Before a shocking switcheroo made Kurt Alme the presumptive frontrunner for only the state’s third open U.S. Senate seat in 64 years, he was the closest thing Montana Republicans had to a human crescent wrench: an unassuming, Harvard-educated, small-town guy, agreeable and adaptable to whatever t ask was asked of him.  The origin story of Alme’s unanticipated Senate run fits that called-upon narrative, at least as the candidate explained it in an email to Montana Free Press the morning after U.S. Sen. Steve Daines withdrew his candidacy for a third term in the final minutes before the Wednesday, March 4, filing deadline:  “Senator Daines called me at the end of last week to ask me if I would be interested in running if he were to retire,” Alme said. “Senator Daines had asked me to consider running for office in the past. I told him I would be interested. On Wednesday morning, Senator Daines let me know that he would withdraw if I would run. I then resigned my post as U.S. attorney and subsequently told Senator Daines I would run.” That March 5 communication attributed to Alme would be the candidate’s last direct communication to MTFP to date. Multiple requests to interview Alme have gone unanswered in the intervening months, even as his campaign regularly emails MTFP material about his Democratic opponent, Alani Bankhead. The fight for the race’s non-Republican vote between the campaigns and proxies of Bankhead and independent Seth Bodnar has dominated headlines this summer. Libertarian candidate Kyle Austin is also in the race. Alme, 59, meanwhile, has flown under the radar as the unchallenged conservative candidate in a state where Republicans have won all but two of the last 26 statewide or federal races.  The few public interviews with Alme were mostly published within weeks of his last-minute filing for the Senate race in early March.  Alme’s campaign events haven’t been widely promoted to the public or the press, meaning few people get to see him in action. A handful of social media videos posted by attendees of Alme’s small gatherings provide a glimpse of his campaign’s narrative.  “I think in Montana, the thing that’s most important to all of us is we get to live our faith and we get to live our conscience with the least amount of government interference as possible,” Alme told a gathering at a restaurant in Roundup 25 days into the campaign.  His campaign recounts each event with still photographs on social media and little comment from Alme or reaction from his audience.  Alme rarely comments on the current actions of the Republican Congress or President Donald Trump, who endorsed Alme in March, though he did speak approvingly of the president’s war on Iran in April. In that same interview with the Bozeman Chronicle, Alme said he intends to tackle wasteful spending in Washington, an issue raised in campaign advertising. Alme doesn’t specify which spending in particular he wants to cut.  In one interview segment from SiriusXM Patriot Radio shared by the Alme campaign, the candidate says, “Montana’s still a small enough place that people like to meet face to face, and they like to talk about issues.”  Unlike Bankhead and Bodnar, Alme has hosted no major press events.  Alme’s relative absence from the public sphere is a nontraditional approach to what has traditionally been one of the state’s most highly visible (and expensive to win) public offices, but the candidate’s quiet profile may reflect a strategic acknowledgment that Alme has little to gain from public statements and appearances.  “He’s running like a frontrunner,” said Jeremy Johnson, head of political science at Carroll College in Helena. “He doesn’t want to say too much. It’s a cautious approach.” That caution, Johnson says, recognizes not just the partisan breadth of a general election constituency, but schisms within the reliably Republican base. “Republican voters are a diverse group within the state of Montana, as well,” Johnson said. “This is a way to sort of bridge different gaps.” Without Alme making much of a public case for his candidacy, voters are largely left to refer to his website for information about his biography and policy positions. Under the site’s “About” tab, readers get to “Meet Kurt” through a distillation of the campaign’s message into four points: “Montana Roots,” “Making Life More Affordable,” “Making Communities Safer,” and “Protecting Montana Values.” Those selling points are repeated under the site’s “Media” tab, where news programmers are instructed that “Montanans watching television and streaming video online need to know that:”  Alme is running for Senate to make our communities safer, support law enforcement, make life more affordable and protect the Montana way of life. Kurt Alme is a federal prosecutor and public servant who has spent his career serving Montanans. As Montana’s top federal prosecutor, Kurt Alme was tough on crime. President Trump nominated Alme to serve as U.S. attorney, twice — because President Trump knew Kurt would stand for law and order.  As Montana’s state revenue director, Alme cut taxes and brought tax relief for Montana families. As Montana’s budget director, Kurt Alme helped deliver a balanced budget.  An endnote on the memo advises that:  “Voters react well to :15 and :30 video advertising units.  Republicans consume information on Broadcast TV, FOX News, and OTT.  YouTube video ads provide a good value for reaching voters. “OTT,” or “over the top,” refers to media delivered directly to consumers via the internet. There is a fair amount of digital advertising in the $2.9 million that’s so far been spent by independent super PACs favorable to Alme, but mailers and door hangers are doing a lot of the campaign work as well, as evidenced by the more than $150,000 paid by super PACs to the U.S. Postal Service from May through mid-August. The biggest spender supporting Alme is Americans for Prosperity Action, whose funders include the Koch family and members of the Walton clan, owners of Walmart. U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme speaks about the results of an initiative to crack down on violent crime in front of a table with seized firearms on Wednesday, May 8, 2019 at the federal courthouse in Billings. Credit: Matthew Brown / The Associated Press With the campaign itself short on details, Montanans may have to rely on their memories of Alme’s biography and resume to assess his qualifications for office. He’s the son of two educators. Alme’s father was principal at the Pine Hills Correctional Facility in Miles City. Alme is a Custer County District High School graduate. The candidate received a business degree at the University of Colorado and became a certified accountant before attending law school. Alme and his wife, Sandra, have been married for 31 years. They have two adult children. People who know and have worked with Alme personally say he’s a man with the character to do the right thing. Russ Fagg, a longtime Alme friend, former Yellowstone County District Court judge, and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in 2018, describes Alme as having a strong faith in Jesus Christ and trusting that God will guide his life.  “We need somebody back there [in D.C.] who’s not going to worry about getting reelected. I think he’s just going to go in there and do the right job and he’s not going to worry about it,” Fagg said. “There’s going to be some tough decisions. The Democrats will likely take the House. It’s likely they can impeach Trump on something, maybe legit, maybe not legit. Kurt will look at it like a judge with fresh eyes. He’ll vote based on the evidence.” Peers of Alme have suggested for several years that he run for office. Fagg said he was enlisted a few years ago by current U.S. District Judge Bill Mercer to encourage Alme to run for governor. It was Mercer who in 2003 hired Alme to be deputy U.S. attorney in the Montana district, a job that Alme kept for the entirety of George W. Bush’s presidency and into the second year of President Barack Obama’s first term. Some friends say Alme’s congenial, measured demeanor reminds them of former Republican attorney general and Gov. Marc Racicot, who had public approval ratings better than 70% during his eight years as the state’s executive in the 1990s. Racicot told MTFP during the primary that he hadn’t met Alme, but the two had a connection in Racicot’s successor, Judy Martz, who was lieutenant governor during Racicot’s second term. Alme was just 34 when Martz hired him to direct her Department of Revenue. At the time he was working for the law firm Crowley Fleck in Billings. The young revenue director also made an impression in 2001 on a Democratic state senator from Trout Creek, Jim Elliott, who would later become chair of the Montana Democratic Party. Elliott told MTFP he became quite friendly with Alme. The Democrat took the unusual move of asking if he could carry Alme’s nomination through the confirmation process. “I was impressed. I asked if I could sponsor his confirmation,” Elliott said. That wasn’t to say Elliott never disagreed with Alme. The former legislator said cuts to the upper end of state income tax rates in 2001 were harmful to Montanans lower down on the economic ladder. But he nonetheless recognized Alme as a person of integrity. Both Elliott and Fagg disapprove of the way Alme became the Republican nominee for Senate. With incumbent Steve Daines serving as a political scarecrow discouraging other Republicans from running, there was little meaningful competition in the Republican primary. But that disappointment, they say, is tempered by their high regard for Alme both as a person and a candidate — and by their belief that the real test of political office is not the campaign, but the pressures of the position — the “tough decisions,” as Fagg put it. Elliott, no stranger to top-ballot politicians, said every officeholder will face a moment when they’re asked to sacrifice their integrity. Once they agree, he said, the next compromise gets easier. “I hope he does the right thing when that time comes,” Elliott said. The 2001 legislative session was important to Alme’s future for another reason. It’s where he met current Gov. Greg Gianforte, then a tech entrepreneur seeking tax relief and a state investment in internet infrastructure from the Legislature. Twenty years later, as Gianforte assembled a staff for his first term, the governor appointed Alme as his budget director. Kurt Alme, Gov. Gianforte’s budget director, takes questions from reporters during a press conference to unveil the governor’s budget proposal in the Montana Capitol Thursday, Jan. 7, 2021. Credit: Austin Amestoy / UM Legislative News Service “The thing that’s most in Kurt’s advantage is, not only is he really smart, he’s a really hard worker,” Gianforte told MTFP last week. “My experience with Kurt is he’s not the first one in the room to open his mouth if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s a quick study. In any area where he doesn’t have much experience, he will put in the time to learn.” Gianforte, who served three years as Montana’s at-large U.S. House representative before his tenure as governor, likes Alme’s candidate resume: state revenue and budget director, U.S. attorney, fundraising director for Christian and secular charities. Alme directed fundraising for the Yellowstone Boys and Girls Ranch between 2010 and 2017. Based in Billings, YBGR operates therapeutic group homes for troubled kids, a cause Gianforte and his wife, Susan, have financially supported. Alme also managed finances for several large donor-advised funds, including the $6 billion National Christian Charitable Foundation, where he was executive vice president of planned giving. Based in Georgia, the NCCF’s charitable work in Montana ranges from adoption and anti-abortion advocacy to Christian schools and wildlife preservation. The foundation’s annual tax filing is more than 8,000 pages long. Alme’s work in the nonprofit charitable sector was bookended by his years with the U.S. Department of Justice. President Donald Trump nominated Alme to be U.S. attorney in Montana twice, first in 2017 and again in 2025. Law enforcement plays a central role in the Alme campaign’s messaging, but is also one of the few places where sources have spoken critically of his performance. The start of Alme’s time leading the U.S. Department of Justice in Montana coincided with the rise in public awareness about missing and murdered Indigenous women, an issue that was met at the time with promises by both U.S. Attorney Alme and then Montana Attorney General Tim Fox to solve a daunting backlog of murder cases and prosecute offenders. Attorney General William Barr, center, attends a Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes council meeting, Friday, Nov. 22, 2019, on the Flathead Reservation in Pablo. Sitting with Barr are Tracy Toulou, left, director of the Justice Department’s Office of Tribal Justice, and Kurt Alme, U.S. Attorney for the District of Montana. Credit: Patrick Semansky / The Associated Press Those efforts by federal and state law enforcement officials haven’t produced meaningful results, said Rae Peppers, a Crow tribal member and former state legislator who wrote laws to compel improved law enforcement, particularly on reservations where prosecution is done exclusively by U.S. attorneys. “It just feels like we’ve been spinning in circles here,” Peppers told MTFP in mid-August. “Nothing has changed.”  That critique points to the challenge of running a campaign that most voters encounter only through mailers, digital ads and social media accounts. Most voters have had few chances to raise concerns with Alme, or test the veracity of the flattering testimonials of his friends and peers. Alme remains, 71 days before a general election that’s widely expected to elevate him to one of the state’s highest-profile public offices, an all-purpose Republican better known to the insiders who’ve appointed him than to the Montanans he would represent. The post Hiding in plain sight: the low-risk campaign of Republican frontrunner Kurt Alme appeared first on Montana Free Press. ...read more read less