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October
17, 2002, 9:00 a.m. By Jon Lauck |
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late August South Dakota Republicans were wincing. It looked like the
state that had voted GOP for president every year since 1968 (including
1972, when one South Dakota senator, George McGovern, ran) could reelect
Senator Tim Johnson over its star Republican congressman John Thune. But
after slogging through a late summer nadir, the Thune campaign has returned
to form. Recent polls show Thune up by five points.
The Thune surge was sparked by a television commercial, no mean feat in a state deluged by statewide ads for races from the U.S. Senate to the School and Public Lands Commission. The ad shows Thune in his hometown of Murdo, population 679, with his father, a World War II vet who built the local church, and his mother, the high-school librarian. It shows him in front of Thune Hardware, making an NBA-range three-pointer with his former Jones County high-school basketball coach, slinging hash at the diner where he used to cook, and ends with his college-sweetheart, wife Kimberly, who's from Doland, population 306. The ad is as South Dakota as Mt. Rushmore and pheasant hunting, and easily cut through the monotonous din of tit-for-tat prescription-drug and Social Security ads.
The debate over the Dirty Thirties-level drought which had drained South Dakota ranchers' watering holes and scorched farmers' fields has also passed, minimizing the effect of President Bush's clumsy handling of drought aid when visiting Rapid City in August. Thune and the secretary of agriculture tapped discretionary funds within the department of Ag to bring some relief. Checks should land in rancher mailboxes this week. Johnson has been trying to horn in on the heroics, though, running radio ads in drought-stricken areas about helping to pass drought aid in the Senate, which is completely unrelated to the relief secured by the Department of Ag. Even though he takes credit for the aid, Johnson decries it as a "drop in the bucket," a tactic straight out of Clinton's obfuscation/triangulation handbook. The Senate aid Johnson takes credit for is stalled, by the way, because western senators want the same exemption from environmental regulations that Majority Leader Daschle slipped into the bill for South Dakota forests.
A recent televised debate in Sioux Falls also went poorly for Johnson, who showed up in a yellow tie and hiking boots. Johnson slipped out of his "I'm a nice, harmless Democrat like Tom Daschle" mode and into Gore-esque condescension and belligerence. In long, confusing responses, Johnson frantically tried to explain his vote against the Gulf War and his decision to sue President Bush 41 to stymie the deployment of American forces, echoing Senator Daschle's Senate floor conniption fit about "politicizing the war" the week before. In the midst of his backtracking, Johnson was met with the latest vanguard of the antiwar Left, led by Barbara Streisand and Susan Sontag, demanding that Democrats stop vacillating and oppose the war. It doesn't help Johnson that his co-plaintiffs when suing the president to stop the Gulf War included coasty liberals such as Ron Dellums, Barbara Boxer, Barney Frank, Charles Rangel, and Pete Stark, in addition to Jim "Beam Me Up" Traficant and the "Baghdad Three."
Johnson's much-vaunted effort to troll for votes on the state's Indian reservations also appears to be coming unraveled. On October 10th, a Rapid City television station reported that
In a massive organized investigation the FBI, the U.S. attorney's office and the South Dakota attorney general's offices are investigating numerous complaints of voter registration fraud in several counties. Attorney General Mark Barnett said Thursday that several reliable witnesses have reported registration fraud as well as fraud in absentee ballots….In at least one possible case, a woman who died supposedly registered to vote weeks later. Also, reportedly absentee ballots have been distributed multiple times for the same registered voter and returned with different signatures. A confidential source told said Thursday that at least one person is specifically being investigated; this person is reportedly a former employee of the Democratic party.
Russell Means, the prominent Native-American activist, finished first in a tribal primary on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and told the Rapid City Journal that "if (Lakotas) all voted for the Republican, Thune, and displaced Tim Johnson, the national Republican Party would have to sit up an take notice. The Democrats take us for granted, and they only have nice words around election time."
Johnson's wheels have come off and John Thune has stayed the course and is back on solid ground. Republicans should start sleeping better.
— Jon Lauck teaches government at Dakota State University.