Independent Bengs Has Money-Momentum in Senate Race Against Rounds; Democrat Beaudion Does Not

Sioux Falls democracy advocate Julia Natvig says independent U.S. Senate candidate Brian Bengs can give incumbent Trumpist Republican Senator Mike Rounds a serious run for his money but needs weak Democratic candidate Julian Beaudion to bow out:

A May 2026 poll by Emerson College shows Mike Rounds has only a 31.8% approval rating. Former university professor and military veteran Brian Bengs is running for the job as an independent. A Bengs-Rounds race could be very competitive — if only the Democratic candidate would step aside.

Exactly this situation is happening in our southern neighbor, Nebraska. The Independent candidate is seen as having the better chance, so the Democrat is pledging to step aside. That needs to happen here as well. South Dakota Democrat Julian Beaudion is a fine person, but his campaign contributions have been meager and his website shows a dearth of policy proposals — in fact, none at all. Even Rounds’ campaign website is lean on issue specifics.

Bengs, on the other hand, is a U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force veteran, former JAG officer, former university law professor, and former park ranger, running on a platform of accountability, transparency, ethics, and leadership that puts South Dakotans first.

His website outlines specific policy positions for government accountability, overhauling the health care system, immigration and border security, protecting Social Security and Medicare, unrigging the tax code, holding the Supreme Court accountable, establishing Congressional term limits, protecting and serving veterans, balancing the budget, paying down the debt, targeting and eliminating corruption, and other issues [Julia Natvig, “Allow Independent Brian Bengs to Go Head-to-Head with Mike Rounds,” South Dakota Standard, 2026.05.23].

Natvig’s mention of fundraising gets me wondering: is Bengs really better positioned financially to take on the Rounds juggernaut than Beaudion?

According to campaign finance reports, yes, Bengs is handily beating Beaudion in raising money.

Both Bengs and Beaudion launched their campaigns and started raising money in the second quarter of 2025. Each challenger has submitted four quarterly reports plus this month’s pre-primary report. In each reporting period, independent Bengs has raised more money than Democrat Beaudion:

	Bengs	Beaudion	Rounds
2025 Q1	—	—	337,056.87
2025 Q2	77,542.44	61,082.32	413,095.91
2025 Q3	76,628.11	67,245.94	510,835.18
2025 Q4	161,158.37	32,277.68	369,959.79
2026 Q1	235,337.61	30,542.04	465,111.66
2026 Pre-Primary (4/1–5/13)	97,486.70	17,333.90	206,781.01
Total Raised	648,153.23	208,481.88	2,302,840.42
Cash on Hand 5/13	58,151.87	3,043.22	2,657,275.98
Amount Spent This Cycle	590,001.36	205,438.66	1,515,593.51

Incumbent Rounds is still by far the fundraising champ in South Dakota’s U.S. Senate race. He entered the race with $1.87 million in the bank, has added six figures every quarter, and as of May 13 had $2.66 million on hand. Rounds could stop raising money now, burn up all of his cash on hand, and still outspend Bengs and Beaudion combined, even if both of the challengers matched their best quarterly fundraising paces for the remaining five months of the campaign.

But look at the challengers’ contrasting momenta. In their first two quarters of campaigning, Bengs held only a slight lead over Beaudion in fundraising. But Bengs’s bank boomed in the last quarter of 2025 and grew again in the first quarter of 2026, while Beaudion’s income crashed. In the first three months of this year, Bengs raised three times as much as he did in his first quarter of campaigning, while Beaudion raised only half of what he did during his launch quarter.

These contrasting trajectories look even worse when we view each challenger’s fundraising as a percentage of the incumbent’s:

	Bengs/Rounds	Beaudion/Rounds	Beaudion/Bengs
2025 Q2	18.8%	14.8%	78.8%
2025 Q3	15.0%	13.2%	87.8%
2025 Q4	43.6%	8.7%	20.0%
2026 Q1	50.6%	6.6%	13.0%
2026 Pre-Primary (4/1–5/13)	47.1%	8.4%	17.8%
Total Raised	28.1%	9.1%	32.2%
Cash on Hand 5/13	2.2%	0.1%	5.2%
Amount Spent This Cycle	38.9%	13.6%	34.8%

After two quarters in which neither challenger managed to raise even a fifth of what the incumbent was taking in, Bengs has upped his game in three consecutive reports to raise almost half what Rounds is raising. Meanwhile, Beaudion has fallen to raising less than a tenth of Rounds’s haul in each reporting period.

To look at the candidates’ financial performance another way, compare the first column in the percentage chart—Bengs cash as a percentage of Rounds cash—to the third column—Beaudion cash as a percentage of Bengs cash. In the three most recent FEC reports, by percentages, Bengs has come closer to Rounds in income than Beaudion has come to Bengs. If campaign cash matters at all, independent Bengs has a better chance of upsetting Republican incumbent Rounds and winning the Senate seat than Democrat Beaudion has of beating Bengs and winning second place.

An independent challenger raising almost half as much as an incumbent Republican is huge. According to Open Secrets, in the three U.S. Senate races in 2024 in which challengers beat incumbents, average spending by the winning challenger was only 29% of average spending by the losing incumbents. That doesn’t mean Bengs has it in the bag: in 2024, 21 incumbent Senators won reëlection over challengers who spent an average of 47% of the incumbent campaign-spend. But in those rare instances where challengers manage to beat incumbents, spending 29% of what the incumbent is bringing in can make for a viable campaign.

Bengs so far has spent 38.9% of what Rounds has spent on the 2026 campaign. Beaudion has only spent 13.6% of what Rounds has spent. Bengs is raising more money each quarter, while Beaudion is raising less. Bengs has the momentum to put up more yard signs, billboards, and broadcast ads, go to more fairs and rallies, ring more phones, and drive more people to the polls. Beaudion does not.