Democrats trying to unseat Republican senators in deep-red states have pursued a new strategy this year: dropping out.
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The Democratic Senate nominees in Nebraska, Idaho and South Dakota — all heavily Republican states — withdrew from the ballot after their primaries, clearing the field for independent candidates. Some Democrats hope that these moderate independents will draw enough crossover support from Republicans and centrist voters who would never back a Democrat to make the races competitive.
“We have to do things differently, or more out-of-the-box, to try and expand the playing field,” said Doug Sosnik, a Democratic strategist and former political director for President Bill Clinton.
But this strategy failed where Democrats thought it had the best chance of working: Montana. Some national Democratic groups backed independent Seth Bodnar, the leader of the University of Montana system, but Democratic nominee Alani Bankhead rejected calls to drop out before the Monday withdrawal deadline.
Bankhead, a veteran and first-time political candidate, said the strategy of running independents is a bad idea that hurts Democrats in the long term.
“If you want to rehabilitate the brand, then you do it by rehabilitating the brand, not supporting independents,” she said in an interview. Undermining the voters’ will by asking the Democratic nominee to withdraw is “highly inappropriate” and further upsets voters, she said.
Democrats once routinely held Senate seats in states that overwhelmingly backed Republicans for president. But ticket splitting, where voters back candidates from different parties for different offices, has become rarer.
No Democratic senator hails from a solidly red state anymore. Only one senator, Republican Susan Collins (Maine), represents a seat that her party has lost in the last two presidential elections.
The strategy follows independent Dan Osborn’s 2024 Senate campaign in Nebraska when, without a Democratic candidate on the ballot, he lost by seven points to the Republican incumbent while Donald Trump carried the state in the presidential election by nearly 20 percent. Osborn, a former mechanic turned union leader, is running again this year.
The decision to drop out to help independents demonstrates the growing toxicity of the Democratic Party’s brand in many states, according to strategists of both parties. Sosnik, the former Clinton aide, said the party struggles with voters who aren’t college educated and doesn’t adequately convince voters that it represents middle-class Americans.
While it is “crucial” for the party to rebuild its brand in red states, such long-term concerns are secondary to ousting Republicans, said Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank.
“Donald Trump is president now, and it’s hard to rebuild a brand in 10 minutes, and the important thing to do in this election is to have the candidate who has the most likelihood of winning,” Tanden said.
But Julian Beaudion, the former Democratic nominee for Senate in South Dakota, said in an interview before exiting the race that asking Democrats to drop out “hurts state and local parties more than it does the national brand.”
Beaudion said he suspended his campaign because of personal challenges, not to help the independent, Brian Bengs.
The independent candidates, all of whom are military veterans, tend to avoid politically divisive issues, instead focusing on popular policies and borrowing rhetoric from both parties.
Bengs and Todd Achilles, the independent Senate candidate in Idaho, and two other independent Senate candidates in Colorado and Mississippi drafted a shared set of policies that includes ending gerrymandering, reducing the national debt and imposing stronger restrictions on insider trading within Congress. They’ve been seeking to paint Democrats and Republicans as two sides of the same corrupt political establishment.
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“You can’t tell the difference between a corporatist Republican and a corporatist Dem,” Achilles said in an interview.
“They’re both taking money from the same organizations, the same PACs and so forth,” he said, adding that he would align with populist senators challenging “concentrated corporate power” including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Josh Hawley (R-Missouri). While Hawley and Warren have worked together to target large corporations, they have very different positions on abortion, gun control and many other issues.
Osborn, too, strikes a balance between traditionally Democratic and Republican policies: he advocates for strengthening social security and legalizing marijuana, but also supports targeted tariffs and lists “drain the swamp” as a policy priority.
But Osborn, Bengs and Achilles barely mention abortion, though all oppose a federal ban. They proclaim support for the Second Amendment while supporting what they call gun safety measures. They’ve all talked tough about illegal immigration but have also criticized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Republicans argue they are essentially Democrats in disguise. They support “the same socialist policies and middle-class tax hikes that made Democrats toxic across the country,” said Joanna Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the party’s Senate campaign arm.
Few nonpartisan polls have been conducted of the races in Nebraska, Idaho and South Dakota, but it’s expected to be a significant uphill battle for the three independent candidates.
Osborn has the best chance in Nebraska, having coming within single digits in his last campaign and now running in a year expected to more heavily favor Democrats. But his opponent, incumbent Pete Ricketts, is one of the wealthiest senators and has spent millions of his own money on the race.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report currently rates the Nebraska race as “Likely Republican,” and the two races in Idaho and South Dakota as “Solid Republican.” Some Democrats hope that, even if the independents fail to win, these races will drain Republican money that could be spent on other races.
Independent members of Congress usually caucus with one of the major parties. But the independent Senate candidates have insisted that they will not, instead hoping that they’d have the power to control the agenda in a narrowly divided Senate.
No elected senator in the past 50 years has declined to caucus with major parties, a move that would likely deny them seats on committees. Achilles, the Idaho candidate, said he believes he’ll have leverage to join committees if the Senate is closely divided.
“I’ll work with Republicans where it makes sense on good legislation coming from that side, and I’ll work with the Dems when there’s good legislation coming from that side,” Achilles said. “So both sides are going to have to work for my vote.”
While independents and third-party candidates have previously won Senate seats, major party nominees have historically not withdrawn from the ballot. And in no recent examples did a party’s caucus lose control of a Senate seat in a state where they were expected to be favored, as Democrats are hoping these independents can pull off.
Democrats, even before Osborn’s 2024 campaign, have tried to leverage this strategy to break through in Republican states. Independent Greg Orman lost a 2014 Senate campaign in Kansas by 10 percentage points, outperforming past Democrats, after the Democratic nominee withdrew. In 2020, independent Al Gross lost Alaska’s Senate election but did so after winning the Democratic primary and running as the party’s nominee. And in 2022, Democrats got behind the center-right independent Evan McMullin in Utah, who lost but again overperformed prior Democratic nominees.
Republicans, though, argue that voters can see through the strategy.
“People aren’t stupid,” said GOP strategist Matt Gorman. “For it to be a successful strategy, it should probably actually work, and it just doesn’t.”
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