Bashing Daschle

KWAME HOLMAN:

Tom Daschle set aside two weeks this month to do what he often does during congressional breaks– he drives around South Dakota to talk informally with his home-state constituents.

WOMAN:

People need to know of what the situation is in South Dakota right now.

KWAME HOLMAN:

The usually soft-spoken, third-term Senator clearly enjoys being in the warm embrace of his fellow South Dakotans.

KWAME HOLMAN:

He's continued to come here frequently, even after becoming Senate Majority Leader, and therefore the nation's top elected Democrat, more than a year ago. The reception Daschle gets here is far from a rising cacophony of criticism he's had to face from Republican leaders back in Washington.

SPOKESMAN:

We're looking for a budget.

KWAME HOLMAN:

The Senate's top Republican, Trent Lott, used comic relief back in the spring to target Daschle, charging he was using his Majority Leader's power to dictate the Senate's agenda to bottle up President Bush's initiatives.

SEN. TRENT LOTT:

We have a serious problem with legislation being lost when it leaves the house and comes to the Senate. So we thought that the best thing to do was to bring in the bloodhounds and see if they could track it down.

SEN. TRENT LOTT:

Good morning.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Republicans accused Daschle of ignoring new tax cuts and dozens of other measures passed by the Republican-controlled House.

SEN. TRENT LOTT:

Basically we have a number of areas where we have a crisis by inaction, by incorrect action.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Even President Bush joined in the criticism.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:

We have been pleased with how many of our initiatives have moved through the House of Representatives, have been frustrated by the fact they haven't moved through the Senate.

KWAME HOLMAN:

When we sat down with Senator Daschle in South Dakota in May, he was offering no apologies.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE:

I don't apologize to anybody for stopping bad ideas from becoming bad law. We're the only thing standing between what the right wing wants to do and what becomes law. So we are, in a sense, America's brakes, and I think that America needs brakes at times.

KWAME HOLMAN:

But being back home in South Dakota does not provide a refuge Daschle from political attack.

SPOKESMAN:

The talk of Sioux Falls. Viewpoint University local and live.

KWAME HOLMAN:

During our visit, Tom Daschle was the subject of KSOO Radio's Friday afternoon call-in show, broadcasting, on this day, at the opening of a new liquor store in Sioux Falls.

CALLER:

Daschle represents a constituency that doesn't represent the make-up, the demographic of South Dakota. And if you look at what he says and look at what he does nationally, the concern I have is that that's not how South Dakotans feel.

KWAME HOLMAN:

However, since Daschle's ascendance to the rank of Senate Majority leader, more and more of the attacks on him are being generated from outside South Dakota. For instance, a group identified by the rallying cry "Fight Back South Dakota" sponsors a Web site: DumpDaschle.org. But donations to the group are directed to a mailing address in Columbus, Ohio. And early last Spring, Washington-based conservative groups began sponsoring an anti- Daschle multimedia ad campaign narrowly designed for the South Dakota audience.

SPOKESMAN:

President Bush is leading the bipartisan fight for lower taxes and more jobs. But in this time of national emergency, one man stands in the way: Tom Daschle.

KWAME HOLMAN:

The groups sponsoring the ads included the Club for Growth, National Right to Life, and the Family Research Council. Like Republican leaders, they too blamed Daschle for holding up anti-cloning legislation, the President's judicial nominees, and other GOP priorities. Daschle called the attacks on him unprecedented, particularly since he's not even up for reelection until 2004.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE:

What's new is that I've never had, in a non-campaign context, the kind of negative ads directed towards me. So obviously something different has occurred, and I'll let others sort out what it is.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Some of those "others" include a group of former Democratic Senators and aides to former President Clinton, which calls itself "Daschle Democrats." The groups responded to the attacks on Daschle on the Web and over the air and called on President Bush to intercede.

SPOKESMAN:

Back here, Mr. President, your out-of-state allies are attacking tom Daschle. You said you would change the tone in politics Mr. President, tell the out-of state special interests to stop the attacks.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Do you feel that the White House and the Republican strategists have encouraged these groups to do this?

SEN. TOM DASCHLE:

I suspect that they probably have. I don't have any direct information that would confirm it, but you have to believe that there is some orchestrated effort. This has never happened before, and so I can't imagine that there isn't some motivation there that goes to their agenda, and whatever goals they have politically.

KWAME HOLMAN:

But back in Washington, D.C., David Keating says his "club for growth" was responsible for most of the anti-Daschle ads in South Dakota, with no encouragement from the White House.

DAVID KEATING:

We wanted to keep Tom Daschle off balance at home and hopefully we'll do a couple of other things: One is discourage him from running for President, and two: We hope that eventually someone strong in the state of South Dakota will emerge to challenge him when he runs for reelection in 2004.

KWAME HOLMAN:

There are more registered Republicans in South Dakota than there are Democrats, 48 percent to 38 percent. But this summer, the talk among the GOP faithful isn't about Tom Daschle. They're more excited about the prospect of Republican Congressman John Thune taking away the state's other Senate seat from Democrat Tim Johnson on election day in November. State Republican Chairman Joel Rosenthal regrets South Dakota's many conservatives aren't more focused on Daschle.

JOEL ROSENTHAL:

South Dakotans probably don't understand how liberal that he is. I don't think they like him. He's got a personal relationship built up over almost 25 years with many people here, and people, when I speak with people and explain the kind of positions that Senator Daschle has, they kind of scratch their heads and wonder how he's doing that.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Kathy Piersol, a Sioux Falls lawyer who has supported tom Daschle for years, says the ad campaign attacking him might have rubbed South Dakotans the wrong way.

KATHY PIERSOL:

Now, as a rule, we don't engage in one-to-one combat here. We try to phrase things nicely, we try to be considerate and get our point across fairly gently. So when the ads come on, and they're very strong attack ads, as people look at them, they're going, "I don't get that. I don't necessarily understand that. That isn't the way we phrase things." And after a while they shrug off negativism.

KWAME HOLMAN:

In fact, a recent poll asked South Dakotans their reaction to the charge Daschle is an obstructionist of the Republican agenda. It was conducted by Augustana College political science professor Jim Meader.

JIM MEADER:

We asked that exact question, "Do you agree with those people who say that tom Daschle is an obstructionist?" And about one- third, 36 percent, agreed with that, but half disagreed. So the message doesn't seem to be playing as strongly, in my mind, as some of the people from Washington, D.C., might be thinking.

KWAME HOLMAN:

The Club for Growth's David Keating disagreed that his group's anti-Daschle ads were ineffective.

DAVID KEATING:

The fact is people all the time say they don't like negative ads, but you look at the polls and they seem to take them into account as to how they will vote.

SEN. TRENT LOTT:

We're here today to issue a first-semester progress report on the Senate Democratic majority and how they're performing in doing the people's work.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Right up to the day congress closed shop for the august recess, Senate Republicans kept up their criticism of tom Daschle. Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum reviewed Daschle's "report card."

SEN. RICK SANTORUM:

One of the reasons we have so many incompletes is because Senator Daschle has basically tried to re-engineer how the Senate's to operate. Months of time just chewed up here in the United States Senate for no reason other than Senator Daschle wanted to advance a partisan agenda, which he could not accomplish by going through his committees.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Daschle, before he left for the break, issued a progress report of his own.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE:

Corporate accountability, the generic drug bill, reimportation, the supplemental appropriations bill and the HIV/AIDS legislation. I would argue it may be one of the most successful and productive sessions of Congress we've had in a long period of time.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE:

Junk food, that's part of the drive around tradition.

KWAME HOLMAN:

As he drives around South Dakota this month, it's unlikely Daschle will be seeing or hearing any of those attack ads from the Washington-based conservative groups. David Keating, for one, says he decided to pull ads off the air, at least for the duration of the summer. Daschle, however, expects them to return.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE:

Unfortunately, I think you are beginning to see just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these groups and their activities. I think that it is possible– in fact, may even be likely– that these independent groups are going to have more money, with more freedom and more incentive to get engaged in campaigns around the country, whether or not a Senator or Congressman is up for election.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Tom Daschle will be back at work in Washington just after Labor Day, ready to take on his critics once again.