A Sly Political Switcheroo Stuns Montana and Starts a New Senate Fight

At 4:52 p.m. in Montana, Kurt Alme, the state’s top federal prosecutor and a Republican, filed to run for Senate.

At 4:57 p.m., Senator Steve Daines of Montana, a fellow Republican and an ally of Mr. Alme, withdrew his name from contention.

At 5 p.m., the deadline for getting on or off the ballot passed.

Finally, at 5:02 p.m., a smiling, Carhartt-clad Mr. Daines broke the news to the world with a video of himself standing in front of snowcapped mountains, a tranquil backdrop for his shocking announcement: “After much careful thought, I’ve decided not to seek re-election.”

The eleventh-hour switcheroo on Wednesday appeared to be an effort by Mr. Daines to clear the field for his preferred candidate, Mr. Alme, whom he endorsed in his retirement announcement. President Trump, Gov. Greg Gianforte and Senator Tim Sheehy, the state’s other senator, also immediately endorsed Mr. Alme, who had been the U.S. attorney for Montana but had to resign to run for office under the Hatch Act.

The move was quickly condemned by Montana Democrats — and even some Republicans — as an anti-democratic power play that had blocked other potential candidates from entering a race for what will now be an open seat.

Ken Toole, a Democrat and former public service commissioner and state senator, criticized Mr. Daines’s “last-minute shenanigans.”

“This is clearly very well thought-out, and planned, and kept secret,” Mr. Toole said. The move, he said, meant that there was “no opportunity for public input, discussion, awareness — all of those things that we like to think about as political obligations.”

Al Olszewski, a Republican former state legislator and newly announced U.S. House candidate, wrote on social media that Mr. Daines had “just betrayed the trust of all Montanans.”

“In this great state, we elect our own representatives,” he added. “We don’t simply accept replacements selected by the deep state and D.C. for them to lord power over us.”

Despite its independent streak, Montana is a red state that has turned even redder in recent elections. No matter who is on the ballot in November, it is very likely Republicans will retain control of the seat. Still, at least one nonpartisan election prognosticator nudged the race out of “safe Republican” territory on Wednesday, in part because of the potential backlash to Mr. Daines’s move.

The top non-Republican candidate in the race is likely to be Seth Bodnar, the former president of the University of Montana, who officially began his long-anticipated run as an independent hours before Mr. Daines’s announcement. Several Democrats are running, but none have the kind of statewide name recognition or fund-raising ability enjoyed by party heavyweights like former Govs. Steve Bullock and Brian Schweitzer and former Senator Jon Tester.

Some speculated that such higher-profile candidates might have considered entering the race if they had known Mr. Daines would retire. (Both Mr. Tester and Mr. Schweitzer shot that down on Thursday, with Mr. Schweitzer pointing to a decade-old comment of his: “I am not goofy enough to be in the House, and I’m not senile enough to be in the Senate.”)

A spokesman for Mr. Daines pointed to comments the senator made to Semafor on Thursday. Mr. Daines said his goal in limiting the field had been to help Republicans defend their congressional majorities by keeping Mr. Schweitzer, Mr. Bullock or Mr. Tester from jumping in and turning the race into a $200 million-$300 million contest.

“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,” he said.

Mr. Daines told Semafor he had worked with the White House to vet Mr. Alme in recent days, and was retiring because he was tired of a travel schedule that kept him away from his family — but he also said he wouldn’t rule out a future run for governor.

In his campaign announcement, Mr. Alme said, “We need proven doers who will stand up for our values without apology.” A request for comment to his new campaign email address went unanswered on Thursday.

Jeff Essmann, a Republican former president of the State Senate and former state party chair, said Mr. Alme had called him on Wednesday evening to seek his advice about his campaign and whom he should hire.

Mr. Essman recounted that Mr. Alme had said he had needed to make the decision about whether to run for Senate “in the last two or three days.”

“I encouraged Kurt to tell the truth, look people in the eye, meet the press and talk to the voters,” Mr. Essmann said. “Kurt is a good man, he’s got a good heart, he’ll exercise good judgment.”

It is not unheard-of for incumbents to keep their intentions to retire secret until the very last moment in an effort to forestall other candidates and designate their chosen replacements. But in recent years it has happened in the House, with two-year terms, not the Senate, where lawmakers serve for six years.

Representative Jesús García, an Illinois Democrat, pulled a similar move last year, dropping his re-election bid late enough that only his chief of staff was able to qualify for the election to replace him.

The maneuver drew bipartisan criticism, and Repesentative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, a fellow Democrat, pushed a successful measure to symbolically rebuke him.

On Thursday, Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez said she was similarly disgusted by Mr. Daines’s action, saying it was something a “weasel-minded person would do.”

“It’s dark and it’s sad,” she said, suggesting that the idea of politicians hand-selecting their successors felt like a throwback to medieval monarchies depicted on “Game of Thrones.”

Mr. Daines argued to reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday that his case was different than Mr. García’s because “I had the governor of Montana, both senators and the White House behind Kurt Alme.”

Days earlier, another longtime Montana Republican, Representative Ryan Zinke, announced his own retirement for health reasons. Less than an hour later, Aaron Flint, a conservative radio host, released a slickly produced two-and-a-half minute video announcing his candidacy, and quickly picked up the endorsements of Mr. Gianforte, Mr. Sheehy and Mr. Trump. But in that race, there was time for other candidates, like Mr. Olszewski, to enter before the filing deadline.

The Senate race in Montana was already expected to be unusual. Mr. Bodnar’s independent candidacy added a wrinkle at a time when some Democrats around the country, aware of their party’s damaged brand, have argued for a strategy of running independents in red states.

But in Montana, Democrats had for months urged Mr. Bodnar to stay out of the race or run in their party’s primary to avoid a three-way general election that could help the Republican candidate.

Mr. Bodnar said in an interview that he would not “be a soldier for either of these parties” if elected. And he criticized Mr. Daines’s move, saying that “Montanans are sick of these dirty political games — they’re sick of Washington insiders who trade power back and forth while Montanans continue to face higher costs.”

The Democratic brand has suffered in Montana in recent years, with Mr. Tester losing his seat to Mr. Sheehy in 2024. In recent months, Mr. Tester has frustrated some in his party by trashing Democratic messaging. Many Democrats expect him to throw his support behind Mr. Bodnar.

Reilly Neill, one of the Democratic candidates for Senate, said the switch-up “goes against our libertarian nature, to see someone make backroom deals when everybody should be a part of decision making.” But she said her campaign would focus more on kitchen-table issues like affordability.

Republicans also lost out on other potential options. Had Mr. Daines simply resigned, state law would have required Mr. Gianforte to appoint a temporary replacement from a short-list of three options provided by the state Republican Party.

Mr. Toole, the state Democrat, speculated that Mr. Daines might have wanted to circumvent that process to prevent a Republican from the hard-right wing of the party from ascending to the Senate. As Republican power has surged in Montana, the party has endured public and messy divides between its various factions.

Mr. Daines had still been raising money for his re-election campaign as recently as Monday, when he sent a fund-raising appeal proclaiming that the “fate of the Senate could hinge on my race.”

By Thursday, Mr. Alme’s face and biography had been scrubbed from the U.S. attorney’s website, replaced by a deputy. For most of the day, his sparse campaign website featured only two words — “Launching Soon” — underscoring the hastily assembled nature of his bid.

By the afternoon, it had updated to a fund-raising plea.

Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.

Kellen Browning is a Times political reporter based in San Francisco.

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