Independent U.S. Senate candidate Brian Bengs managed to get some national attention for his campaign by getting on CNN Sunday. He still didn’t say the one thing we must hear from a true opposition candidate—”Impeach Donald Trump!”
But Bengs did directly challenge Rounds’s attack line, that Bengs is just a Democrat disguised as an independent, by asserting that independence is his true stripe:
JEFF ZELENY: You ran for Senate in 2022 as a Democrat, but this year you’re running as an Independent. Are you really an Independent or worried about the Democratic brand in your state?
BRIAN BENGS: Well, I’m actually worried about good government. I was — I registered as an Independent when I turned 18. So back when George H.W. Bush was first running for president. And I registered as a Democrat to run as a Democrat when I saw that the party was setting up to let John Thune, the current majority leader, or the United States Senate, just coast to reelection, seemingly with no competitor.
So I thought somebody had to do something, and I was somebody. And, you know, I took the reins.
ZELENY: But you are running with the backing of the Democratic Party, which helped push out your former Democratic rival. Does that cause any suspicion among voters about what side you align with?
BENGS: Well, the — Mike Rounds is going to try to portray me as a Democrat. And I would note that I’m not running with the backing of the Democratic Party in the sense that they have formally endorsed me. They have declined to endorse me.
So, there’s plenty of Democrats that are unhappy with me because as you point out, like, oh, you were a Democrat.
I was an Independent in disguise. You know, Mike Rounds is going to try to lay me a Democrat in disguise. But I’ve been an Independent with the exception of the 13 months that I registered to run as the Democratic nominee.
Learned quite a bit then and more confident than ever that Independents is the answer to fixing what ails America [Brian Bengs, interviewed by Jeff Zeleny, CNN: Inside Politics, 2026.08.16].
But Bengs can’t bank on absolute independence as his pitch point. He’s depending on other indies to win Senate seats and form their own power bloc:
ZELENY: I mean, you are one of several candidates in the Midwest and the West running as an Independent. And you say that you hope to deny a majority to either party. What do you mean by that?
BENGS: Yes, because the Senate is so closely divided between Team Red and Team Blue, if you can get just a handful — a handful of Independents in there that denies either team a majority, then we become the fulcrum through which if you want to move anything through the Senate, you’re going to need it, need us. And there’s going to be a price for that.
And we want good government reforms. For example, a national ban on gerrymandering would be something that we would pursue.
But the other opportunity would be if Team Red and Team Blue would work together, which they will not do, they could bypass us, but that would be a win unto itself.
ZELENY: So you’re saying if Democrats narrowly won the majority, you would not caucus with them?
BENGS: No. I plan to caucus with the Independents. And right now I’m not planning to vote for majority leader for either John Thune or Chuck Schumer, because at this point, I’ll probably vote for Dan Osborne.
ZELENY: But that means that you would give up your committee seats potentially as well. Is that an argument that you have to make to South Dakota voters that this could effectively water down their representation in the state?
BENGS: No, I’m actually going to water up their representation in the state, to turn a phrase again, by virtue of if we get multiple Independents into the United States Senate, we become the power bloc.
So it is a new concept that we’re trying to sell here. And if I was just running by myself and me alone as an Independent, yes, you would be right. But because there are more, and I anticipate more of us will be elected then we become the power bloc [Bengs, in Zeleny, 2026.08.16].
Brian Bengs is an independent, but in this Senate race, independent is a complicated label.