Exclusive / Daines says his stunning exit was designed to avoid ‘a very expensive’ race

When Steve Daines drove his truck across his barley field a week ago to film his retirement video, almost no one in Washington knew how painstakingly, and quietly, he was working to clear the field for his successor.

The capital found out Wednesday night, when the two-term Montana senator abruptly withdrew from his reelection race just minutes before the candidate filing deadline — preventing a last-minute contender for the now-open seat. Daines told Semafor on Thursday afternoon that his goal was clear: blocking the state’s potential Democratic candidates from the race.

“A second midterm for a president, you have natural political headwinds. And my goal here was to try to make this race as least expensive as possible, given there’s a lot of expensive races on the map,” Daines said in an interview. “This was all about preventing this race from escalating into another $200-300 million race.”

Daines worked with the White House to vet Kurt Alme, a US attorney in Montana, as his chosen heir. Support quickly emerged from the Montana Senate delegation, its governor, and President Donald Trump. He said he didn’t want to leave any time for former Sen. Jon Tester, or former Govs. Brian Schweitzer and Steve Bullock, to launch a surprise Democratic bid and sap resources.

It was a fitting maneuver for the former chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee: “Out of an abundance of caution, I wanted to try to make sure we didn’t have a very expensive Senate race with one of those three possibly in it,” Daines said.

Tester, who had already indicated he had no interest in another run, has doubts about Daines’ reasoning.

“I don’t believe that, as none of us were running. He f–ked his own party,” the Montana Democrat told Semafor.

Montana GOP Sen. Tim Sheehy’s chief of staff Mike Berg, a former Daines campaign aide, called Tester “a bitter man and a loser.”

Daines is bowing out of Washington at an arguable peak of influence, becoming one of Trump’s closest outside advisers. He had tried to recruit Alme for a Senate bid years ago, but Alme had passed because the timing wasn’t right. This time was different.

And Alme wasn’t even aware he was being vetted by the White House for the seat over the past few days. Daines was working on his own with the White House’s political team to make sure Alme would have unified support from the GOP as Daines retired.

“It was very important to me that the White House … your governor and the two senators get together and say, ‘this would be a great America first candidate,’” Daines said. “Nobody knew that I had that sign off from the White House. That was a tight hold.”

Independent candidate Seth Bodnar entered the race on Wednesday, perhaps the best chance for people wanting to defeat Alme. Daines dismissed his chances as “a liberal from Missoula, a Democrat now identifying as an independent” and said Alme would start with a big lead.

In response, Bodnar said that: “Steve Daines and Party insiders coronating their hand-picked successor and robbing voters of the ability to choose their elected representatives is exactly what Montanans hate about the corrupt politics of Washington, DC.”