(C) South Dakota Searchlight
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Musk DOGE cuts motivate former U.S. Senate candidate to run again • South Dakota Searchlight [1]
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Date: 2025-05-02
Government cost-cutting led by billionaire Elon Musk spurred a 2022 Democratic U.S. Senate candidate to jump back into the electoral arena.
Brian Bengs announced this week that he plans to run in the 2026 election, this time as an independent, for the seat held by Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds. Sioux Falls businessman Julian Beaudion is seeking the Democratic nomination.
Bengs said his previous run as a Democrat was out of character.
“The bulk of my life I’ve been an independent,” Bengs told South Dakota Searchlight, noting that he only registered as a Democrat in 2022 to earn the organizational and fundraising advantage of party alignment.
Bengs came in second in the three-way race for U.S. Senate that year. Republican Sen. John Thune, who’s since become majority leader, got 70% of the vote, Bengs collected 26%, and Libertarian Tamara Lesnar pulled 4%.
There had been “people telling me to run” against Rounds in 2026 for quite a while, Bengs said, but “a switched flipped” when Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) came for his job.
The former Northern State University professor and retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel had moved to Hot Springs and taken a “retirement job” as a ranger at Wind Cave National Park.
In February, DOGE fired “probationary” federal employees – those who hadn’t been on the job at least a year. Court orders later reinstated those employees, though most wound up on administrative leave, not back at work.
Bengs didn’t actually lose his job in the shake-up. No one at Wind Cave did.
“We learned that they had decided they weren’t going to fire veterans,” Bengs said. “I and everybody else were veterans, so we were only spared by virtue of having been in the military.”
That was enough to put Bengs back into political mode. He resigned his position at Wind Cave as of this month.
Bengs told Searchlight he didn’t want to run as a Democrat in 2022, but that “I didn’t have the money to run as an independent.” The party infrastructure opened doors to financing (Bengs ultimately raised about half a million dollars for his 2022 campaign), but it also gave him name recognition and helped him collect a list of potential donors that “wasn’t huge, but it was something.”
“Partisanship is an addictive drug, and it’s a drug we’ve mainlined into our homes,” Bengs said, referencing political media streams. “We get it on a daily basis.”
The small list of donors he collected through his momentary wade through Democratic waters has since grown to a “multi-million” name list, Bengs said Thursday. That’s the list upon which he intends to finance his run this time around.
“If everybody on that list donates even a few dollars, then we’re in the race,” Bengs said.
If elected, Bengs said he wouldn’t caucus with Democrats or Republicans. He’d act as kingmaker, he said, by courting whatever side had a proposal aligning with his values.
“When it’s a closely divided Senate and they want my vote, I’m going to say ‘what’s in it for South Dakota?’” Bengs said.
That would be part of his pitch to the Republicans and independents who might be wary of casting a ballot for a former Democrat. He’d also point out positions like his belief that it’s time to end birthright citizenship. For those on the political left, he’d lean into support for a tax system that “favors work over wealth,” and his disgust with what he sees as the South Dakota delegation’s capitulation to President Donald Trump.
Bengs’ decision to run as an independent strikes Beaudion as opportunistic and as a telling sign. He supported Bengs in 2022 and said the two agree on some issues, but “I always have understood who I am and what I stand for,” Beaudion said.
“My campaign is for the people, and we believe the Democratic Party gives us the best chance to lead people in that way,” Beaudion said. “There has been much more of a steady hand in the Democratic Party.”
Bengs and Beaudion did speak about their respective electoral plans, with Bengs telling Beaudion he didn’t plan to run. That was before DOGE began targeting federal employees, though.
Both men will appear over the weekend at the Custer County Democratic Party’s $50-per-ticket McGovern Day Rally at Crazy Horse Memorial, as will District 32 state Rep. Nicole Uhre-Balk, D-Rapid City.
Sen. Rounds, in a statement from his campaign staff, responded to Bengs’ announcement by calling him another choice for left-leaning South Dakotans.
“It’s great that the left wing of the Democrat Party will have multiple candidates to choose from,” the statement said.
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[1] Url:
https://southdakotasearchlight.com/2025/05/02/musk-doge-cuts-motivate-former-u-s-senate-candidate-to-run-again/
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