Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight
South Dakota’s Democratic U.S. Senate nominee ended his campaign Tuesday.
“In recent weeks, my family has faced extraordinary personal challenges,” Julian Beaudion said in a written statement. “As many of you know, we experienced a devastating house fire while continuing to navigate significant personal financial hardship.”
The deadline for the state Democratic Party Central Committee to nominate a replacement candidate is next Tuesday. The party issued a news release Tuesday evening that did not say whether party leaders will pick a new nominee. Instead, the news release said the party “respects Julian Beaudion’s decision to suspend his campaign for U.S. Senate” and added that he “would have made an outstanding U.S. senator for South Dakota.”
Party officials did not immediately provide a response to South Dakota Searchlight questions on Friday evening.
Beaudion is a businessman and former state trooper. He had been receiving support from party officials, but some other Democrats had been calling for Beaudion to drop out, saying they believe the independent candidate in the race, Brian Bengs, has a better chance to beat incumbent Republican Sen. Mike Rounds. Bengs ran as the Democratic nominee against Republican U.S. Sen. John Thune in 2022 and received 26% of the vote.
Beaudion alleged in his statement that “an opponent and those associated with the opponent, hit my family and I with intimidating threats to drop out of this race.”
“Those attacks were personal and never about politics,” Beaudion’s statement said. “The mental and physical safety of my family is my priority and for this reason alone, I step aside.”
The Bengs campaign replied to Searchlight questions by sending a written statement from Bengs.
“I have never spoken ill of Julian, and I won’t start now,” Bengs’ statement said, in part. “He is a patriot and I applaud his action. We were both under a great deal of stress, but I entirely reject the notion that there was some behind-the-scenes conspiracy. Nobody has been attacked or threatened.”
The effort to force Beaudion out of the race included American Muckrakers, a website operated by a North Carolina man.
American Muckrakers published articles in recent weeks praising Bengs and sent an email to South Dakota media outlets in June containing allegations about Beaudion, with references to some of the personal struggles Beaudion ultimately alluded to in his statement Tuesday.
The Bengs campaign, in response to earlier Searchlight questions, said it has no formal relationship with American Muckrakers or its author.
Several people who spent decades working in Democratic politics had also been calling for Beaudion to leave the race. They included Steve Jarding, a former executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party; Steve Hildebrand, who was the deputy national campaign manager for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s successful 2008 presidential campaign and worked on earlier campaigns for former South Dakota U.S. Sens. Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson; and Drey Samuelson, who was Johnson’s chief of staff for 28 years.
Hildebrand had said there’s a stigma associated with the Democratic brand in South Dakota that would prevent Beaudion from winning, and Jarding said “the Democratic brand in South Dakota is dead.” They said Beaudion should drop out to consolidate votes and resources behind Bengs. Beaudion said in his statement Tuesday that he will not endorse Bengs or Rounds.
Democrats have not held a statewide office in South Dakota since January 2015, when Sen. Johnson — who was slowed by health problems — left office after opting against a reelection campaign. Rounds, a former governor, won the race for Johnson’s Senate seat and has held it ever since.
The gap between registered Republican and Democratic voters in South Dakota has widened in recent years, and Republicans now outnumber Democrats 2.5 to 1. The Democratic Party has been further subjugated by the rise of independents and voters who list no label or affiliation on their registration, who now collectively outnumber Democrats in the state.
South Dakota Democratic Party Chairman Shane Merrill, in an interview with Searchlight prior to Tuesday, disagreed with the assertions by Jarding, Hildebrand and Samuelson that the party’s brand is too damaged to win statewide elections in South Dakota.
“I find it rich that the folks that made their living off the South Dakota Democratic Party are now running away from the brand instead of trying to help build and strengthen the brand,” Merrill said. “If we would all work together, we could probably accomplish more.”
Rounds has used the Democratic feud over Beaudion to raise campaign donations, sending emails to potential donors saying “the Democrats are running a fake independent to flip my seat.”