SIOUX FALLS — South Dakota’s independent U.S. Senate candidate, Brian Bengs, said Sunday he “would probably not be here in a competitive position today” without the support he’s gotten from a new political party co-founded by a former Democrat and a former Republican.
Bengs appeared alongside the Forward Party’s CEO and one of those co-founders at a forum attended by around 60 people at Monick Yards, just east of downtown Sioux Falls. Bengs faces Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds in a race with no Democrat on the Nov. 3 ballot.
Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey and EPA administrator during the George W. Bush administration, told the crowd she helped launch the party in 2022 because she feels the current two-party system is broken.
After leaving the Bush administration, Whitman wrote the 2005 book “It’s My Party Too,” which criticized Republican moves toward social issues for boxing too many people out of the party. That “was dangerous for the country,” Whitman said on Sunday. She eventually became a registered independent. She came to believe, she said, that major parties have no incentive to turn their focus away from party loyalty and back toward working together to address the country’s problems…