Here’s quirky little data point: in the third quarter, independent Brian Bengs raised more money ($892K) for his U.S. Senate campaign than his opponent Mike Rounds ($433K) and both people running for U.S. House, Republican Marty Jackley ($289K) and Democrat Nikki Gronli ($125K), combined.
Marty Jackley’s total campaign fundraising so far, $1.72M, is pretty close to Brian Bengs’s cycle total of $1.68M. That comparison may not matter much—Jackley is running against a non-office-holding Democrat while Bengs is trying to unseat a well-warchested establishment Republican. Plus, it’s easier to get big donors to invest in flipping a Senate seat than in holding one of 435 House seats. But it is impressive to see any South Dakota independent demonstrate that he can raise as much money as a longtime Republican officeholder for Congressional race… and it is conceivable that, if Bengs deploys his cash effectively, he might get out the vote of a lot of anti-establishment independents who would lean away from the old guard and favor other outsiders (on which synergy Democrats ought to capitalize!).
But the point which I am burying here is that the U.S. House raise is shaping up much more typically than the U.S. Senate race. Establishment Republican Marty Jackley is raising goo-gobs more money than Democrat Nikki Gronli. Jackley raised more than twice as much money as Gronli in 2026 Q3. His total fundraising this cycle of $1.72M is four and a half times more than Gronli’s $386K. And as of September 30, Jackley had $1.18M in cash on hand, almost 13 times as much as Gronli’s $93K.
The arguably more depressing point is that the South Dakota Democrat running to go to Washington has raised less than a quarter of the amount the independent has raised trying to climb the other side of Capitol Hill. In Q3, Gronli’s haul was only one-seventh of Bengs’s.
On the bright side, both Jackley and Gronli report zero campaign debt. Whomever you choose on November 3, you can count on your next Representative to pay her/his bills on time.
That a divorced philanderer like Marty wants to go into a US House seat simply means he can tap into the bevy of congress groupies for hire.