For three weeks every summer, one cannot find the country's most influential Democrat in Washington, D.C. or surrounded by a phalanx of press and staff. Instead Tom Daschle can be found in the fire halls, diners, farm equipment stores or on the back roads of rural South Dakota. Daschle says he uses the unscheduled and unhurried tour to gauge what is on his constituent's minds.

For those who have followed Daschle's career, they say the tour is the state's senior senator embracing the "prairie populist" ideals that first attracted him to politics.

"Daschle's low-key, low-profile appearances at cattle auctions, health clinics and coffee shops are typical of his self-effacing approach to politics, which this year has succeeded in uniting Senate Democrats as a significant roadblock to the Bush administration's pursuit of a massive tax cut and other legislative goals," John Lancaster wrote of the tours in a 2001 Washington Post profile.

Despite his apparently humble nature and modest roots, the minority leader has used a mastery of the senate procedure coupled with a fierce belief in partisan politics to rise to the upper echelons of the Democratic Party and to unify a fractured caucus.

"Soft-spoken and self-effacing, Daschle is neither a stirring orator nor a prodigious fundraiser," Nicholas Confessore wrote in an article in the liberal American Prospect. "Although liberal for his home state of South Dakota, Daschle is just left of center among his fellow Democrats. He leads no ideological or geographic bloc, isn't really closely associated with any particular wing of the party, and, for that matter, is rather less well known than some of his more boisterous, outsize colleagues."

But when Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont bolted his party in May 2001, becoming an independent, and swung the balance of power to the Democrats, he also made Sen. Tom Daschle arguably the most influential Democrat in the country.

His ascent to political power found its beginnings in a tiny northeast South Dakota farming community. The oldest of four boys, Tom was born in 1947 in the rural town of Aberdeen to a middle-income family. His father was a decorated World War Two veteran who worked as a bookkeeper for a local auto parts store.

In his early years, Daschle excelled in academics, flourishing at Aberdeen's Central High School and feeding his growing interest in political affair at Boys State, a weeklong leadership camp sponsored by the American Legion.

In 1969, he became the first in his family to graduate from college, earning a degree in political science from South Dakota State University with the help of the ROTC program. He then entered the service, working for three years as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command in Colorado.

During his time away from South Dakota, Daschle's interest in politics appeared to only grow and when his term of service ended, he went to work in the Washington office of Sen. James Abourezk. He worked there for five years, learning the intricacies of Senate debate and fueling his own desire to run for office. When Abourezk announced his intention to resign in 1978, then-U.S. Rep. Larry Pressler decided to mount a campaign, leaving one of the state's two House seats open and giving Daschle his chance.

The campaign that followed between the 30-year-old Daschle and Leo Thorsness, a decorated Vietnam prisoner of war, was one of the closest South Dakota had ever seen. In the end, Daschle's populist message and tireless campaigning carried the day, barely. Daschle won his first campaign by 14 votes, although a recount later bumped up the margin of victory to 139 votes.

In the House, he stuck to the party line, representing farming and ranching interests and keeping a relatively low profile. But his tenure in the House would be tested four years later. Due to the 1980 census, South Dakota lost one of its two House seats, pitting Daschle against a fellow incumbent, Republican Cliff Roberts, in the 1982 election. Again, the campaign was a close one, with both candidates fighting for the middle ground. In the end, Daschle edged Roberts with 52 percent of the ballots cast.

Daschle won reelection easily in 1984, making it two successful statewide campaigns for the 37-year-old. But it was a fratricidal Republican primary for the U.S. Senate nomination in 1986 between Sen. James Abdnor and Gov. Bill Janklow that gave Daschle his next opportunity. Daschle entered the race and campaigned hard against Abdnor, who had spent much of his money and had been badly bloodied in the primary. Again it was a tight race and again Daschle managed a 52 percent to 48 percent victory.

In the Senate, Daschle closely allied himself with Sen. George Mitchell of Maine. Two years later, when Mitchell became the Senate majority leader, he chose Daschle to head the influential Senate Democratic Policy Committee, essentially serving as Mitchell's main assistant. But when Mitchell announced in 1994 he would leave the Senate, Daschle immediately organized his campaign for majority leader. But to ascend to this post he would need to leapfrog dozens of more experienced senators and defeat Tennessee Sen. Jim Sasser who had also announced he would seek the post.

As the November 1994 election approached, it appeared Sasser would win the position. But it was the year of the Republican Revolution and although Sasser had the votes to become party leader, he did not have the votes to stay in the Senate, going down in defeat to a little known surgeon, future Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

The field appeared clear for his ascendancy, although it would now be as minority leader, until several senior Democrats intervened and nearly derailed Daschle's efforts. Michael Barone described the culmination of the leadership fight in the 2002 Almanac of American Politics.

"Connecticut's Christopher Dodd immediately entered the race, with encouragement from some older committee chairmen, but Daschle relinquished his seat on the Finance Committee to Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, whose vote gave him a 24-23 victory --one that brings to mind his first election to the House," Barone wrote.

As leader, he kept his historically fractured caucus largely unified for some of the most intense partisan fights, the 1995 government shutdown, the impeachment of President Clinton and the passage of President Bush's tax cut.

With Jeffords' defection, Daschle became Senate leader, working to balance partisan differences with the president with the need to get legislation done, but also serving as chief Democratic spokesman in opposition to the president.

As the 2002 campaign heated up, Republican ads sought to portray Daschle as the personification of the obstructionist Senate, bent on holding back a president in a time of war. In race after race, Democrats were tarred with the connection of helping Daschle in his fight against the president.

In the end several Democrats did go down in defeat because of the president's popularity and the perceived gridlock in the senate, but few blamed Daschle and no one mounted a serious leadership challenge against him.

Now Daschle must mount his own campaign for reelection against a Republican who only narrowly lost in 2002 to Sen. Tim Johnson.

Daschle must walk a fine line, rallying support in this traditionally conservative state while running the national party in the upper house. Most analysts expect the race to be close and also for Republicans to pour a lot of money into the campaign in hopes of ousting one of the nation's leading Democrats.

Tom Daschle is married to his second wife, former Federal Aviation Administration official and now aviation lobbyist Linda Hall Daschle, and is the father of three.

-- By Lee Banville, Online NewsHour