South Dakota's Democrat Quit With $3,078 and a House Still Under Investigation

Politics has a way of finding the exact seam where a man is weakest and pressing until he folds. In South Dakota, the seam was money, a burned-out house, and a family that had taken enough.

Three thousand and seventy-eight dollars. That is what Julian Beaudion, the Democratic nominee for a U.S. Senate seat¹¹, reportedly had in the bank the week he quit, according to American Muckrakers, the out-of-state PAC that spent months hounding him to do exactly that. On Tuesday, August 4, he did. Beaudion announced he was ending his campaign, clearing the way for independent Brian Bengs to take on GOP Sen. Mike Rounds this fall.³

Here is the part that should stop you cold. Beaudion said his family experienced a devastating house fire while continuing to navigate significant personal financial hardship.² The cause of that fire remains under investigation, and Beaudion, a former state trooper, says he is putting his faith in that investigation.⁹ Then came the accusation. He alleged that after the fire, an opponent and those associated with the opponent hit his family with intimidating threats to drop out of the race.⁸ He was blunt about the arithmetic of it: I will not be endorsing or supporting Brian Bengs, and likewise, I cannot support Senator Mike Rounds.⁶

Bengs says none of it happened. The independent responded with a statement saying nobody has been attacked or threatened.⁷ Both men cannot be telling the truth. One of them is describing a campaign built on menace; the other is describing a fantasy. The fire investigators, not a press release, will settle which.

Now, the uncomfortable disclosure, because we do not hide our receipts. The effort to force Beaudion out included American Muckrakers, a website operated by a North Carolina man.⁹ That is a separate outfit run by David B. Wheeler, no relation to this publication and no shared newsroom. In June, Wheeler's group publicly called on Beaudion to withdraw, claiming he was using donor funds to pay personal expenses and hire friends and family, and pointing to court records showing debt-collection lawsuits and bench warrants for failure to appear.⁴ Those are allegations, unproven, and Beaudion has answered none of them under oath. The Bengs campaign said it has no formal relationship with American Muckrakers or its author.⁹ Convenient. Also unfalsifiable.

Beaudion, for his part, called the squeeze what he believed it was. Before he folded, he told a Washington Post reporter he considered the effort to make him drop out political extortion, and said he believed he had a chance to win.¹⁰ He does not lack for grit. In his exit statement he wrote that he knew being the first Black person in the state to take on a task like this was going to be met with resistance, and he did it anyway.¹

And who profits from a Democrat and an independent clawing at each other in a state Trump carried by nearly thirty points? Rounds has held this seat since 2015, and Cook Political Report rates it solid Republican.⁵ Better still for him: Rounds used the Democratic feud to raise money, telling donors the Democrats are running a fake independent to flip my seat.¹² The knuckleheads fought over the scraps. The incumbent passed the collection plate.

A man's house burns. His campaign account holds pocket change. He says he was threatened; his rival says that is a lie; the arson file sits open. Somebody in South Dakota knows which of those is true. Until they say so, the rest is noise, and the only winner is the guy who never had to strike a match. MUCK YOU is a mantra about accountability, so here it is plainly: light on this one, please. All of it.