Posted on 11/06/2002 11:54:46 AM PST by nothingnew
snip...
Mr. Daschle may have been unknown to the people of South Dakota, but at least two important groups knew him well: Big Labor and the Democratic Party hierarchy. Both First Lady Rosalynn Carter and her redoubtable mother-in-law, Miss Lillian, flew in for fundraisers. Thanks to ties he had forged in Sen. Abourezk's office, when Mr. Daschle called for funding, union leaders answered. Almost one-third of the $180,000 he raised for his campaign came from out-of-state labor unions—among the highest totals of any congressional race that year.
Demographics within the state also seemed to be in his favor. Registration records showed that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 1,589 voters in 1978—the first time the GOP had ever fallen behind in registrations, according to the secretary of state.
Still, Mr. Daschle knew he'd have to work hard to overcome his image as an untested political novice. His opponent, Leo Thorsness, was a 46-year-old Vietnam War hero who had already established statewide name recognition with an earlier campaign against George McGovern. With open races for both the Senate and the governor's mansion, there would be no popular Democrats at the top of the ticket to turn out the party faithful. If Mr. Daschle were going to go back to Washington, he'd have to get there largely on his own.
His strategy was twofold: Knock on a lot of doors, then take out a lot of newspaper ads to talk about all those doors he was knocking on. With Mrs. Daschle by his side, he tramped across the eastern half of the state for more than a year, knocking on upwards of 40,000 doors. Then, as Election Day neared, he unleashed a barrage of newspaper ads, showing him at different doors, listening to the concerns of South Dakotans.
The typical ad read like this: "For 399 days when nothing special was going on, Tom Daschle was visiting 40,000 homes in person, working hard, listening, preparing himself to serve you in Congress. He's earned your vote." With only 11 daily newspapers in the entire state, Mr. Daschle could afford to blanket the First Congressional District with ads, slowly building his reputation as earnest, hardworking, and thoughtful—in short, a serious candidate.
But would it be enough? Early returns on Election Day looked grim. Republicans swept five out of six statewide constitutional offices and won two-thirds majorities in both legislative chambers. The GOP also took the governor's office for the first time in eight years and won back the Senate seat vacated by Mr. Abourezk.
Things didn't look much better for Mr. Daschle. When the counting stopped in the wee small hours of Wednesday, Nov. 8, he trailed Mr. Thorsness by 42 votes. It looked like he would be swept away by the rising GOP tide.
Then, in a weird precursor to the presidential race of 2000, a locked box of absentee ballots was discovered in Minehaha County, home to the city of Sioux Falls—a discovery that kicked off weeks of canvasses, recounts, and court challenges. Precinct by precinct, both sides identified suspect ballot boxes, brought in lawyers, and argued over individual slips of paper.
Like the electoral equivalent of Chinese water torture, Mr. Thorsness watched his lead erode one vote at a time. A week after the election, his margin was cut to 16. The season's first blizzard buried the state in snow, and still the counting dragged on. Norman Rockwell died, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone was assassinated, Mickey Mouse turned 50, and the Rev. Jim Jones led the mass suicide of nearly 1,000 followers in the jungles of Guyana.
Thanksgiving came and went. Four days later, with the initial recount complete, Tom Daschle got his first good news: Out of 129,000 votes cast, he had won by 14. The secretary of state (who happened to be the mother of his old classmate, Lars Herseth) rushed to certify him as the winner.
But the Thorsness camp wasn't satisfied, and a district-wide recount got underway. When freshman orientation started in Washington, the outcome of the race was still so uncertain that both men showed up to get their introduction to the Congress. But even as he was learning his way around the Capitol, Mr. Thorsness was learning the bitter truth: Back in South Dakota, he was losing ground rather than gaining.
In January, when the final numbers at last came in, Tom Daschle had won by 139 votes. Still just 31 years old, he had already survived the toughest political race of his career. Uncertain how to pronounce his name, his fellow lawmakers dubbed him "Landslide." It was meant to be ironic. It turned out to be prophetic.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldmag.com ...
Ah, Miss Lillian, Jimmy Carters mother. The press on the left doted on her, we conservatives considered her as the woman with the biggest boobs in America, Jimmy and Billy.
"It doesn't matter who casts the vote as much as who counts the votes"....Joe Stalin.
Then, in a weird precursor to the presidential race of 2000, a locked box of absentee ballots was discovered in Minehaha County, home to the city of Sioux Falls—....
Four days later, with the initial recount complete, Tom Daschle got his first good news: Out of 129,000 votes cast, he had won by 14.
A weird precursor to some elections of 2002, too.
I don't think much of Senator Abourezk, for whom Daschle worked, either. From this article "Mad Daschle"
Mr. Abourezk called the Israeli government "terrorist" and consistently opposed arms sales to Tel Aviv. He called for recognition of the PLO and embraced Syrian President Hafez Assad, a major sponsor of international terrorism. (Later, during the Gulf War, the former senator even compared Israel to Nazi Germany: "Israel has been grabbing land since 1948, and I don't know how you call it self-defense.... Hitler said he took Czechoslovakia in self-defense, you know.")...there are tantalizing exceptions that suggest Mr. Daschle was more than just a rubber stamp for the senator's views. With a memo dated April 3, 1975, Mr. Daschle submitted a seven-page "statement on Kissinger's Middle East failure, for your consideration for insertion in the [Congressional] Record. While it puts the blame on Kissinger's strategy, it doesn't castigate him or blatantly put him in a bad light."
In fact, however, the statement did castigate the secretary of state, portraying him as biased, na•ve, and dangerously ambitious. It blasted America's "carte blanche policy on military supplies for Israel," and even charged that the U.S. government endangered its own soldiers for the sake of Israel's:
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