Centrist Independent Voter endorses independent candidate Brian Bengs for the United States Senate from South Dakota.
This is not an easy endorsement. Bengs offers something we strongly support—a genuinely independent senator committed to restoring Congress as an institution—but parts of his economic program are substantially more populist and interventionist than ours.
His opponent, Republican Senator Mike Rounds, also deserves credit on two matters of particular importance.
Rounds has been a strong and consistent supporter of Ukraine. He has backed military assistance, recognized Russia as the aggressor and argued that helping Ukraine resist Vladimir Putin serves American national-security interests. On this issue, Centrist Independent Voter agrees with him.
Rounds also behaved commendably after the 2020 election. After examining claims of widespread fraud, he concluded that none would have changed the result and publicly said that Donald Trump had lost a fair election. When Trump attacked him for saying so, Rounds stood his ground: “The former president lost the 2020 election.” He later criticized Trump again when Trump suggested terminating constitutional rules in response to the election result. That willingness to put fact and constitutional principle ahead of party deserves recognition. (washingtonpost.com)
Unfortunately, Rounds’s more recent record provides less evidence of such independence.
He voted for and enthusiastically defended the 2025 reconciliation legislation commonly called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Whatever the merits of individual provisions, its fiscal consequences are difficult to reconcile with claims of serious deficit restraint. The Congressional Budget Office now estimates that the law will increase cumulative federal deficits by roughly $4.2 trillion over the 2025–2034 period relative to its January 2025 baseline. (cbo.gov)
Rounds also voted to confirm several of President Trump’s most controversial nominees, including Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services and Kash Patel as Director of the FBI. (senate.gov)
Rounds has co-sponsored the SAVE Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship for federal voter registration. Non-citizen voting in federal elections is already illegal, and the available evidence suggests that it is exceedingly rare. There is also a straightforward reason why. A non-citizen who deliberately registers or votes risks serious criminal and immigration consequences for the essentially nonexistent personal benefit of casting a single additional ballot—and in doing so creates a government record of the offense.
We therefore see little reason to impose a new documentary requirement on millions of eligible citizens, many of whom may not have a passport, birth certificate or other proof of citizenship readily available. Even modest additional barriers can discourage otherwise eligible voters from registering. (rounds.senate.gov)
Rounds has also voted against congressional efforts to terminate U.S. military operations in Iran that Congress had not specifically authorized. For an organization concerned about Congress’s long-term surrender of its constitutional responsibilities to presidents of both parties, that war-powers vote is troubling. (cbsnews.com)
Bengs offers a very different institutional approach. A Navy and Air Force veteran, retired lieutenant colonel, former JAG officer, attorney and instructor in law and government, he has made restoration of congressional authority and constitutional checks and balances central to his campaign. He favors stronger border security combined with expanded legal immigration and takes a substantially more moderate position on abortion than Rounds.
Most important, Bengs says he would caucus with neither Democrats nor Republicans. He and several other independent Senate candidates are considering the creation of a new independent caucus outside the two major parties. Bengs describes the goal as creating a “fulcrum” in the Senate that would either force the parties to negotiate with independents or force Republicans and Democrats to work with one another. (bengsforsouthdakota.substack.com)
That possibility is enormously attractive to Centrist Independent Voter. Even a handful of genuinely independent senators could reduce the power of party leadership, encourage bipartisan coalitions and insist that Congress reclaim responsibilities it has surrendered to presidents of both parties.
But our enthusiasm comes with an important reservation.
Bengs proposes a federal wealth tax of 2 percent on household wealth between $50 million and $1 billion and 3 percent above $1 billion. He also favors higher taxes on capital gains, corporations and upper-income taxpayers. Centrist Independent Voter does not support a wealth tax, and we have serious reservations about several other elements of this economic agenda. (bengsforsouthdakota.substack.com)
His health-care proposals include lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 55 and creating a Medicare buy-in option for younger Americans through the ACA marketplace. Although we share Bengs’s concern about the cost and availability of medical care, these proposals differ substantially from our market-oriented universal-coverage approach. (bengsforsouthdakota.substack.com)
Those disagreements also illustrate a danger inherent in the independent-caucus idea. If Bengs and several other independents are elected and find themselves holding the balance of power in the Senate, they should regard that result as a mandate for responsible, pragmatic government, not as a license to use their outsized leverage to pursue pet populist crusades. Their purpose should be to make Congress work better, strengthen its institutions and make bipartisan governing easier—not to substitute a new collection of ideological demands for those of the existing parties.
Independence is valuable precisely because it can loosen the grip of the two parties. It should not become merely another vehicle for ideological politics.
On balance, we believe Bengs’s commitment to political independence, constitutional government and a more functional Senate outweighs our substantial disagreements with parts of his economic program.
Centrist Independent Voter endorses Brian Bengs for the United States Senate.