Election day is November 3. Even under the most favorable scenarios sketched by the polling, Idaho and Montana would deliver senators who owe nothing formal to either conference, which would leave the composition of the next Senate unsettled until the organizing resolution is written in January 2027.