If you think I’m being hard on petty, graceless, and unhelpful Democratic failure Julian Beaudion, check out Sioux Falls blogger Scott Ehrisman’s blistering indictment of the now-withdrawn U.S. Senate candidate’s character:
I have warned folks in the SD Dem party he is a fraud and not real bright (trust me, the elders in the party have been sounding the alarm bells for years over Julian).
But did they listen? Nope. In fact most of the insiders in the party sing his praises because he has been to a thousand leadership conferences, and they paid for them.
I met Julian 6 years ago when he was running against Greg Neitzert for his council seat. We talked for about 20 minutes, mostly me, and I gave him the same advice I give anyone running for city offices. It’s pretty boilerplate and understandable. He just stared at me the whole time with a blank look on his face. No notes, no follow up questions. Oh, and guess what happened? He lost, big time. Granted, Greg was a popular incumbent and Julian really didn’t have much of a chance, but for Christ’s sake, at least show up for game day and make an effort.
I think he is clueless, and I think the peeps who support him are even more clueless [Scott Ehrisman, “Another Julian Beaudion Pity Party,” South Dacola, 2026.08.04].
…and Beaudion’s justification of his withdrawal from the Senate race with dubious allegations of “intimidating threats” against himself and his family from the campaign of independent Brian Bengs:
If all of this crap was going on over the past several months to you and your family, why not drop out so the Dems could replace you with a candidate? So damn selfish it is disgusting and makes me want to spit nails. And this is politician who has NEVER been elected to office and also a former law enforcement officer. If you are getting threats, there is a number you can call, I think it starts with a nine [Ehrisman, 2026.08.04].
(Not that we have to worry about the Democrats naming a replacement candidate… more on that in a later post!)
Ehrisman makes a good point. A smarter candidate faced with actual threats against his family would have sounded alarms sooner, first and foremost to law enforcement, but also in this political context in public to knock down his offending opponent. But as Ehrisman and Beaudion’s own communications indicate, Beaudion isn’t that smart.