Sunday, Jul 6, 2008
The tax cut, judiciary nominations, environmental policy and defense strategy could all come down to a Senate race in the fifth-smallest state in the union.
Oct 21, 2002 | How much is at stake in the dead-heat Senate contest in South Dakota? With the Democrats' one-seat Senate majority their only weapon against the Republican-run White House and House of Representatives, this one race, in a farm-belt state with a population half the size of Phoenix, could determine the future of the federal judiciary, defense spending, environmental policy and President Bush's $1 trillion tax cut.
It is also a face-off of major proportions: Bush, a frequent and popular visitor, versus the favorite son, Senate majority leader and possible 2004 presidential candidate Tom Daschle. Not surprisingly, the two topics defining this race are the same ones that both those men are obsessed with: Bush's aggressive stance against Iraq, and Daschle's focus on the faltering economy.
Which makes the race particularly odd is that it pits two candidates -- Sen. Tim Johnson, the Democrat, and Rep. John Thune, the Republican -- whose positions on those key issues are strikingly similar.
Johnson, a one-term Senate incumbent, voted for the use of force in Iraq. So did Thune, the state's only member of the House. Johnson voted for President Bush's tax cut; so did Thune. Johnson supported a multibillion-dollar farm bill to help struggling South Dakota ranchers and farmers who have been hit hard by drought; so did Thune. But by the time Election Day has come and gone, close to $20 million will have been spent by supporters of the two, trying to highlight their differences.
Thune is trying to focus voters on the war in Iraq and concerns of national security; Johnson is pointing voters toward the sluggish economy, appealing directly to ranchers hit hard by the state's crippling drought. And neither wants to be seen as anything but an earnest politician with middle-of-the-road ideals.
For Johnson, that has meant avoiding charges that he might be some kind of liberal. While the National Journal calls Johnson's voting record "mostly liberal," Johnson's campaign spokesman, Dan Pfeiffer, paints him as a moderate voice in the Senate, comparing him with conservative Democrat Zell Miller of Georgia, whose siding with the Bush administration frequently infuriates his Senate colleagues. "When the White House goes looking for Democrats on a vote, they go probably first to Zell Miller and then to Tim Johnson," Pfeiffer says.
And previously high marks from liberal groups have been falling. The League of Conservation Voters, for example, gave Johnson a healthy 88 percent on their 1998 scorecard. Last year, that score fell to a barely passing 63 percent. (That's still higher than the big fat zero Thune received from the group, which caused the LCV, along with the Sierra Club, to launch televised issue ads attacking Thune's environmental record.) But Johnson's campaign has persisted in trying to keep some distance from the enviros; Pfeiffer made a point of referring to Johnson's "less than stellar Sierra Club rating" and specified that the campaign had not sought an endorsement from the group. (Which it got anyway.)
And while Johnson has a mixed record when it comes to supporting labor unions, organized labor is expected to wage an aggressive get-out-the-vote campaign in the state on Election Day. If Johnson has tried to downplay his political support on the left, Thune has tried to reach beyond his strong support from the right. His initial rise in state politics, as an underdog candidate for the House in 1996, was buoyed by support from religious conservatives in the state, and Thune's voting record in the House reflects that support. He has cast votes in support of school prayer and the posting of the Ten Commandments in government buildings, helping him receive a 92 percent score from the Christian Coalition.
But on one of the most important issues to South Dakotans, Thune has clashed with his conservative colleagues. While Republicans from Bush on down have limited drought relief to the state's stricken farmers and ranchers in an effort to curb government spending, Thune has fought hard to get them assistance. His campaign points to $750 million in government money that Thune helped secure -- only a small portion of which will actually go to South Dakota. In August, Bush came to the state and told ranchers they would have to endure the drought without assistance as the federal government dealt with rising deficits and big spikes in military spending.
Get Salon in your mailbox!