Why some Dems back independent candidates for Senate

If Democrats want to win control of Congress in the midterms they need to win races in places they haven't won for a while. What will it take for Democrats to find success in Republican held areas? Today on the pod we go to Montana and Nebraska where Dems are trying two different approaches and ask whether either will work. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamer Geeth, I cover politics. I'm Barbara Sprent, I cover Congress. I'm Sam Greenglass, I cover Congress. And Sam let's start in Montana. You spent a week reporting there, really tough assignment. I know, perfect. A handful time of the year. You know, today people think of this as a solidly Republican state but it wasn't that long ago that it was more purple. Yeah, I mean Montana has fairly recently elected candidates, democratic candidates for governor and it was until 2025 that Montana had a Democrat serving in the US Senate. There's a real history of ticket splitting in this state but in recent years especially since the Biden era it has become a lot harder to describe Montana as a purple state. You know Montana is also home to a really interesting center race at the moment. You know, we typically think of when we think of spoiler candidates, we think of like an independent running who is siphoning votes away from one of the two main party candidates. And in this case, actually the spoiler label has been ascribed to the Democrat running. It is a race in which the three candidates that seem to be receiving the most support are Republican, Democrat, and Independent. And the Independent is polling much better than the Democrat. And so the sort of typical political gravity here is kind of flipped in which the Independent, Seth Bodner who used to be the president of the University of Montana, he is outpolling the Democrat there. And it's brought a lot of division within the Democratic Party in the state because you've got really prominent former Democratic leaders of the state who are getting behind the Independent. You've got others who are still supporting the nominee of the party. So it's a very sort of raucous time in the state as it comes to the Senate race too. So Barbara, you did travel to Nebraska where there is also an independent candidate running for Senate. That one though with the support of the Democratic Party. So what's going on there? Yeah, I mean, another red state that had a Democratic Senator a bit longer ago than Montana, I think it was 2013. The last time there was a Democrat in the Senate from there. But in some ways, the dynamic really is kind of the opposite of what the race looks like in Montana because, you know, from early on the Democratic Party in the state decided that Dan Osborne was their guy. They wanted to support him. They thought he had the best chance of beating incumbent Senator Pete Ricketts. And that took a lot of twists and turns because they had to put someone in the primary who then had to be honest with voters from the beginning. Like, I want you to vote for me in the primary. And then I will drop out of the primary to clear the path for the independent. I imagine one reason that you are seeing independence in these states that are redder states is that the Democratic Party brand is not in a good place. So what did you hear about that? Yeah. So, Tam, I talked to so many voters at an Apple festival, a scarecrow festival, a homecoming game for the University of Montana. And something I heard again and again, even from Republican leaning voters who maybe were feeling some frustrations about Trump's second term, is that despite that, they were not feeling compelled to vote for a Democratic candidate or to give Democrats control of Congress because the brand has become so toxic in places like Montana, especially since the Biden era when we had the pandemic and the beginnings of inflation. And that is not just bouncing back really quickly. I wanted to drill into this a little bit more though. So I went to see Senator John Tester, former Senator John Tester, who was a Democrat elected to the Senate from Montana, but lost in 2024 in this era that we're talking about. And so I went out to his farm in this place called Big Sandy and he reminded me that it wasn't always this way. The where you're standing right now in 1960 was pretty damn blue because these were the children of homesteaders in the Great Depression. They understand the role government played. Look, before my grandfather died, he said it wasn't for FDR. We wouldn't be on this place. Tester is saying that Democrats now have an opening because of frustrations over the war in Iran, because of tariffs, because of prices of diesel, and there might be some opportunity to remind voters of that legacy in this new era. Barbara, when it comes down to it though, these are independent candidates. But are they independent candidates or are they just like Democrats pretending to be independent candidates? Well, I mean, you have hit on the thing that Pete Ricketts in Nebraska is kind of branding his whole campaign against Dan Osborne by saying he's a secret Democrat. Obviously, this is much harder for Osborne to refute because he's gotten support from the Democratic Party in the state. And I asked him, like, is this harder in some ways? Like in some ways, it's a two-way race, which is great. You don't have the spoiler thing that is the dynamic that we see in Montana. But is it harder because there isn't an actual Democrat running to refute this idea that you are the Democrat running? And he said, yeah, like, it does make it a lot harder. So when I talk to voters there, you know, they run the gamut. But I certainly encountered people who were very suspicious of the idea that any independent is a true independent. But don't you have to caucus with a party to be assigned to committees, which is like a key part of being a member of Congress? Non-cochasing members typically don't get standing committee assignments, although both candidates, uh, Bodner and Osborne have said that they believe that they will be placed on on committees. But beyond that, uh, Bodner, Osborne and the other two independence running in Idaho and South Dakota are very bullish about the fact that gone are the days of these like massive majorities in the Senate. You know, what we'll probably see is a narrow majority. And so when you've got a narrow majority, every individual vote really matters. Their theory of the case is that they will wield significant power and in both parties needing to do outreach to them in order to get their votes. I will just note that when Angus King, independent of Maine ran, he also insisted there was no way he was going to caucus with a party and he caucuses with the Democrats. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we will have more in a moment. Welcome back. And Sam, you went to Montana to look at a house race that could offer yet another playbook for Democrats trying to compete again in rural places away from the coast. What does that race look like? So, Tam, this is a giant congressional district. I should say first, it runs some like 400 miles from Yellowstone National Park all the way up to Glacier National Park. And the Democrat running here is a former smoke jumper. These are elite teams of wildland firefighters for the U.S. Forest Service who basically jump out of airplanes to fight fires in these really remote forests. And what's different about this candidate, Sam Forestag is a, he's 32 years old, b, he's running on that working class background and c, he's running as an economic populist. I asked him what that meant to him and one of the things he told me is that it's been really frustrating to hear Democrats seem to just stumble on this concept of affordability as like an election strategy in the last year or so. When for him and many of the people he knows in Montana, the cost of living is something that they have been talking about all the time for years now. We don't change this by giving a new term to what we change this by changing who's actually in those damn rooms. Because we've got a lot of people who've been sitting in those offices for 10, 20, 30 years and nothing has changed. I'm going to answer to people like the kid I was growing up whose belly is full because of food stamps. It does not feel like that's who Congress is answering to right now. And I should say the dog that you heard in that tape unclear how he's voting. And so what you're hearing from Forestag there is saying that both parties have not got in this right and he's calling for new people to sweep into Congress and change things. Yeah and I will just note that President Trump came to Montana to campaign which is a sign that even if this is a little bit of a long shot, it's not such a long shot that the president didn't feel like he needed to show up in campaign. I mean and like not to bring it back to Nebraska, but President Trump also came to Green Island, Nebraska to do a rally there. And I think it just it's another sign of bringing the president to places that you wouldn't normally think he would have to campaign. But also Dan Osborne, I've met him, Sam Forestag. They, you know, not to borrow a term from the president, but they both come from central casting, you know, a smoke jumper. You don't get much more iconic than that in Montana. You know, like Dan Osborne is a steam fitter. He campaigns in casual clothes and I am not talking polos. He's wearing work shirts much at the time. Yeah. And I mean, I think this is a large part of why the the Democratic Party in Nebraska was so excited to get behind Osborne because they just felt like there wasn't someone that they could run who they felt would connect with working people more and have a better shot at defense. feeding the Republican running. And so that is part of the calculus that you see. - So Sam, as you say, you have talked to so many voters. Did you get a sense of whether this is effective? Is this just, you know, the bad environment that Republicans are facing, oil prices being high, tariffs, all the things? Or is there something about these candidates? - Yeah, so I think at the end of the day, a lot of this race will come down to who shows up. But there are a lot of independent voters in Montana. And so peeling off some folks who may be have voted for Republicans in the past and are now open to considering Democrats will certainly be a part of the equation. And I did meet some of those people. One of them was Nick Babcock. He's a male carrier. He voted for Trump three times. And he told me he was overall pretty happy with Trump's first term. But then I asked him how about now? - The second term is the exact opposite. That we have seen a complete betrayal of every campaign promise it was made. It just feels almost like a slap in the face. My hero was Charlie Kirk. And he would listen to absolutely anybody and absolutely I'm willing to change my mind. - So Babcock told me he showed up to a four-stag town hall. And he felt like four-stag is someone who also knows what it's like to punch a clock just like him and feels like he might actually take on the establishment and do some of these things that Babcock wants to see from Congress and he hasn't seen yet. And so he says he's voting for four-stag. How many of those people are actually out there and how much role they will play in shaping this toss-up race by election day, that we'll have to wait and see. - I mean like populism is universal. - I mean so much of what we're hearing in so many of the races that I've covered this cycle and I'm sure you have as well, is it's almost less about left versus right versus moderate in some ways and about anti-establishment versus status quo throw these guys out. And I think that is gonna be maybe the prime dynamics shaping a lot of these toss-up races this year. - Yeah, somebody I was talking to recently described it as like top versus bottom. Like it's not left right. It's like the elites and everybody else. So I do wanna zoom out because Democrats have been criticized for abandoning rural places or just not being able to talk to those voters at all. How do they respond to that? - Yeah, this is something I talk to Democrats a lot about. And I think broadly Democrats would say that their policies have not abandoned these voters, that they would help these voters, but that the message and the messenger has not been great. And I think there's an acknowledgement that the criticism of the Democratic brand, particularly in the places that Sam and I just went to, but certainly elsewhere in the country, it is well taken. And I talked to a Jane Club about this. She's the chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and DNC Vice Chair. - Our party should look and sound like America, not just the coast and certainly not people only from ivory tower kind of schools. So it's right that people have pushed back on our brand. It is a problem. We are working on it. - What stood out to me is she said that this is a long-term strategy. It has to be for Democrats to reinvigorate their brand, to pick the right messengers to go into communities in different states. But I also think that she said sometimes what that will look like is a Democratic party in a state getting behind an independent as they did with Osborne in Nebraska. And sometimes it will be fielding their own candidate in the primary. And that's just something that the states will have to decide really on a case-by-case basis going forward. You know, something else, Cleb, told us that really stuck out to me is that she finds it so frustrating when she hears Democrats say, you know, the only way to have a durable Senate majority is to like kill the filibuster or restructure the whole Senate that it's unfair that rural places like Nebraska get two senators while California also gets only two. She says the more sensible answers that Democrats have to compete in more places. You know, she reminded us that not long ago as we've been talking about places like South Dakota, Iowa and yes, Montana, Nebraska, they had Democratic senators and it is possible to return to that kind of environment once again, if Democrats invest the resources to do it rather than just competing every year in the same couple of swing states. - Well, any part of it is that the Democratic base has changed in the last decade or two. That Democrats have gotten far more of the college-educated white voters that used to be Republicans. And those people now have a louder voice in the Democratic party and in the Democratic base. And that language of the ivory tower, as she called it, is just not the same as the language or the lives that people are living in different parts of the country or in more rural areas. All right, well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith, I cover politics. - I'm Barbara Sprent, I cover Congress. - I'm Sam Greenglass, I cover Congress. - And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast. (upbeat music)