South Dakota and NYT

The New York Times mentions South Dakota in two different contexts today. One piece is headlined "Bad New Days for Voting Rights." Excerpt:

With South Dakota's senior senator, Tom Daschle, running in another hotly contested race this year, Indians are bracing for more trouble at the polls. Many Indians feel their situation is similar to other so-called ballot integrity efforts over the last few decades.

There's no mention at all in the piece about Tim Giago, the Native American journalist making an independent bid for the Senate in South Dakota. It is rumored that Tom Daschle met with him yesterday to try to get him out of the race (so much for Daschle welcoming him to the political arena). With Giago on the ballot, the trouble at the polls for Tom Daschle might be that his get-out-the-vote effort on the reservations might be getting out the vote for Tim Giago.

Elsewhere in the NYT, Sheryl Gay Stolberg has a piece headlined "In Politics, Too Much Money Is Never Enough." Excerpt:

It is a rule of thumb in politics that candidates need enough money to respond to attacks, which is one reason campaign managers insist they can never have enough. When Senator Tim Johnson, the South Dakota Democrat, ran for re-election last year in South Dakota, he spent $7 million; in a state with little more than half a million people 18 years old or older, that amounted to more than $18 for every registered voter. (By contrast, Mr. Bush, if his campaign costs $200 million this year, will spend pretty close to $2 per registered voter.)

Yet at the end of the campaign, Mr. Johnson did not have enough to respond to a negative direct mail ad, and he eked out a victory by just 524 votes. "We definitely didn't raise enough money,'' Mr. Hildebrand said. Political consultants of both parties agree that so far Mr. Bush seems to be making smart use of his millions. Senator Kerry came out of the Democratic primary season slightly ahead in the polls; since the Bush-Cheney ads began, most polls show the president has narrowed the gap. The decision to scale back, said Dick Wadhams, a Republican strategist, is smart politics.

"Obviously the president needed to get back into the political game,'' Mr. Wadhams said. But, he said, "the public has probably had their fill of politics at this point.''

Interestingly, Dick Wadhams, who is John Thune's campaign manager, has not spent a cent to date on television advertising (although the Thune campaign has advertised on blogs). By contrast, Steve Hildebrand, who is Tom Daschle's campaign manager, has spent millions on television advertising that has been going on since last summer. Still, most polls show the margin between the two candidates to be very close, considering the disparities in television advertising.