Underfunded, Alani Bankhead was facing scratch-ticket-lottery odds of reaching voters with hardly more than a whisper campaign in the final weeks of the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.
The can-do Air Force veteran and first-time candidate entered April with just $10,625 in her campaign’s checking account. The Helena resident was hitting all the speaking engagements, but she didn’t have much money for ad buys or mailers — at least not as much as opponent Reilly Neill, of Livingston, the only candidate among the four Democrats in the race with more than $100,000 to spend.
Then people started complimenting Bankhead on her ads. What ads? she said. Bankhead hadn’t realized that a newly created political committee, Progressive Vet PAC, had spent $592,000 on digital ads and mailers promoting her through Thursday.
Her fellow Democrats had noticed, and they’re crying conspiracy. Such shenanigans have been done before. The Democratic consultancy Hilltop Public Solutions orchestrated a promotional campaign by Montana Hunters and Anglers to boost votes for Libertarian Dan Cox in the 2012 Senate race, to the detriment of Republican Denny Rehberg.
Eastern District U.S. House candidate Brian Miller — not a competitor of Bankhead, but an outspoken observer of Democratic politics — launched a four-part series of video shorts on Facebook suggesting that Progressive Vet PAC’s real motive is not to benefit Bankhead. Rather, Miller said, the campaign could be designed to boost independent Senate candidate Seth Bodnar, who, in order to win the general election, would likely need a Democratic opponent willing to drop out before the November election rather than dilute the race’s non-Republican votes. Miller points out that the new PAC’s treasurer is former Democratic state legislator Moffie Funk, who had worked to elect U.S. Sen. Jon Tester in past elections.
Many of Tester’s former staff are now on Team Bodnar.
“Someone asked me about Moffie Funk. I didn’t know if Moffie was a guy,” Bankhead said of the woman who has worked on Democratic campaigns for years. “When I tell you I’m the most boring candidate on the planet, all I do is campaign and sleep.”
Miller’s videos had a combined 2,800 views by Thursday afternoon. They had been shared on Facebook and by text message by members of the “giddy up” group, a coffee klatch of Democratic Party old-timers whose most prominent member is former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer.
Schweitzer, who has endorsed Neill, has elsewhere been critical of Bankhead’s familiarity with Montana nomenclature. Bankhead had, at an April 13 debate, referred to Montana’s powerful industrialists of the late 1800s and early 1900s as “copper barons” rather than “copper kings,” a rookie mistake as bad as ordering “pastie” at the counter of Joe’s in Butte. There’s no “paste” in pasty.
By law, candidates aren’t allowed to coordinate with PACs on communications and spending. Progressive Vet can promote Bankhead, but she could no more tell the PAC to stop spending than she could tell it to start.
Progressive Vet PAC is so new that it doesn’t have to disclose its funders before the primary ends on June 2. Organizing late is a scheme that’s commonly used by PACs and candidate committees to prevent anyone from seeing whose money is being spent, or how much money there is.
Capitolized asked Funk where Progressive Vet PAC’s money comes from, but Funk didn’t say. In an email, she said the narrative on the PAC’s website “should be sufficient to understand why this endeavor in support of Alani is so important to those of us who both think she is the best candidate and who oppose the flagrant attempt by Republicans to meddle in the Democratic primary.”
The Progressive Vet PAC narrative posits a different conspiracy than the one being promoted by Miller. Progressive Vet’s website suggests that Republicans are “boosting Neill” with “mailers, texts and digital ads disguised as attacks” — a strategy ultimately (ostensibly) designed to hurt Bodnar.
Campaign finance records show that More Jobs, Less Government, a PAC that spent more than $22 million backing Tim Sheehy’s successful run for Senate in 2024, has spent nearly $282,618 on digital ads, text messages and mailers opposing Neill, according to federal election data reported Friday. PACs are required to disclose the subjects of their independent expenditures and whether they support or oppose that candidate. Those disclosures show that the PAC’s buys focused on Neill are in opposition to her campaign.
More Jobs, Less Government didn’t respond to questions left in a voicemail for this article, nor did their man in Montana, Jake Eaton, whose public affairs and political consulting firm, The Political Company, was paid $95,118 to produce text messages and mailers opposing Neill.
The Republican-meddling theory holds that More Jobs, Less Government, by calling Neill “too liberal for Montana” and suggesting she supported Kamala Harris for president in 2024, is driving Democrats to vote for Neill, and thus undermining Bodnar’s chances. Neill has publicly stated that she will not cede the race to Bodnar if she wins the Democratic nomination.
Then again, Bankhead has said the same, a pledge that takes some wind out of the sails of the Republican-meddling theory.
“Not only no, but hell no,” Bankhead said. “Please, put the ‘hell’ in the quote.”
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