The campaign finance landscape in Montana’s four-way race for U.S. Senate has been reshaped after a pop-up super PAC that spent heavily to promote Democratic candidate Alani Bankhead declared in late June that it was leaving the competition, announcing via a press release that a Democratic candid ate “does not have a viable path” in November.  Bankhead, who had raised $24,000 for her campaign by mid-May, has repeatedly said she was floored by the more than $3 million spent in advertising and phone banking by Progressive Vet PAC. It is illegal for PACs to coordinate with candidates. Nearly all of the advertising promoting Bankhead and punching down on her similarly underfunded primary opponent Reilly Neill was Progressive Vet’s.  Independent candidate Seth Bodnar and Republican Kurt Alme are both running seven-figure campaigns. And while Progressive Vets exits, other PACs are pumping advertising into the race intent to solidify public opinion by summer’s end. Another $869,000 in ads supporting Alme or Bodnar have been placed by PACs since the June primary, federal elections data shows. There’s been no PAC spending on Bankhead since June 3. When Progressive Vet PAC ads first aired, Democrats speculated the PAC had identified Bankhead as the candidate most likely to withdraw from the general election if she won the party’s nomination. Not having a Democrat in the Senate race is considered beneficial to independent Seth Bodnar, who is already supported by high profile Democrats like former U.S. Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester. Bankhead has repeatedly said she won’t withdraw. When asked by MTFP after the primary if it was sticking around for the general election, Progressive Vet’s treasurer Moffie Funk said the PAC was “discussing next steps.”  In a mid-June interview with Montana Free Press, Bankhead said her focus was on building grassroots support — momentum she said she is committed to capturing.  “Regardless of the PAC money or whatever, no candidate can run without the support of the people,” Bankhead said. “We have to scale up because it’s a bigger game.” Bodnar’s campaign in an email conversation with MTFP on Thursday addressed speculation that Progressive Vet’s exit would be beneficial to his campaign. Seth Bodnar, independent candidate for U.S. Senate, talks to prospective voters during a meet-and-greet event at Benny’s Bistro in Helena on March 7, 2026. Credit: Lauren Miller, Montana Free Press, CatchLight Local/Report for America “Seth has been crystal clear from day one: he has never asked anyone to drop out, and he has been running to win a four person race from the beginning. That hasn’t changed,” spokesperson Abby Tracy said in an email. “Seth is the only candidate in this race who hasn’t been boosted by millions in dark money, and he’s going to win because of the growing grassroots coalition of Montana Independents, Democrats, and Republicans who are sick of the broken political system that super PACs like this one represent.” Alme didn’t respond to a request for comment on the impact of Progressive Vet’s exit. Progressive Vet formed on April 27, twelve days before absentee ballots were mailed to Montana voters, and waged an ad war in the Democratic Senate primary against a Republican leaning PAC, More Jobs, Less Government, which at the time was the biggest advertiser in the Democratic primary.  More Jobs, primarily funded by billionaires in the finance and energy industries, was portraying Neill as the Kamala Harris-loving liberal out to impeach Donald Trump, while suggesting Bankhead was a Trump-friendly Democrat ready to work with the Republican president on immigration. More Jobs, which spent $22 million advancing Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy’s election in 2024, poured $1.76 million into the Democratic primary. Progressive Vet spent more than $3.3 million, according to Federal Election Commission data on independent expenditures, from May 1 through June 3, including $194,467.25 opposing Neill. To promote Bankhead, Progressive Vet didn’t just advertise — the committee made live calls to voters to boost turnout for Bankhead. Funk, Progressive Vet’s treasurer, is a former Montana legislator who resides in Helena and, like several Democrats, worked to elect Tester in past elections. The PAC’s official address was at a contract mail service in Billings. Bankhead won 44% of the vote in the five-way Democratic primary. Neill finished second with a 33% vote share. The amount of PAC spending wasn’t unusual for a multi-candidate Senate primary in Montana. In the six-candidate Republican primary of 2018, won by Matt Rosendale, PAC spending in the primary approached $4 million, federal election records show. Rather, it was the extremely poor finances of the 2026 Democratic candidates that stood out. Combined, their receipts amounted to less than $325,000, most of it belonging to Neill. Progressive Vet disclosed little about itself. Its late creation put it on a federal campaign finance reporting schedule that didn’t require it to fully disclose its funding sources until after the primary was over.  Just as cryptic was the PAC’s contractor 1912 Collaborative, a Delaware corporation created the day after the organization of Progressive Vet. 1912 Collaborative handled direct mail and digital ads for the PAC. Its director and owners haven’t been disclosed.  Progressive Vet functioned as the outer shell of a political nesting doll with two inner shells revealed so far. The first shell, disclosed in campaign finance reports, was American Values Project PAC, whose sole donor was Jason Carroll, founder of Hudson River Trading, which does algorithmic trading across several digital markets. Carroll had previously contributed to an unsuccessful 2024 Montana initiative to create an open primary election system in which only the top two vote getters advance.  The second shell was Contours Inc., which also contributed to at least three PACs promoting independent candidates this election cycle. Contours is a Delaware-incorporated nonprofit fueled by a $6.6 million grant from Global Impact Social Welfare Foundation, or GISWF, according to its 2025 tax filings.  Voters fill out their ballots during the primary elections at the Lewis and Clark Library on June 2, 2026, in Helena. Credit: Lauren Miller, Montana Free Press, CatchLight Local/Report for America GISWF, a 501(c)4 nonprofit organization whose donors aren’t disclosed, is no stranger to Montana. In 2024 the organization donated $2.3 million to Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, which succeeded in amending explicit abortion rights into the Montana Constitution through ballot initiative. The Global Impact Social Welfare Foundation also contributed $420,000 to Moving Montana Forward, a super PAC that spent exclusively on promoting Tester in 2024. GISWF is also a contributor to Sixteen Thirty Fund, which bought ads promoting several centrist Republican candidates for state Legislature in the 2026 primary. Sixteen Thirty also supports two dozen Montana social welfare organizations dealing with voter registration and state fiscal policy. In its Tuesday press release, Progressive Vet said it was turning its focus to Noah Taylor, a veteran running for Senate in Kansas. The PAC this week replaced a mention of Bankhead on its website with a brief description of Taylor, who Progressive Vet says stands a chance to win. Last week, Kansas polling commissioned by the nonprofit newsletter Capitol Bee showed that 3% of respondents identified Taylor as their choice in a field of more than a half dozen Democrats. In a statement posted to social media in early July, Bankhead said she had heard that some members of the Montana Democratic Party board of directors were supporting Bodnar rather than her own campaign. The split, she said, was only further proof that her campaign was facing opposition from a “political machine” more than a traditional partisan fight.  “This race is no longer about Republicans and Democrats,” the statement read. “[I]t has become about power, corruption and manipulation and the soul of Montana.” The post Mystery PAC that boosted Bankhead exits Senate race, leaving a financial void appeared first on Montana Free Press. ...read more read less