While Brian Bengs is running as a Democrat for US Senate, it sounds as of he’s doing so very, very begrudgingly, according to this story on KELOland news today:
He announced his campaign for U.S. Senate on Veterans Day in November and said he’s running as a Democrat because state law requires a candidate to be a registered member of the same party. Independent is not a political party in South Dakota.
Bengs pointed out South Dakota’s Republican Party doesn’t allow independents to vote in their primary elections and that’s why he reached out to the South Dakota Democratic Party to seek the party’s nomination while remaining an independent.
“I was an independent up until October of last year for my entire life,” Bengs said.
…. Um…. has anyone told him that he can actually run as an independent in South Dakota, if it’s such a big deal to him? In fact, the Secretary of State has a whole page on it.
Sounds to me that he is more looking for organizational support from a political party than being independent, since he’s spending so much of his media time trying to disavow it.
**UPDATE ** I missed this ‘WTF’ comment in the story…
Facing an uphill battle with money, Bengs said he also expects to receive death threats while running for office.
Wait, what?
I’d say that comment was coming out of left field, but that’s a given. Hi, I’m running for US Senate. People are going to threaten me.
I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of a candidate intro like that, which makes me think that the democrats are going to keep candidate shopping if they can.
People in South Dakota have really took the bait that “democrats are the enemy” narrative. The reinforced talking point of that you are either a good non-RINO republican, or you are the enemy from California has gotten out of hand here. I certainly wouldn’t identify as a democrat, and would not be surprised one bit if anyone who did received death threats.