Until three months ago, the Republican Senate primary in Montana carried an air of inevitability. The incumbent, Steve Daines, had declared his plans to seek re-election, and no one was lining up to challenge him.
Then, on March 4, just three minutes before the candidate filing deadline, Mr. Daines made the surprise announcement that he would not seek a third term.
He did not stop there. Mr. Daines immediately endorsed Kurt Alme, the U.S. attorney for Montana, who had filed his own candidacy a mere five minutes earlier, in what appeared to be a coordinated effort to stifle competition.
It was an audacious, but not unheard-of, strategy to engineer an easy primary for Mr. Alme. By waiting to withdraw until the last moment of the qualifying period, Mr. Daines effectively denied other Republicans a chance to run, clearing the field of major candidates for his chosen successor.
President Trump endorsed Mr. Alme later that same day.
The Montana switcheroo drew widespread condemnation from Democrats and even some Republicans, who called it anti-democratic. Other big-name candidates might have run for the seat had they known it would be open.
Some wondered if Mr. Daines’s move would eventually lead to a backlash against Mr. Alme in a general election. Mr. Daines said he had been “wrestling with this decision for months.”
In another twist this year, at least some Democrats are unlikely to rally around the winner of their primary. That’s because much of the party’s leadership is backing an independent bid by Seth Bodnar, a former president of the University of Montana.
In March, Mr. Bodnar decried Mr. Daines’s last-minute shuffle as “the disgusting arrogance of Washington politicians and their party bosses” and said he aimed to be an independent voice “for every single Montanan who is sick of this broken political system.”
Montana, sparsely populated and independent-minded, has turned increasingly Republican in recent elections.
Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.
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