Beaudion Torches the Bridge: SD Democrat's Exit Curdles Into Race, Threats, and a Named Rival

Two thousand seven hundred and thirty-six dollars. That is not the story. Three thousand and seventy-eight dollars is closer.

That second number, Julian Beaudion's cash on hand as of the week he quit, was $3,078.11, against Brian Bengs's $51,405.51 and Mike Rounds's $2,736,663.91. Broke candidates lose. That part is arithmetic, and everyone in South Dakota Democratic politics knew it. But arithmetic is not what Beaudion left on the table when he walked.

He left an accusation. Beaudion, a Sioux Falls small-business owner and former state trooper, announced on Tuesday, August 4, that he was ending his Democratic bid for the seat held by Republican Mike Rounds^1,7, and his written statement blamed a "devastating house fire while continuing to navigate significant personal financial hardship"² plus, more darkly, "an opponent and those associated with the opponent" who "hit my family and I with intimidating threats to drop out of this race."² He would not name the opponent that day. He promised the time would come.

The time came about a week and a half later. In a Substack post published around August 15, Beaudion stopped gesturing and started pointing. He tied the independent in the race to the whole apparatus: Beaudion wrote that in October of last year Bengs "began engaging with American Muckrakers, a political organization known for aggressive opposition research,"⁵ and that Bengs's campaign manager later relayed, through a friend, an allegation that people tied to an "East River White Men" effort included individuals holding senior positions within the South Dakota Democratic Party⁵. Read that twice. He is accusing his own party's operatives, not just the GOP.

And he made it about race, because he says they made it about race. Beaudion, who is Black, wrote that he was told explicitly that his race was central to the effort to get him off the ballot³. According to a South Dakota outlet that read the post, Beaudion recounted a face-to-face conversation in which Bengs allegedly said, "if you stay in the race, things will get worse for you."¹ Beaudion, to his credit, does not pretend to a smoking gun. He wrote that he has "no evidence that would justify making such an accusation, and I will not make one," but added that hearing those words right after his home burned affected him⁶. That is the honest hedge of a man who knows the difference between a feeling and a fact. Good. We hold that line too.

Here is the other side, and it is flat. Bengs responded that he had never spoken ill of Beaudion, called him a patriot, and said, "I entirely reject the notion that there was some behind-the-scenes conspiracy. Nobody has been attacked or threatened."⁴ Somebody is wrong. Both statements cannot be true. And the referee that matters is not a Substack: the cause of the house fire remains under investigation, and Beaudion, the former trooper, says he is putting his faith in that investigation³. Fine. Let the investigators talk.

Meanwhile the people who wanted a two-man race got one. The South Dakota Democratic Party, through Deputy Director Joe Zweifel, said Wednesday it would not name a replacement, leaving Rounds and Bengs alone on the ballot^4,8, exactly the consolidation that American Muckrakers, the David Wheeler outfit that had publicly called for Beaudion to withdraw, took a victory lap over⁵. And the incumbent? Rounds has been milking the Democratic feud for cash, blasting donors that "the Democrats are running a fake independent to flip my seat."³ Everybody got paid but the guy with $3,078.

Beaudion says his campaign is over but his voice is not. On the evidence so far, the voice is louder broke than it ever was funded. The receipts, though, are still with the fire marshal. Until they land, this is one man's sworn word against another's flat denial, and we say so plainly. That is the job. MUCK YOU, and prove it.