HELENA — Montana’s airwaves may not have seen the same level of political advertising they have in recent election cycles, but with the June primary fast approaching, the amount of spending is rising quickly. Now, a sudden burst of advertising has impacted the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, focusing attention on two of the five candidates – and neither one is happy about it.
“Whether it benefits me or not, it's not good for democracy at the end of the day,” said Alani Bankhead.
“Montanans don't like people to tell us what to do – we really don't,” said Reilly Neill.
(Watch the video to see more of the outside advertising in the primary.)
The blitz of outside spending in the primary began last month, when mailers and digital ads from the group American Leadership Fund told voters to “call Reilly Neill and tell her: Your policies are too liberal for Montana.” The group had previously put out ads touting Republican Senate candidate Kurt Alme as a “proven conservative.”
Neill, a former state lawmaker from Livingston, says many of the people who saw the messages did call her, but to complain about the advertising and express support for her campaign. She says she saw the ads as an attempt to stop her campaign before the general election.
“There must be a poll that says that Reilly is going to not just win the primary, but be a force to be reckoned with in the general election – and that's true, and Montanans on the ground know it,” she said.
Since then, a group called Progressive Vet PAC has been putting out digital ads, mailers and TV ads supporting Bankhead, calling her a fighter against the “MAGA agenda” and highlighting her career in the military and law enforcement.
Meanwhile, the committee More Jobs, Less Government has begun running TV ads, again saying Neill is “too liberal,” and claiming Bankhead is a “conservative Democrat” who agrees with President Donald Trump on immigration. Bankhead says that’s a misrepresentation.
“Anybody that suggests that I'm going to support the current immigration policy, which is counter to our constitutional liberties, is mistaken,” she said. “So absolutely it is influencing and creating a lot of that confusion.”
This week, Bankhead called on Alme to denounce those ads. More Jobs, Less Government is a “super PAC,” which is allowed to raise and spend unlimited money on campaign advertising, as long as the expenditures are independent – not endorsed by any candidate and made with no coordination with a candidate’s campaign. However, the committee – which describes itself on its website as “working to recruit and elect strong Republicans who champion conservative values” – has previously supported Republican Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy in their campaigns.
“We're calling on Alme to tell Daines to knock it off, to stop allowing dark money to come into our elections,” Bankhead told MTN.
More Jobs, Less Government’s federal organizing paperwork also lists Daines Senate Majority Fund and Team Alme as joint fundraising representatives.
Progressive Vet PAC’s treasurer is Moffie Funk, a former Democratic state representative from Helena. In its initial campaign filing, which covers through the end of April, the only money it reported receiving was $200,000 from American Values Project PAC. That committee, in turn, reported getting its funding from Jason Carroll, a founder and partner with Hudson River Trading, a large quantitive trading firm.
Neill says it shows millionaires and billionaires are trying to knock her out of the race in the primary – she believes, because of positions like her opposition to data center development.
“The Montana people do not want this,” she told MTN.
The amount of money these outside groups are spending in the Democratic primary is dwarfing what the candidates themselves are spending. Neill has spent by far the most of the Democratic Senate candidates: $216,464 since the start of 2025. Bankhead’s campaign has reported spending just $11,306 directly.
Tribal historic preservation officer Michael Black Wolf has spent $25,616, businessman Michael Hummert has spent $3,191, and arts administrator Christopher Kehoe has reported spending just $80.
Meanwhile, according to a federal election database, as of Thursday, More Jobs, Less Government had reported $695,979 in independent expenditures against Neill and for Bankhead. Progressive Vet PAC had spent $961,626 in support of Bankhead and against Neill.
American Leadership Fund’s ads, which didn’t explicitly encourage voting for or against a candidate, are not included in the Federal Election Commission’s database on independent expenditures.
Eric Austin, head of the political science department at Montana State University, said it makes sense for groups wanting to make an impact on the election to start spending in the primary, when the competition for airtime isn’t as heavy and costs of advertising are lower.
“As much as we all dislike negative campaign ads, the evidence suggests pretty clearly that they work in terms of enabling voters to distinguish between candidates,” he said.
Austin said, in a primary race without a well-known statewide political figure like Sen. Jon Tester or Gov. Steve Bullock, these ads may be trying to define candidates before they get the chance to do it themselves.
“Then these kinds of strategies work better, because everybody is a sort of low-information voter – or a lower-information voter than they might be if all the candidates have name recognition,” he said.
Neill says she doesn’t believe the ad blitz will make much of an impact on primary voters – especially since many have already made their decisions. As of Friday, the Montana Secretary of State’s Office reported 118,595 voters had already returned their absentee ballots.
“It saturates a market that gets exhausted by it; people just turn it off, mute it, move on,” said Neill. “Montanans, we're pretty sharp.”
Bankhead says she hopes voters with questions about what they see in the ads will reach out to campaigns directly to get answers – and pay attention to where the messages are coming from.
“We've been doing everything we can to educate and empower Montana voters, to let them know that it's really important for them to look at the bottom of the mailers and the ads to see who's actually sponsoring it,” she said.
