Daschle facing a tough race

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Tom Daschle was pumping more than gasoline Wednesday morning at the Gas Stop convenience store.

The Senate's top Democrat was working the pumps and the crowd here to promote ethanol, the homegrown corn-based fuel additive and lifeblood of local farmers. Yet Daschle had a bigger, less obvious task on this day: convincing the locals that he's the irreplaceable protector of corn growers and other struggling South Dakotans — not just Washington's chief antagonist of President Bush, who remains highly popular in these parts.

The minority leader, up for re-election next year, is embarking on the earliest and costliest campaign of his political career, trying to hold off a wave of attacks over his outspoken criticism of Bush. This week was "ethanol week," a Daschle staff member said, a time for the senator to break ground on a new ethanol plant and spend several days talking about how "two out of every three rows of corn" will be turned into Made in the USA corn fuel if he gets his way.

Daschle — a little bit Washington, a little bit South Dakota — rolled up the sleeves of his pressed white dress shirt and charmed the crowd like few others in the political business can do. He didn't look anything like the obstructionist monster that conservatives are making him out to be in political ads.

Daschle's image as a home-state hero is critical to his re-election hopes, because his anti-Bush routine won't fly in the heartland, where the president rides high in the polls. Such is life for Democrats running in Bush country. Bush won the state with more than 60 percent of the vote in 2000, and his allies have spent the better part of two years portraying Daschle as the villain in the president's wartime Washington.

Neal Tapio, 32, a businessman and former GOP Senate staff member, said he may challenge Daschle strictly out of "disgust that our leader has been the leader of the opposition to President Bush." In a letter to the local paper, Josh Anhalt of Madison pleaded with voters to "support someone who will work for South Dakota instead of for himself and his political party."

Bush is urging former GOP Congressman John Thune, who lost last year's race against Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., by 524 votes, to try again — this time against Daschle. Thune, a lobbyist who splits his time between Washington and South Dakota, has set up a political committee to put pressure on the minority leader. Many South Dakotans assume he will enter the race.

Besides Thune, freshman Rep. William Janklow, a former governor, is considered the only other state Republican with the name recognition and political skills to knock off Daschle. But Janklow, a friend of Daschle's, is not expected to jump in.