WASHINGTON — The defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) was a victory for Republicans on Capitol Hill, who had grown increasingly frustrated by his aggressive opposition to many of President Bush's legislative initiatives and judicial nominations.
After election results seesawed through the evening, Republican John Thune, a three-term former congressman, emerged as the victor early today.
The most closely watched, bitterly contested Senate race in the country, the South Dakota campaign was also the most expensive. Together, Thune and Daschle spent an estimated $35 million to $40 million to bombard South Dakotans for months with nonstop attack ads and campaign mailers.
The South Dakota fight reflected the bitter partisanship and stark divisions that characterized the 2004 elections. Daschle warned that Thune would act as a rubber stamp for Bush and the Republican leadership and, as a junior senator, would be unable to deliver federal money and vital projects to South Dakota. Thune attacked Daschle as a pillar of Washington's Democratic elite, a man out of touch with his roots.
Not since 1952, when Majority Leader Ernest McFarland (D-Ariz.) lost to conservative Republican Barry Goldwater, has the leader of a party in the Senate been defeated in a bid for reelection.
Normally, congressional leaders come from safe districts, and the opposing party does not target them. But in this polarized campaign year, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) outraged Democrats by personally campaigning for Thune in South Dakota.
Still, Democrats hoped that Daschle's stature in the Senate and his reputation among South Dakota voters for delivering federal largess to the rural, sparsely populated state would ensure his survival.
"People in that state, in South Dakota, know that Tom Daschle delivers for them," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told CNN. "Why would anyone in South Dakota ... want to give up having someone who is Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate?"
But Daschle was running in a heavily Republican state that voted solidly Tuesday for Bush. And Republicans used Daschle's stature against him, presenting him as a symbol of gridlock in Washington and of the efforts of liberal Democrats to block Bush's tax-cutting agenda.
"I've always described Daschle as the Darth Vader of the U.S. Senate, from the perspective of conservatives like me," said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a Washington-based conservative group that poured money into Thune's campaign.
