Sen. Steve Daines Re-Gifts Montana Senate Seat To Weird Trumper
State's other senator broke a dude's arm.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana) took a brief break from being on cable TV news every waking moment so he could announce Wednesday that he will not seek reelection to the seat he was first elected to in 2014. Daines is the sixth Republican senator to leave the Senate rather than face voters this year, joining the likes of Thom Tillis, Joni Ernst, Mitch McConnell, Cynthia Lummis, and Tommy Tuberville. OK, fine, Tuberville is facing voters again since he’s running for governor of Alabama.
Roll Call reports that Daines withdrew his reelection paperwork Wednesday with just a few minutes to go before the filing deadline for Montana’s June 2 primary election. By some amazing coincidence, Trump-appointed US Attorney Kurt Alme filed to run for the seat just a few minutes before Daines noped out.
Daines immediately endorsed Alme, spouting some back-slapping bullshit about how Alme “did such a good job cracking down on crime” as Trump’s US Attorney for Montana in Trump’s first term, he was a natural choice for reappointment in the second term. Not getting indicted or disbarred in his first stint is certainly an achievement for a Trump appointee.
The Art Of The Ratfuck
By staying in the race — at least on paper — until the very last moment, Daines ensured there wouldn’t be a primary fight between Alme and other potential Republican candidates. Beyond that, CNN reports that according to two unnamed insiders, Daines also waited to leave the race as a tactic to ratfuck Democratic opposition. As long as potential high-profile Democratic candidates thought Daines was seeking a third term, they’d be less likely to go up against him (and his $4.9 million reelection fund) than they would against a newcomer.
With Democrats seeking to flip four seats to take control of the Senate, the last thing GOP fundraisers wanted would be another competitive race against a Democrat who might draw national attention and donations. Sure Montana has gone far to the right, and the odds would be against any Democrat, even if they were running against a rusted out F-150 pickup, as long as the pickup truck were 30 years old and had an R after its name. (An NRA sticker on the rear window would also help.)
But even with Republicans’ built-in advantages, a race against a strong Democratic candidate like former governors Brian Schweitzer and Steve Bullock or former senator Jon Tester would have turned into a huge money suck in a year where high-profile fights for control of the Senate are already demanding lots of money from big Republican donors.
Tester, for instance, already counted himself out of the 2026 race last year when it looked like Daines was running for reelection. Tester lost his seat in 2024 to gross millionaire and lying liar Tim Sheehy.
Daines acknowledged to Semafor Thursday that he delayed his move to ratfuck more prominent Democrats from getting into the race, framing it as one last favor to Trump:
“A second midterm for a president, you have natural political headwinds. And my goal here was to try to make this race as least expensive as possible, given there’s a lot of expensive races on the map,” Daines said in an interview. “This was all about preventing this race from escalating into another $200-300 million race.”
Wasn’t that a noble subversion of the ability of voters to choose their candidates?
Tester told Semafor he didn’t buy that reasoning because “none of us were running.” He thinks it was more about preempting any other Republicans from going up against Daines’s chosen successor. “He fucked his own party,” said Tester (full cuss restored by Wonkette).
Sheehy’s chief of staff Mike Berg, a former Daines campaign staffer, offered the astute political analysis that Tester is a “bitter man and a loser.” Look for him to go far in GOP comms roles.
Former Gov. Schweitzer, who has already endorsed former state Rep. Reilly Neill in the Senate primary, agreed with Tester that the move may have been more about preempting Republican primary opponents. He said he thinks “Republicans agree with me all across Montana that we don't have royalty in Montana. […] We don't think it's the right thing for a king to anoint the next king. And that's what Daines just did.”
For her part, Neill, one of the five Democrats running for the nomination, said Daines’s maneuver won’t play well with lots of Montanans because it “goes against our libertarian nature, to see someone make backroom deals when everybody should be a part of decision making.”
Also in the race is former University of Montana president Seth Bodnar, who’s running as an independent; he said in a press release that Daines “has so little respect for Montana Republicans that he withdrew at the last minute to coronate his handpicked successor instead of giving them a voice at the ballot box.”
We need to remember that No More Kings also must include No More handpicked Dukes, or dookies, as the case may be.
The GOP Coalesces, Or Congeals
On his fake Twitter substitute site, Trump (or some intern temporarily pulled off posting racist memes) praised Daines’s loyalty and endorsed Alme, writing, “In fact, if Kurt didn’t have the highest level of aptitude and talent, Steve would have remained exactly where he is but, Kurt is exceptional, and I will be giving him, based on Steve’s strongest recommendation, my Complete and Total Endorsement.” All of Montana’s GOP electeds quickly fell in line to endorse the chosen successor.
It remains to be seen if any of the several Democrats seeking the nomination will be able to overcome the state’s increasingly rightward tilt. Who knows? Maybe Daines’s obvious anointment of Alme will piss people off? Or maybe Alme will turn out to have a brain full of spiders, although that’s hardly a drawback for Republicans anymore.
Grand Old Body-Slamming, Arm-Breaking Party
In other Montana Senator news, Sen. Sheehy became a viral video star Wednesday when he joined Capitol Police officers who were trying to eject a war protester from a meeting of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee. The protester, Marine vet and North Carolina Green Party US Senate candidate Brian McGinnis, interrupted the meeting by shouting “No one wants to fight for Israel!”
As Capitol Police tried to remove McGinnis, video shows he stuck one arm between the exit door and its frame. Sheehy then tried to dislodge McGinnis, and an audible snap could be heard on video as something broke in McGinnis’s arm or hand.
Sheehy took to social media to post the video and praise himself for being a badass tough guy who’s willing to break some people’s bones for America, writing,
Capitol Police were attempting to remove an unhinged protestor from the Armed Services hearing. He was fighting back. I decided to help out and deescalate the situation.
This gentleman came to the Capitol looking for a confrontation, and he got one. I hope he gets the help he needs without causing further violence.
Sticklers for accuracy questioned how grabbing a guy’s arm and breaking a bone somewhere qualifies as “deescalating” a situation.
Sheehy now joins Gianforte in the ranks of Montana Republicans who like beating the shit out of people, and we have no doubt that “prediction markets” are now taking bets on how Alme, now officially a candidate, will find a way to jump out of nowhere and start whaling on some dude.
[Politico / CNN / Semafor / NYT / Roll Call / KXLH / Montana Free Press / Daily Montanan / Reilly Neill for Montana]
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OK. I died.
The funniest meme I've ever seen.
Forrest Gump on the bench talking to a woman.
"Kristi Noem is like a box of chocolates. They'll both kill your dog."
Montanans get what they voted for, same as every other rural state being royally screwed by the party of billionaires and pedophiles. James Talarico said it best: "It's not left vs. right, it's top vs. bottom." Will Montana realize this? Ummm