Looks like Brian Bengs, who US Senate Majority Leader and Senator John Thune dispatched in 2022, is coming back to the woodshed for another whipping; this time against US Senator Mike Rounds:
Bengs for South Dakota F1N FEC by Pat Powers on Scribd
In 2022, Democrat Bengs was defeated in a 3-way general election contest against Senator Thune and Libertarian Tamara Lesnar on a vote of 69.6% – 26.1% – 4.2%.
Bengs’ challenge in this new contest is that I’m not sure people know him anymore than they did 4 years ago.
PLUS, as a former Democrat running as an independent, he will face a Democrat already in the race with Julian Beaudion having filed to be in the contest. Beaudion will absorb a large portion of the automatic party votes Bengs had received in 2022.
It will be interesting to see how he will run differently to get past the margin he received in the election this last time. Because I’m not sure the electoral math is there for him with little changed from 4 years ago, except his party.
Brian is actually has always been an independent. His views tends to be more liberal but only reason he ran as a Democrat is because he felt that was the only way to make it to the election.
Honestly, Democrats didn’t really put forth much of an effort in support of him and he knew it.
I have more respect for him if he choose to run as an independent.
Had Amendment H passed, he for now would only have to defeat the Democratic candidate to advance to November.
Why didn’t the SDDP throw much support to him when he ran?
Your guess is as good as mine.
I would guess he really wasn’t a “true” Democrat that honestly they didn’t have a candidate in their own party that was making a serious run to challenge Thune back in 2022. Remember that year, they had no challenger for Dusty in the U.S House race. the only race they were focused on was the Governor’s race where Jamie Smith ran for them. You know how that turned out.
I know that as soon as that election was over, Brian switched back to being an Independent.
Good for Brian! He would make an excellent US Senator.
Nice to have solid proven losers as a choice in the race.
Bengs is awful. He behaved inexcusably toward the SDFRW ladies during their convention in Pierre four years ago. He showed up at the Ramkota while their convention and tried to bully a sweet baby boomer into allowing him to speak. When he was politely told no, he picked another lady to bully. When he was politely but firmly shut down, and the ladies went into the meeting, he and his staff left their palm cards all over SDFRW’s registration table. Class act, right?!