Candidates and committees spending in federal elections had year-end reports for 2025 come due on Jan. 31 — and those reports offer a peek at how much candidates running for office have in their coffers as primary races begin to ramp up. Mariah Thomas, your resident state politics reporter, here with a quick rundown of what those reports showed this Wednesday.
This midterm election cycle, Montana’s looking at a statewide race for the U.S. Senate, and a pair of U.S. House races. Here at the Beacon, we’ll be covering the Senate race and the western House race throughout the year. The Senate race is ranked as solid Republican by the Cook Political Report, while the western House district is ranked as likely Republican.
On the Senate side, Republican incumbent Sen. Steve Daines ended 2025 with more than $4.9 million of cash on hand — more than the five Democrats challenging him combined. Daines has drawn a Republican challenger in Charles Walkingchild, who filed his candidacy on Dec. 9, 2025, but didn’t have fundraising data to show for the past calendar year.
Of the Democratic pool angling to challenge Daines, Reilly Neill has raised the most thus far, bringing in $147,227.40 total since announcing her candidacy, with just shy of $11,000 in cash on hand. Neill, a former state legislator from Livingston, registered her Senate candidacy the day after former U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, lost his re-election bid to Tim Sheehy in 2024. She also ran for Montana’s eastern House district as a write-in candidate in 2024.
The five-way Democratic primary also includes Air Force veteran Alani Bankhead, Fort Belknap preservation officer Michael Blackwolf, Navy veteran Michael Hummert and Kate McLaughlin, a Whitefish resident who works as the treasurer for Soroptimist International of Whitefish. All have registered campaigns with the Federal Election Commission.
Combined, Bankhead, Blackwolf and Hummert have brought in $28,916.08. McLaughlin, a recent entry, didn’t have any data for the year. She filed her original statement of candidacy Jan. 17.
In the state’s western House district, incumbent Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Republican, also emerged as the biggest fundraiser. He ended 2025 with $2.8 million in cash on hand. Like Daines, Zinke outraised his Democratic challengers.
Both Russell Cleveland and Matt Rains, early entrants into the Democratic primary to challenge Zinke, filed year-end reports for 2025.
Cleveland, a Navy veteran and rancher from St. Regis, had $195,894.87 in receipts on the year, ending it with about $48,000 of cash on hand to spend. He’s been campaigning since last April.
Rains, who entered the primary in October, reported $113,774.15 in receipts, and closed out the year with $46,411.43 in the bank.
The field of Democrats challenging Zinke doubled the first week of 2026, with former gun executive and author Ryan Busse and wildland firefighter and union leader Sam Forstag entering the primary race. Busse filed his statement of candidacy Jan. 7, while Forstag’s was filed Jan. 5. Neither filed a year-end report for 2025, since they entered the race after the year was up.
But keep in mind, we’re still a long way out from the June primary and November general elections. There’s a lot of time for things to shift and change, which I’ll certainly be watching out for moving forward. I’m just a politics nerd who finds this data interesting — and hopefully you do, too. And now, the rest of today’s Daily Roundup.
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