Democrat Julian Beaudion announced his withdrawal from the U.S. Senate race at the last possible moment: SDCL 12-6-55 allows nominees to withdraw their names from the ballot no later than the first Tuesday of August (that was yesterday, August 4) at 5 p.m. The Secretary of State’s general election candidate list indicates that Beaudion’s formal request to withdraw was received and certified yesterday.
Assuming Beaudion’s bail is not part of a long-discussed but well-concealed placeholder strategy (and we’re talking Democrats here, so the chances of deep planning are slim), Beaudion’s last-minute withdrawal leaves the South Dakota Democratic Party with just one week to replace Beaudion on the ballot. SDCL 12-6-56 allows the state party central committee to fill a vacancy created by the post-primary withdrawal or death of a statewide candidate. SDCL 12-8-6 requires the central committee to file any nomination of a replacement candidate with the Secretary of State by the second Tuesday in August (that’s six days from now, August 11) by 5 p.m. Central.
Beaudion’s petty insinuations against and explicit refusal to support independent candidate Brian Bengs would suggest an expectation that the South Dakota Democratic Party will offer Beaudion’s backers a palatable alternative. Intriguingly, the SDDP did file notice with the Secretary of State on July 20 that it will hold a second nominating convention on August 10. A do-over convention would be a good opportunity for the party to name a new U.S. Senate candidate, but the party doesn’t have to go to the trouble of calling a second convention to fill a vacancy; it just needs to get the state party central committee together. The only action requiring a convention at this point is to nominate a candidate for the one statewide office, Attorney General, for which the party made no nomination at its June 6 convention.
So the do-over convention doesn’t indicate that the Democratic Party was planning to replace Beaudion. Plus, the SDDP’s statement yesterday on Beaudion’s withdrawal says nothing about naming a replacement.
Most importantly, we must ask who if anyone the Democrats have on their bench for a surprise U.S. Senate campaign. The party already struggled to find candidates to fill its statewide slots. None of those candidates are previous statewide officeholders. Like Beaudion, its candidates for Governor (Dan Ahlers) and U.S. House (Nikki Gronli) have never before run statewide campaigns. Ahlers already felt like a last-ditch choice, stepping up from his duty as party executive director to fill a ballot spot that he and the party couldn’t recruit anyone else to tackle. To run a credible campaign, the Democrats can’t fill Beaudion’s vacancy with a first-time candidate; they need a Democrat with name recognition and built-in constituencies who could galvanize the electorate and rally all the donors whom Beaudion could not.
Who’s left for the party to throw into the Senate race and run a credible campaign?
In a dream world, the Dems would lure Stephanie Herseth Sandlin out of political retirement and away from her presidency of Augusta University to challenge Mike Rounds for his Senate seat. The former Congresswoman is the last and best-known Democratic statewide election winner in the state. Almost every Democrat backing Bengs would leap to her familiar bandwagon. But with Jon Lauck taking over the Center for Western Studies, Herseth Sandlin needs to stay in Sioux Falls to prevent Lauck from turning Augie into a bastion of Republican yahooliganism.
Another fantasy candidate would be Billie Sutton, the former state legislator who came within three percentage points of beating Kristi Noem in his inspiring 2018 campaign for Governor. The lovable Sutton has the best story of any Democrat in South Dakota and lots of cross-partisan appeal. But, like Herseth Sandlin, Sutton has sent no smoke signals since his last election defeat that he’s angling to get back into the campaign ring.
More realistically, the Democrats could ask former legislator Jamie Smith to pick up Beaudion’s baton. Smith came within four votes of winning the mayor’s race in Sioux Falls this summer. He has experience running a statewide campaign, though not a successful one, as he lost to Governor Kristi Noem in the 2022 gubernatorial race 62% to 38%. Even with those two losses, Smith may be the only Democrat with name recognition and experience in big campaigns and public office who could enter at this last minute and wage a serious campaign against Senator Mike Rounds.
But does the South Dakota Democratic Party want to wage such a serious campaign? Do they want to fight an uphill battle against both the Trump-tyranny-enabling Rounds (and we patriots all have a moral imperative to do so) and the surprisingly strong independent Brian Bengs? Or do the Democrats want to take what looks like the less-long shot, leave the ballot position Beaudion couldn’t hold vacant, endorse behind Bengs, the man who carried the Democrats’ standard against Thune in 2022, and work to unite the anti-incumbent, anti-Trump vote behind a single independent alternative?