Democrats Can't Win In South Dakota. Senate Candidate Brian Bengs Gonna See If An Independent Can.
Odds instantly went from 'dream on' to 'long shot.'
South Dakota is nobody’s idea of a blue state. It has zero statewide Democratic officeholders. You could fit all the Democrats in both houses of its (tiny) state Lege into a 9-seat Sprinter van and still have room for some luggage. (The 96 Republicans would need at least two charter buses). The last time the lower Dakota elected a Democrat as governor was 1974, when Yr Doktor Zoom was 12 years old and living in Oregon (and back when that state still occasionally elected Republicans).
Brian Bengs wants to see if running as an independent for US Senate is the way to escape the seeming curse of a “D” after your name on the ballot. Bengs is a veteran of the Navy and the Air Force, a former professor at Northern State University, and currently works in what he calls a “retirement job” as a ranger at Wind Cave National Park. That’s directly related to his decision to challenge the incumbent Republican, Mike Rounds, who’s running for his third term in the Senate.
Bengs ran as the Democratic candidate against John Thune in 2022, and got the traditional thumping for a Dem in South Dakota, with 26 percent of the vote to Thune’s 70 percent. Libertarian Tamara Lesnar got the other four percent. Bengs decided to try another Senate run last spring, when Elon Musk and DOGE eliminated tons of jobs in the national parks, throwing the entire parks system into chaos.
Bengs’s own job wasn’t threatened, but he says “a switch flipped” when the DOGE cuts hit one of the parts of the government that almost all Americans love, regardless of their politics (We’ll leave out the far-right weirdos who think national parks are a sin against private property).
With his independent Senate run, Bengs is actually part of a red-state trendlet started in 2024 by Dan Osborn, whose indie campaign in Nebraska put a real scare into establishment Republican Deb Fischer. Osborn is running again, this time against Pete Ricketts, and they’ve been joined by Todd Achilles, a former Democrat who’s running as an independent in Idaho. The three candidates even have a group chat where they compare notes and share ideas.
Bengs is betting that this might be the year when enough South Dakotans decide that they’re tired of the lockstep partisanship that supports massive cuts to services that make life better, and mindless support of the violence being inflicted on Americans by ICE and DHS, led by former South Dakota governor and cosplay enthusiast Kristi Noem.
The Cook Political Report rates the South Dakota Senate race “Solid R,” noting that there had been “some buzz that Sen. Mike Rounds may try to get his old job as governor back,” what with Kristi Noem winning hearts and minds everywhere in her new job as DHS secretary. But nahh; Rounds formally announced his Senate reelection campaign late last month, describing himself as a “Reagan Republican that votes with President Trump 99% of the time.” Ew.
Just days ago, Bengs called out Thune and Rounds for their willingness to go along with the “lawlessness and violence demonstrated by ICE,” which he said has been the top issue voters want to talk to him about during his most recent statewide road trip to collect petition signatures to secure a place on the ballot.
Bengs noted that that campaign trip started right after Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, and that he’d received “a text from my law school roommate, distraught at the Alex Pretti killing. He asked me a question that I would come to hear many times on the trail, and one that I’ve been wondering myself: ‘What can we do?’”
That answer isn’t likely to come from the state’s current, comfortably settled Senate delegation, who have a steady supply of big-money donations and little motivation to curb the violence, let alone fix the American immigration system.
This question is so hard to answer because the systems our nation relies upon are failing. Career politicians in Washington twiddle their thumbs and give half-answers while voters ask why common-sense stuff can’t get done.
Bengs’s position on the out-of-control behavior of DHS in our cities is perfectly in tune with what most Americans say in polls:
Nobody is opposed to arresting violent criminals. It’s breaking car windows of non-criminals, using 5-year-olds as bait to lure adults, and shooting citizens in the back and face that has prompted Americans’ anger.
Bengs last month said the many illegal aspects of Trump’s abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro could make for “a multi-day seminar” in law school, but added it could be summed up as a “blatant violation of the rule of law,” both in terms of the US Constitution and international law. By contrast, Rounds proudly voted against the War Powers resolution that would have required Trump to seek permission for action in Venezuela, insisting that “South Dakota is safer because of what we’re doing down there to stop drugs from trafficking,” as if that made any damned sense at all.
On his campaign website, Bengs calls for a fairer tax code, for getting money out of politics, and hell yes, a public option for healthcare, as well as rolling back RFK Jr’s attack on science. And in a nice change from the generalizations you see on most campaign websites, every item on his “issues” links to a longer essay where he goes into detail on what he’d support.
Yr Editrix suggested we take a look at Bengs because she was impressed by his fundraising emails, and how many candidates can you say that about? If you’d like to send a few Ameros his way, here’s his campaign site!
[Brian Bengs on Substack / Politico / South Dakota Standard / South Dakota Searchlight / Bengs for South Dakota]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if you’d like to make a one-time (or recurring) donation to support our 2026 Senate race rundowns (and the best damn snark in politics), then here, have a button:
As long as he promises not to wear a hoodie to the Senate floor, I'm good.
This article has people named Rickettes and Achilles.