Democratic candidate Julian Beaudion is dropping out of the race for U.S. Senate, and the gracelessness of his exit underscores the goodness of this riddance.
In a Facebook post analogizing his failed campaign to the Apollo 13 mission (an attempt to cast his failure as heroism so laughable I won’t dignify it with deconstruction), Beaudion says his family experienced a house fire and ongoing “significant personal financial hardship”. But he says the only reason he has quit the campaign is that “an opponent”, whom he cowardlily does not name, threatened him and his family:
After the fire, an opponent and those associated with the opponent, [sic] hit my family and I [sic] with intimidating threats to drop out of this race. Those attacks were personal and never about politics. The mental and physical safety of my family is my priority and for this reason alone, I step aside. This is a time for my family to heal and for South Dakota voters to choose a Senator. Not [sic] a time for me to talk of specific threats and attacks. But rest assured that time will come [Julian Beaudion, FB announcement of campaign termination, 2026.08.04].
Superfluous comma, incorrect pronoun case, sentence fragment… this is a time for someone to proofread Beaudion’s text.
This is definitely not the time for Beaudion to talk of specific threats and attacks. That time was last month or whenever those attacks happened, when Beaudion was still campaigning, when he could have put those allegations and whatever evidence he has to support them in public view to warn voters that independent Senate candidate Brian Bengs—and come on, Julian, we all know you mean Bengs, since incumbent far-frontrunner Republican Marion Michael Rounds had everything to gain by keeping you in the race and splitting the anti-incumbent/anti-Trump vote and nothing to gain from helping Bengs push you out—is a real S.O.B. who shouldn’t hold public office and that Beaudion is the kindly, upright alternative. But insinuating now, with that alternative gone, that Bengs is a meanie only moves votes from Bengs to Rounds. Beaudion ran to unseat Rounds, so the only logical and graceful action for him to take is not to slag Bengs but endorse him.
But Beaudion slams that door on his way out:
Let me be clear, I will not be endorsing or supporting Brian Bengs in this race [Beaudion, 2026.08.04].
Beaudion says he can’t support Senator Rounds either:
Likewise, I cannot support Senator Mike Rounds. After years in Washington, South Dakotans [sic]—
—sorry, I gotta break here to explain this Beaudionian inattention to grammar. An introductory phrase should describe the subject that follows it. Beaudion is thinking of Mike Rounds’s years in Washington, but he doesn’t write what he’s thinking. He jumps ahead and makes his subject “South Dakotans”, who have not spent years in Washington. To accurately express his thoughts, Beaudion should have written, “After years in Washington, Mike Rounds blah blah blah.”
Let’s look at that blah blah blah:
…After years in Washington, South Dakotans [sic] continue to struggle with rising costs, limited access to healthcare, challenges facing family farms, and communities that feel increasingly forgotten. Our state deserves leadership that confronts those challenges with urgency and courage.
I believe South Dakotans deserve a better choice than the one that remains before them [Beaudion, 2026.08.04].
Note how punchier that line could have been with Mike Rounds as the subject: After years in Washington, Mike Rounds has failed to fix rising costs, dwindling access to health care, challenges facing family farms….
In addition to not writing grammatically or well, Beaudion here seems to give South Dakotans a lot more reasons to vote against Rounds than against Bengs. Beaudion alleges evidencelessly that Bengs campaigned hard against him, which doesn’t really hurt anyone or anything but Beaudion’s feelings, but he says Rounds has let a bunch of real policy problems fester and hurt all South Dakotans.
South Dakotans deserve a choice. They deserve the best possible Senator, one who will solve their real policy problems. If Beaudion believed that he was the best man to solve those problems, he should have stayed in the race. By leaving the race, he leaves South Dakotans a choice between Mike Rounds and Brian Bengs. The choice for anyone who backed Beaudion is crystal clear: Mike Rounds is a feckless toady for Trumpist tyranny, and we must rally behind anyone—Democrat, independent, naturalized Martian—who will stand up against that tyranny and work to make South Dakota and America better.
But Beaudion forgets about putting South Dakota first and instead gives priority to his personal pique at Brian Bengs for running a better campaign and hoovering up the majority of opposition campaign cash that Beaudion hoped to get his hands on but failed to earn.
Priority #1 for every patriot should be taking the Senate away from King Don. Priority #1 for candidates who can’t do that themselves should be to tell their supporters to rally around other candidates who can. Priority #1 for Julian Beaudion is to tell his supporters, Brain Bengs was mean to me, and “rest assured the time will come” for me to get back at him, so don’t vote for anyone and let Mike Rounds win.
Julian Beaudion wasn’t helping fight Rounds and Trump with his ineffective campaign. He isn’t helping fight the real problems facing this state and this nation with his personal pettiness toward Brian Bengs. Beaudion’s graceless exit seals the argument that he was out of his depth running for U.S. Senate.
Good riddance… and vote for Brian Bengs.