Montana’s Democratic Party chair resigned Monday and endorsed an independent for U.S. Senate over her own party’s nominee, saying the state party is more divided than ever weeks before the midterms.
Shannon O’Brien, who has led the Montana Democratic Party since 2025, announced she is leaving the post and throwing her support to Independent candidate Seth Bodnar in the race for the open seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.).
The Hill reported that O’Brien laid out her case in an MS NOW op-ed, criticizing both Democratic nominee Alani Bankhead and Republican Kurt Alme while urging Democrats to back Bodnar instead.
The move lands deep into a four-way contest that also includes Libertarian Kyle Austin, with November’s midterm elections only weeks away. Decision Desk HQ, The Hill’s election partner, gives Alme a 91 percent chance of winning and Bodnar 9 percent. Aggregate polling if the race had been held Monday showed Alme at 43.4 percent, Bodnar at 27.1 percent, and Bankhead at 18.3 percent.
O’Brien did not soft-pedal the break. She wrote that the Montana Democratic Party is fractured by the Senate fight and that staying quiet was no longer an option.
In the op-ed quoted by The Hill, she said:
“I’m a person with a positive outlook. I’m uncomfortable being negative about anyone, especially a Democratic nominee. But sometimes it’s impossible to stay quiet; sometimes you have to make people uncomfortable for the greater good. The winner of this race will almost certainly vote on a nominee to the Supreme Court.”
She argued Bankhead lacks the resources “or will” to win and said there are “real questions” about Bankhead’s “commitment to protecting a woman’s right to choose, her support of working people and her views of people living in poverty.”
O’Brien also claimed Bankhead “came out of the gate mudslinging at Bodnar, a decent human being, seemingly ignoring the Republican and her ideological opposite,” and added: “Democrats should ask themselves why Republicans so badly wanted her on the ballot.”
On the Republican side, O’Brien labeled Alme someone who “will be a puppet” for President Trump. She framed Bodnar as the candidate who built a campaign around fixing a Washington that “stopped working for them [Montanans] a while ago.”
Her closing pitch to party voters was blunt:
“Our solutions must be bold, and sometimes uncomfortable, steps toward positive change. The future of our state and our country is at stake. I hope all Democrats across Montana will join me in choosing the best person this year, even if he’s not from the party they were expecting.”
Bankhead answered the same day. In a statement to The Hill, she said O’Brien has worked “against the Democratic nominee since the summer” and is “using her exit to campaign for a man who never ran in our primary.”
Bankhead went further on internal party fights:
“This summer she got a legal opinion, without a vote of her own board, on whether the party could refuse to replace me if I quit, and her own board members wanted her performance reviewed for it.”
She has repeatedly refused to leave the race. In August she said, “I’ll never bow down... I am in this race to win it, and I am staying through Nov. 3.”
The race is for Daines’s open seat. Early polling cited in the report showed Bodnar could beat Alme in a one-on-one matchup. With Bankhead still on the ballot and polling third, O’Brien’s exit turns a quiet state-party transition into a public verdict on the Democratic nominee’s strength.
O’Brien’s own words put the split on the record. She said “the Montana Democratic Party is more divided than ever” because of the Senate race. A sitting state chair resigning and endorsing an independent over her party’s nominee is not routine housekeeping. It is a leadership admission that the party’s chosen candidate is not the one she believes can win or carry the stakes she named, including a future Supreme Court vote.
Bankhead’s reply paints the same fight from the other side: a chair seeking a legal opinion on how to handle a possible withdrawal, board friction over that move, and months of internal opposition culminating in a last-act endorsement of someone who skipped the Democratic primary entirely.
Voters now see the numbers alongside the personnel drama. Alme leads. Bodnar sits second in the cited aggregate. Bankhead is third. The party chair who was supposed to unify Democrats has quit and told those same Democrats to back the independent.
When a Democratic Party chair resigns and tells her own voters to abandon the nominee, the problem is not messaging. It is a party that cannot hold its line when an open Senate seat and a Supreme Court vote are on the table.
