Montana Sen. Steve Daines will not seek reelection, he announced Wednesday, adding to a wave of retirements in the GOP ranks.
Daines’ announcement makes him the sixth Republican senator to choose not to seek reelection in this fall’s midterm elections, joining a list that includes North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who announced his decision last year, and Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is running for governor instead of seeking a second term. Sens. Joni Ernst, Cynthia Lummis, and Mitch McConnell, a former Senate majority leader, also announced they won’t seek reelection this cycle…..
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Danies has more company…..
Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) is the latest House Republican to announce his retirement from Congress, the Deseret Newsreports.
Crazy to think that control of the U.S. Senate could come down to Seth Bodnar vs, Kurt Alme. Who ever heard of either one not long ago? I had never heard of Alme until tonight.
FYI, Bodnar is running as an Independent who will be supported by Democrats, who are not fielding their own candidate. Good move. Same thing will happen once again also this year in Nebraska.
I should correct myself. Democrats actually do have candidates running for the Senate in Montana, but Bodnar, as an Independent, is being backed by Jon Tester and is considered to easily be the strongest option to defeat a Republican which theoretically would be a little bit easier now without the incumbent Daines.
So, Democrats will eventually have to decide if they want to try to stand in the way of that in November.
I think also that if Tester knew that Daines was not going to seek reelection, he might have run again himself.
Montana now has an open House seat and Senate seat, with very late withdrawals by incumbents.
Things DO seem to be tightening Up, eh?
If Democrats have any hope of flipping Montana, their Senate candidates or eventual nominee is going to have to stand down and get behind Seth Bodnar.
The main story here besides the surprise of Daines retiring, is the dirty political trick of acting like a candidate for reelection while secretly coordinating with a replacement candidate who filed for the seat with 8 minutes left until the deadline, complete with a Trump endorsement.
What Daines has done has been done before, Dem Rep. Chuy Garcia of IL is a recent example, but it of course prevents anybody else from having gotten into the race. It will leave a lot of upset Republican politicians in Montana.
That kind of trick of last-minute filings (sometimes involving a nearly-unknown stand-in to file the election papers) is quite frequent at the state and local level in Rhode Island — and I’m sure other places, too.
It’s particularly pernicious in Rhode Island because party primaries aren’t held until September, 7 or 8 weeks before the November general — as occurs in a handful of other states. This means that a challenger has to campaign during the summer when many voters are either away or paying little attention to the local news but already knows (and may previously have voted for) the incumbent. An incumbent (as seems to be the case in Montana) appears to seek re-election in order to stop anyone else from filing, and then fails to file for himself or herself but has his or her preferred choice
It’s positioning for a win anyway ya can, eh?
I think the House IS GONE from GOPer’s for Sure
Another GOPer ain’t coming back next year….
We KNOW this guy, eh?
Darrell Issa Won’t Run Again
March 6, 2026 at 7:48 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 47 Comments
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is expected to drop his bid for reelection just ahead of California’s congressional filing deadline on Friday, Axios reports.
Politico: “An ally of President Donald Trump, Issa’s decision could help Democrats win his newly-competitive district in the midterms.”