Wilmot Collins is running for Senate against incumbent Republican Steve Daines, he will announce Monday.

The entry of Collins into the race gives Democrats a mold-breaking candidate who is unlike the type that would be recruited by operatives in Washington. Collins is Montana’s first and only black mayor — a veteran, a father, and a refugee from Liberia.

Democrats have hoped that Governor Steve Bullock would launch a Senate campaign against the milquetoast Daines, but he has instead been flirting with joining the presidential field, which he apparently believes might benefit from at least one more obscure white male politician.

Collins, meanwhile, hopes that his unique profile can overcome a yawning partisan gap. Montana, while it has elected Democrat Jon Tester three times to the Senate and has a Democratic governor, is deep red in presidential years. When Collins arrived in Montana in 1994, he had spent two years and seven months navigating the United States asylum process. He’d fled Liberia’s civil war, which took two of his brothers and forced him to leave home for good. Twenty-three years later, he defeated 16-year incumbent Jim Smith to become Helena’s first black mayor — and the first black mayor in the state’s history. A Liberian refugee, elected mayor in the heart of Trump country.

The turn of events was so curious that Comedy Central’s The Daily Show sent a crew to investigate. But Collins’s strategy was simple, and it worked: Talk to people.

He knocked on thousands of doors during his mayoral campaign, he told The Daily Show. And he’ll do the same as he sets his sights on the Senate; he plans to visit at least 90 percent of the counties in the state. “Some of the counties have not seen any representative for years and years and years,” he said in an interview with The Intercept. “So they don’t have an opportunity to question their representative. With my running, with my getting in, they will have that opportunity.”

As he did during his mayoral campaign, he’ll stay away from typical partisan talking points and is still fleshing out what his platform will look like. He’s wary of the way Washington does politics. And that may work in his favor.

When Collins won his mayoral race, the local Helena Independent Record ran a headline that a “progressive ticket” was sweeping the Helena City Commission. The mayor’s seat is nonpartisan, and Collins plans to stay away from divisive party-aligned rhetoric in his Senate race. “My message is not gonna be red, blue, pink, yellow. It’s gonna be for the people of the state,” he told The Intercept.

If Collins can gather the support to beat Daines, who won with comfortable margins in his 2012 House race and 2014 Senate race, Montana would again have two Democratic senators. The race opens up another avenue for Democrats as they work to retake a majority in the Senate, depending on the results of 2020 races.

Collins has lived in Montana for 24 years. And the issues he’s experienced firsthand and heard about from fellow Montanans aren’t new. “I decided to jump in the race because I think I understand the people. I am the people. And I don’t think our representative is adequately representing us,” he said.