The worse story the ""Argus Leader" has had to run. They were really in the tank for Daschle. I suspect we get as much joy out of this race as we do out of Bush's.
THUNE WINS
By KEVIN DOBBS, JON WALKER AND TERRY WOSTER
Argus Leader
published: 11/3/2004
Late results clinch victory
John Thune emerged from a tumultuous and divisive race against Sen. Tom Daschle with a narrow but solid 51-49 percent advantage early today, ending the Senate minority leader's quarter-century run in Washington and giving Republicans their biggest Election Day victory outside of the presidential contest.
Thune led by about 9,000 votes at 3 a.m. today, with 99 percent of precincts reporting.
It marks the first time that a Senate party leader lost a re-election bid since 1952. More important, it retires Daschle's 26-year career, which began with a 1978 election to the U.S. House. Daschle rose to national prominence when he became Democratic Senate leader in 1994.
Thune supporters gathered at the Ramkota Hotel, packing its exhibit hall and cheering loudly for the winner as he prepared to address them at about 3:20 a.m.
"All right South Dakota! It's time. Thank you all very, very much," Thune said to raucous applause. "Today, the voters of South Dakota spoke, and I am enormously grateful that they have given me the opportunity to serve as their next United State senator."
The race is among 34 nationwide involving contested Senate seats. Republicans went into Election Day holding 51 seats to the Democrats' 48. There is one independent. A series of retirements - five Democrats and three Republicans - means there will be at least eight new members of the Senate. Republicans hoped to widen their majority, and they did. The GOP took Democratic open seats in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Louisiana. By 1 a.m., Republicans were assured of 52 seats.
All eyes were on South Dakota, though, as the race here would either solidify Daschle's position as the nation's highest-ranking elected Democrat or redefine the way business gets done in the Senate, Republicans said. Daschle's rivals say he has worked tirelessly to obstruct President Bush's domestic programs and served as a menacing mouthpiece for Democrats opposed to the White House's handling of the war in Iraq.
It was the year's most expensive Senate race, costing the campaigns more than $30 million.
Daschle spent a nervous evening watching returns on TV from his room in the Sheraton Hotel in Sioux Falls with his wife, Linda, his mother, Betty, his three children and two of his brothers. Dressed in a blue shirt and slacks, he sat on the couch and laughed with the others, but showed the weariness of a politician whose career was in trouble.
At Daschle's election-night headquarters at the Sioux Falls Convention Center, a crowd of nearly 500 cheered with spirited enthusiasm when early returns showed their candidate with a 52 percent to 48 percent lead. But the mood mellowed when the race tightened and then swayed in Thune's favor late Tuesday.
"I still find it almost impossible to believe a senator with Tom Daschle's stature and influence is going to be thrown out of office. He's probably the most influential senator South Dakota's had in Washington or ever will have," said former U.S. Sen. George McGovern, sensing the ominous mood in the room.
Daschle, 56, emphasized throughout his campaign the power his leadership position affords.
The three-term senator said he put South Dakota's needs on the national agenda and brought home federal money for everything from a library in Brandon to subsidies for farmers. By contrast, Daschle's campaign tried to sell Thune as a would-be Senate rookie who would start from scratch in Washington, standing at the back of a long line come appropriations time, fighting for crumbs and costing South Dakota immeasurable losses in federal spending.
"A leader in the Senate is a big plus for South Dakota. If we lose his leadership spot, South Dakota's going to suffer," said Paul Hasse, 70, a retired Vermillion businessman who backed Daschle.
But Thune was markedly more aggressive compared with his campaign against Johnson in 2002. He repeatedly told voters that Daschle has spent too many years in Washington, that he has lost touch with the values of a majority of South Dakotans and that his leadership duties force him to advance a national liberal agenda that doesn't sit well at home.
Thune accused Daschle of blocking Bush's federal judicial nominees and cited the minority leader's decision to oppose the president's Medicare prescription-drug plan for seniors.
In a "Meet the Press" debate in September, Thune stood by an assertion Daschle emboldened the nation's enemies by criticizing President Bush before the invasion of Iraq.
Sen. Johnson said Thune and his supporters ran an unfair campaign, attacking the lobbying work of Daschle's wife and the senator's commitment to the Catholic Church. "They've been questioning his marriage and his religion. It has been a terrible thing, unprecedented in our state," Johnson said. "I always thought Christianity was about clothing the naked, feeding the hungry and housing the homeless. I think the Thune campaign has been unrelentingly negative and has distorted the Daschle record almost beyond belief."
But Thune stuck to a campaign theme that touted his rural upbringing and maintained that, unlike his opponent, he embodies South Dakota's core values.
"I will put South Dakota first every single day, with every single vote," Thune said today.
That starts with a pro-life stance on the abortion issue and continues with a fiscally conservative platform aimed at creating long-term solutions for problems like the extreme poverty on South Dakota's Indian reservations. Thune said Daschle has for years thrown taxpayer money at the tribes, yet the senator has managed only to provide band-aids for decades-old troubles such as soaring unemployment and woefully lacking health care.
"It's about what you believe about marriage. It's about what you believe about abortion, and all the important issues," said Elizabeth Dutton of Sioux Falls, a Thune supporter.
Moreover, the former three-term congressman, originally from Murdo, said he would work as an ally to Republican leaders yet remain "an independent voice" for South Dakota, parting company with his own party if it were in South Dakota's best interest.
Thune said that with Sen. Johnson, a Democrat, in the early stages of a six-year term, it would be wise to balance the political makeup of the South Dakota delegation.
A majority of voters appeared to agree - and that it meant more than the clout Daschle said his minority leader position gave him.
Thune, 43, became a household name in South Dakota during his six years in the U.S. House. He was first elected in 1996.
Thune first gained attention within the Republican party when he worked as an aide to U.S. Sen. Jim Abdnor in the Senate. He later worked for the U.S. Small Business Administration when Abdnor headed the agency.
Daschle won his first race for Congress by beating Leo Thorsness by 139 votes in 1978 to earn a seat in the House of Representatives. He won three more House races, then successfully jumped to the Senate by defeating Republican Jim Abdnor by a 52-48 percent margin in 1986. Daschle won easy re-elections to the Senate in 1992 and 1998, by nearly 2-1 margins over Charlene Haar and Ron Schmidt.
"I think South Dakota recognized it was time for the kind of change John was talking about it," said Torrey Sundall of Sioux Falls. "John Thune represents more of South Dakota. He is still an original South Dakotan and thinks like we do."
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