WSJ Political Diary on the Daschle injunction

Via DVT:

Desperate Daschle?
Tom Daschle must have found his last internal polls very scary. The Senate Minority Leader took the unusual step of getting a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order to block Republican lawyers from monitoring polling places on Native American reservations. The 2002 Senate race was won by Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson by 524 votes only after a suspicious surge of late returns from the reservations. Unless the ruling is overturned, there may be less scrutiny of reservation precincts this year than there was even two years ago.

Mr. Daschle took little risk in bringing the case before U.S. District Judge Lawrence Piersol. A more compromised figure in a Daschle lawsuit can't be imagined. Mr. Piersol, a former Democratic legislator, was Mr. Daschle's personal attorney in his first race for Congress in 1978, which Mr. Daschle won after several recounts. Last year, Mr. Daschle told a group of trial lawyers: "I got my start in politics thanks to lawyers, rather, one lawyer in particular. In 1978, I won my first election to the House by 14 votes... I was fortunate to be represented by a great lawyer and a dear friend, Larry Piersol."

Judge Piersol, whom the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader reports "Daschle chose for the federal bench," issued his restraining order at 1:45 a.m. on Tuesday after hearing one witness from each side. The witness for the Daschle forces was a Virginia lawyer who had worked for Howard Dean in Iowa and had been in South Dakota working for Mr. Daschle for 48 hours. He said that, in early voting, Republican poll watchers would "roll their eyes" and make a "negative face" at times and that, in his opinion, constituted "intimidation" of voters. Spectators in the courtroom snickered at the contention that this would deter anyone from voting. But the judge, not surprisingly, bought the argument. Former Senator Jim Abdnor, the man whom Mr. Daschle defeated to get to the Senate, denounced the decision saying, "We need voters to decide this race, not judges." With hundreds of attorneys blanketing the state today, that may be a vain hope.