Sen. Mike Rounds scrubbed President Trump's endorsement from his South Dakota campaign homepage, a quiet change his adviser still calls a point of pride.
The “Endorsed by President Trump” banner that sat on the senator’s reelection site as early as September 22 is gone. Trump’s name no longer appears on the front page of roundsforsenate.com, and the issues page no longer cites the president on America First priorities that once included the decision to eliminate the Department of Education.
Daily Mail reporting flagged the shift after comparing the live site with earlier versions. A Rounds spokesperson did not answer that outlet’s request for comment.
Rounds’ political adviser, Rob Skjonsberg, struck a different note when he spoke with Fox News. He said the campaign remains proud of the president’s endorsement and noted that the endorsement still runs in the senator’s announcement video.
"proud of the president’s endorsement"
That is the public line from the Rounds team even as the homepage and issues copy went quiet on Trump’s name.
Rounds is seeking another term in a state Trump carried by 29 points in 2024, winning 63.4 percent of the vote. Cook Political Report still rates the South Dakota Senate seat Solid Republican.
The Democratic nominee, Julian Beaudion, withdrew on August 4. That left Rounds in a head-to-head against Independent Brian Bengs, an Air Force veteran and former Democratic candidate. The race is not the pure party-line contest many expected in a state that backed Trump so heavily.
A Zenith Research poll of 500 likely voters, taken September 24-27, showed Rounds ahead by six points, with a 4.4 percent margin of error. The numbers arrived in the same window when the endorsement language was still visible on the site, then later disappeared from the front page and issues section.
Party loyalty fights are not limited to one chamber. Readers tracking Trump’s withheld endorsement of Sen. John Thune already know how endorsement politics can reshape Senate dynamics without a single floor vote changing hands.
Rounds is not alone. Across several states, Republican candidates have trimmed Trump’s name, photo, or slogan from prime real estate on their sites.
In Florida, Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds moved the president’s name out of some of the most prominent spots. Fellow Florida candidate Mike Beltran removed several high-visibility Trump references. In Kentucky, Ralph Alvarado took down prominent Trump imagery and swapped the label “America First Fighter” for “Independent Leadership.”
Iowa Republican Joe Mitchell dialed back some of the more explicitly pro-Trump language. Texas candidate Carlos De La Cruz dropped “Trump Conservative” from a leading description of his campaign. In California, Young Kim removed Trump and “America First” references from key portions of her site, and James Gallagher took down Trump’s endorsement and photograph.
Democratic operatives are watching those edits in real time. The same opposition research machine that floods swing districts with attack ads has every reason to screenshot a homepage change and turn it into a mail piece. That is the same hardball style on display when Democrats hit Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick with Epstein-file ads and local sign crackdowns.
Daily Mail/YouGov polling cited in the coverage found 49 percent of voters saying Trump is hurting Republican candidates and 20 percent saying he is helping. The same reporting described the president’s approval rating as having fallen into the low 30s and said he has stepped up campaign activity.
Those figures are survey snapshots, not election results. South Dakota’s 2024 margin remains the hardest data point on the board for anyone claiming the president is poison in Rounds’ home state. A six-point edge in a Solid Republican seat is not a crisis. It is a reminder that an Independent opponent and a scrubbed banner can still leave a Republican favorite in command.
Cross-party moments keep cutting both ways in Washington. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s rare alignment with a Trump push on defense-contractor stock buybacks showed that policy overlap can surface even when campaign websites go silent. Procedural breaks happen too, as when House Democrats Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez broke ranks and handed Republicans another win.
Website copy is messaging. It is not a floor speech, a committee vote, or a signed pledge. Rounds’ team left the endorsement in the announcement video and, through Skjonsberg, said it is proud of that backing. The senator’s race remains rated Solid Republican after Trump’s 29-point South Dakota win.
The open questions are simple. The exact date the homepage language came down was not pinned in the reporting. Rounds himself has not issued a full on-record explanation beyond the adviser’s short remark and the campaign’s non-response to Daily Mail. Democrat trackers will keep refreshing candidate sites looking for the next missing banner.
Senate politics rarely stay neat. Coverage of Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s Minnesota gubernatorial nomination fight under a massive fraud scandal shows how fast a safe-looking party story can turn into a liability hunt. Republican homepage edits are now part of that same opposition-research cycle.
Voters in South Dakota already delivered their verdict on Trump in 2024. A missing website banner does not erase that result, and it will not draft the final script for a Solid Republican seat.