Republican Kurt Alme leans into homegrown experience in case for Senate seat

When President Donald Trump visited Kalispell for a rally last week supporting GOP candidates, it wasn’t Montana’s western congressional district — a race polling within the margin of error — that he spoke about first.

Instead, he gave a shout out to Montana’s Senate race, rated “Solid Republican” by political analysts, and shared the stage with the GOP nominee, Kurt Alme. 

Alme, a Harvard-trained lawyer, is known by colleagues as being the smartest guy in the room, but he has only worked in appointed roles — he’s a first-time politician. 

Alme was twice nominated as U.S. attorney for Montana by Trump, and he thanked the president “for being a job reference for me three times.”

“I’ve spent my entire career serving and protecting Montana families,” Alme said. “And now I’m ready to step up again to make our lives more affordable, make our communities safer, and protect our Montana way of life.”

Alme has run a subdued campaign this election cycle but is favored to succeed in a four-way race against Democrat Alani Bankhead, independent Seth Bodnar and Libertarian Kyle Austin. 

Switcheroo

Montana’s U.S. Senate race has interested political observers this year for many reasons. The Democrat in the race has barely raised $110,000 and has splintered the state party. There’s a well-funded independent on the ballot with a military, corporate and educational resume and most of the state’s high-profile Democrats on board. And incumbent Republican Sen. Steve Daines was supposed to be on the ballot. 

Daines was elected in 2014, putting a Republican in a congressional seat held by Democrats for a century. Then a U.S. representative, he benefitted from longtime lawmaker Sen. Max Baucus’ resignation to become U.S. ambassador to China, and a plagiarism scandal involving his replacement, leaving the seat without a strong Democratic successor. 

In 2020, Daines was reelected over popular two-term Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock and has been a strong voice in the Senate on anti-abortion issues, as well as public lands.

In February, Daines was the first candidate to file for reelection with the Montana Secretary of State’s Office but withdrew in the final minutes of the March filing deadline, allowing just enough time for Alme to submit his paperwork. 

Daines told Semafor in an interview that he engineered his exit to prevent potential high-profile Democrats, such as Bullock, from entering and turning it into an expensive race. 

While Alme immediately garnered endorsements from the state’s elected Republicans, the move drew ire from within and outside the party. 

Al Olzsewski, former Flathead County Republican Central Committee chairman who lost a primary for the western congressional district, said the move “betrayed the trust of all Montanans,” and inserting Alme into the seat was a “deceptive maneuver.”

Alme, whose campaign declined requests for an interview with the Daily Montanan, captured more than 75% of the Republican primary vote. 

From Montana, for Montana

Alme was born in Great Falls and graduated from high school in Miles City, and he touts his Montana roots over two of his opponents — Bankhead and Bodnar — who moved here as adults. (Austin, who polls in fourth, was also born and raised in Montana.)

While he left the state for education — Colorado for undergrad and Harvard for law school — Alme has spent his professional career in the Treasure State. He has worked in two Republican gubernatorial administrations in budget and finance, been a lawyer in private practice, and was president and general counsel of the Yellowstone Boys and Girls Ranch Foundation, in addition to his stints as U.S. attorney. 

Under former Republican Gov. Judy Martz, Alme says he spearheaded one of the “largest tax cuts in state history,” with 2003 legislation that took Montana’s top income tax rate from 11% to 6.5%, and added a capital-gains tax credit. 

Under Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, Alme served as budget director through the 2021 session, also working to secure another income tax cut. He has also said he worked to make Montana debt free, and Gianforte signed legislation doing so in 2023, two years after Alme had left his position. 

“That’s my record, and I’ll do it again in Washington,” Alme said during Trump’s visit to Kalispell. “Because we need to rein in Washington’s reckless spending to lower inflation, lower mortgage rates, so more Montana families can afford to buy a home. And we need to keep taxes low.”

Former Montana Attorney General Tim Fox, a Republican, said he was close with Martz and got to know many of her cabinet members, including Alme. 

“I was very favorably impressed with him. I mean, you talk about who’s the smartest person in the room — generally, it would be Kurt Alme, but he wouldn’t ever let you know that, or feel like he feels that way,” Fox said. “He’s a pretty humble guy, which I ascribe to probably his roots in places like Great Falls and Miles City, just being a small-town kid.”

Fox said when he was attorney general, he overlapped with Alme’s first term as U.S. attorney for about four years and got to know him more in a professional setting as both offices had similar responsibilities around crime prevention. 

Alme was a “real breath of fresh air” after previous U.S. attorneys Fox said didn’t communicate well with the state. 

“Kurt immediately reached out to me, and his people reached out to folks in my administration, and we built a lot of partnerships,” Fox said. “Kurt was the kind of guy that felt like, ‘Listen, we’re all on the same team, regardless of politics, and we all have a mission of keeping people safe and preventing crime and prosecuting criminals.’ And I thought he was just stellar in terms of how he worked across the aisle.”

Both times Alme was nominated to be U.S. attorney, dozens of colleagues and peers wrote letters of recommendation, many of whom spoke of his straightforward approach to solving problems and willingness to collaborate. 

His support crossed both sides of the political spectrum, including several Democratic state lawmakers, and spanned from local, state and federal offices. 

Those who speak against Alme do so by denouncing the political party he represents and the president in the same breath. 

“Kurt Alme was installed on the ballot by D.C. party bosses in a backroom deal, and he’s been hiding from Montana voters like he’s in the witness protection program ever since,” Abigail Tracy, a Bodnar spokesperson, said earlier in the campaign. “Alme’s campaign strategy is simple: Say nothing, show up nowhere, and let party bosses and political elites in Washington, D.C., do the talking for him.”

Alme has largely aligned himself with the national Republican platform, including saying that while he would “push for a quick and successful” end to the conflict in Iran, “we can’t vote to stop allowing weapons use against Iran.”

“I’ll never support having our sons and daughters’ boots on the ground in another forever war, but we can’t allow that regime to have nuclear weapons,” Alme said in a candidate debate. “We need to support the president, our troops, and our diplomats as they work to set back Iran’s nuclear program and work to reopen their control of the straits.”

He has also said he was originally skeptical about the tariffs implemented by Trump, but said Canada has “gone with unfair trade for too long.”

“Somebody needed to stand up and push back for a level playing field,” Alme said. “I’ll work to be sure that any deal that comes out of this not only levels the playing field, but that it also provides more trade opportunities for Montana.”

Not a two-party race

Incumbent officeholders enjoy an advantage in elections, and Alme doesn’t have one — though there is a little bit of a party advantage. 

“We do have the incumbent’s party, and Montana, I would probably characterize as like a reddish purple right now,” said Hope Dewell Gentry, a political scientist at Montana State University-Billings, who runs the school’s annual public opinion Mountain States Poll.

The last open Montana Senate seat was in 2014, when Daines flipped it from Democratic control. Before that? In 1978, when Democrat Max Baucus held the seat following the death of Sen. Lee Metcalf. 

Party advantage carries some weight, but Gentry added Alme is not “necessarily a known entity in Montana.”

“I don’t think he has the name recognition that he might hope for to give him an advantage,” she said. “Whereas Bodnar does have name advantage, but he also has name disadvantage because there are plenty of people who know him and don’t like him.”

With a four-candidate race that could splinter a large portion of the non-Republican vote, Gentry said, the winner of November’s election will only need a plurality of votes.

Alme has run a mostly quiet campaign, compared to the numerous public appearances, rallies and debates held by his opponents recently. Alme has only appeared on stage with the other candidates once — a debate held in mid-October. 

“He is campaigning as if he is in a safe place,” Gentry said. “If I was talking to him, I think I’d recommend to him to not feel that he is completely safe, especially with a lot of odd tension between the Democratic Party and the Democratic candidate.” 

Bankhead is polling third in the four-way race, with support among many traditionally Democratic-leaning groups and the majority of big-name Democrats in the state going to Bodnar.  

A fractured non-Republican voting block only helps Alme, Gentry said. 

One of the biggest things Gentry is watching for as ballots begin to trickle in is whether Trump’s recent visit to Kalispell will help turn out reliably Republican voters to boost Alme or could instead fuel a stronger protest turnout among those disapproving of the administration. 

“That’s a dangerous game when your popularity isn’t particularly high because people don’t tend to change their party affiliation,” she said. “What usually happens is if a Republican voter doesn’t feel into a Republican candidate, they’ll just stay home. But that works for the Democrats, too.”