Democratic candidate Alani Bankhead speaks to Montana Democrats during a gathering at the Northern Hotel in Billings during the summer of 2026. She is running for the U.S. Senate in the 2026 Election as the Democratic nominee, facing off against three other candidates. Former Gov. Brian Schweitzer endorsed Bankhead after the primary. He said he doesn’t buy the claim that a Democrat can no longer win in the state, and he doesn’t fault Bankhead for seeking statewide office as a political unknown. “I’d never been elected to anything when I ran for governor. Nothing,” said Schweitzer, who lost a Senate election in 2000, but was elected as governor again in 2008.
Nonetheless, Bankhead faces fierce headwinds, from the pipeline of money flowing to her independent opponent, Seth Bodnar, to the dysfunction of the Montana Democratic Party, to the support Republican Kurt Alme has by virtue of his political party. Bankhead, who lives in the Helena area, came swinging out of the gate. Her aggressive stance turns off some Democrats, but the military veteran argues it’s a spirit Montanans need in Washington, D.C. “We are in a fight for our democracy right now, and it’s important for people to understand who’s going to be the fighter in D.C.,” Bankhead said to the Daily Montanan.
Bankhead, who is the third generation of her family to serve in the military, was a bodyguard to the secretary of the U.S. Air Force when a review of nuclear sites was ordered, and she visited Malmstrom Air Force Base, she said. “I remember tooling around Great Falls, and people would wave on side roads,” Bankhead said. She said she and her husband decided that’s what they wanted. They landed in the Helena area five years ago after her husband retired from active military duty and became a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agent investigating clean air and clean water violations. The couple intended to recover from a couple of decades of military service, with Bankhead retiring as a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and special agent. But she said one reason she decided to run for office is they encountered neighbors who were struggling to put food on the table. “We did not sacrifice and deploy and get shot at and bombed so that this could be happening in the richest country in the world,” Bankhead said.
In December 2025, Republican U.S. Sen. Steve Daines of Montana failed to appear for a vote to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidy. A spokesperson told MTN News at the time that Daines was traveling, but Bankhead figured it should be curtains for Montana’s senior senator. “Your whole job is to meet with people and vote on their behalf,” Bankhead said. She decided to try to take his job. “You’re getting fired,” she recalled thinking.
Daines had his own plans. With two terms under his belt in the Senate, he would have been the tough-to-beat Republican incumbent, but at the last minute, he withdrew and endorsed Alme – who filed eight minutes before the deadline on the last possible day. Daines’ sudden exit left some Montanans, including members of his own political party, miffed because it closed the field to candidates who may have been interested if only they had been given notice. At least a couple of powerful Democrats tried to convince Bodnar to file as a Democrat too, but he filed as an independent. He has said he feels “politically homeless.”
Democratic political consultants pitched a strategy to boost Bankhead in the primary election and back the independent in the general election, said political scientist Jessi Bennion, of Montana State University and the University of Montana. It’s a roadmap playing out in other conservative
