You're right about this. I was driving through South Dakota late in the summer of 2004 -- during the peak of Tom Daschle's last campaign for the U.S. Senate before he ultimately lost to Republican John Thune.
From the billboards I saw and the sound of his radio ads, I would have sworn the guy was a conservative Republican with a 95+ rating from the American Conservative Union. I couldn't believe this was the same dope who was such an unapologetic leftist when the "Beltway Daschle" version of his persona came out in national media outlets.
Maybe it's a South Dakota thing -- I remember reading, back when Nixon utterly trounced the leftist McGovern back in '72 that the presidential campaign was the first clue SD voters had that McGovern was a liberal!