contact: zawilliams@davidson.edu Created: 11/15/04 Updated: 12/06/04 10:30 AM |
 |
This page is part of a class assignment at Davidson College
Daschle Falls to Thune
After John Thune's shocking win over Tom Daschle in the 2004 election for South Dakota Senator, several differing theories have been offered to explain the outcome.
The best explanation for Daschle’s loss, found recently in the New York Times, is that Thune effectively persuaded the majority of Republicans in the state to return to their party (Stolberg 2004). In a state that has voted for Republican presidents for the past forty years, George W. Bush’s 22 point margin of victory over Kerry in the 2004 election proves the heavy Republican leanings of South Dakota. Portraying Daschle as a liberal Democrat who had become out of touch with South Dakota, Thune wooed Republicans back by focusing on conservative issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and gun control—all issues that a majority of South Dakotans agreed with him on (Stolberg 2004). Exit polls show that Thune's strategy worked as South Dakota voters thought moral values was the most important issue, and of that group, 81% voted for Thune (CNN.com 2004).
A less convincing explanation focuses on the Indian population and how it supposedly did not turn out in great enough numbers to give Daschle the victory (Mercer 2004). It is true that Democrats have come to lean on the Indian population for votes. In 2002, Tim Johnson’s narrow win over Thune has been largely attributed to the turnout from the Pine Ridge Indian reservation (Cohen 2004). However, while turnout in counties with a majority of Indian voters averaged only 67% compared to 79% across the entire state, that mark was a record high and turnout increased across all Indian counties from 2000 to 2002 and from 2002 to 2004 (Indianz.com 2004).
In hard fought political campaigns such as the one between Daschle and Thune, “the candidate’s desire to win must be firmly placed in the context of the public good” (Lawton and Wood 2004). Candidates should consistently stick to their principles and ethics throughout political campaigns.
In June 2004, Daschle asked Thune to join him in a pledge to ask third-party groups not to advertise on behalf of either candidate (Brokaw 2004). Ironically, the idea to prevent such advertising was originally Thune’s in the 2002 Senate race against Tim Johnson (Yoon 2004). In this race, Thune declined Daschle’s proposal and enjoyed the heavy advertising support of numerous outside groups that hammered away at Daschle throughout the campaign. While this proves Thune’s inconsistency on principles from one campaign to the next, Daschle actually disregarded his own pledge in the last week of the 2004 campaign when the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee began airing ads attacking Thune (Glazer 2004).
In this campaign, both John Thune and Tom Daschle compromised their former principles in order to try to win. In the end, each candidate knowingly benefited from those very outside groups that they had formerly pledged to disallow.
contact: zawilliams@davidson.edu Created: 11/15/04 Updated: 12/06/04 10:30 AM |
|