Lost Leader

Daschle vs. Thune

Anatomy of a High-Plains Senate Race

by Jon K. Lauck

Oklahoma, 304 pp., $24.95

It seemed almost a miracle. Tom Daschle, the South Dakotan who rose to lead the Democrats in the Senate, performed perhaps his greatest political feat in 2002, when he worked and schemed, cajoled and threatened, and eventually dragged to victory Tim Johnson, the Democrat running for South Dakota's second Senate seat.

That 2002 race had almost everything a political junkie could want. A razor-thin finish of 524 votes. A lead for the Republican, John Thune, that disappeared hours after the polls closed in a flurry of questionable ballots from the Indian reservations. A threat of lawsuits, a roar of outrage from the Republicans, a smug victory announcement from the Democrats--and presiding over it all, the elfin figure of Tom Daschle, smiling like a mischievous sprite as he coerced donations, manipulated the political machines on the reservations, and pulled his candidate home.

Funny thing: Tom Daschle's worst political error came during that same campaign, for it was on Election Day in 2002, as he celebrated his friend's victory, that Daschle began the campaign that would end with the loss of his own Senate seat two years later. He saved Tim Johnson, but along the way, he infuriated voters in a Republican-majority state, created a subculture of bloggers determined to bring him down, and freed to run against himself the hungriest, most-attractive young Republican candidate in the state. If Thune had beaten Johnson, Tom Daschle would still be a senator today, for the Republicans had no one else with much chance against him. Instead, Thune lost to Johnson in 2002--and then sent Daschle down to defeat in 2004.