South Dakota Politics

The photo above is found in tomorrow's edition of the Washington Post with a story headlined "'Deadwood': HBO Opens a Harsh New Frontier." The story covers the new HBO series about Deadwood, South Dakota back in the days of Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane, which premieres tomorrow night. Excerpt:

["Deadwood" creator David] Milch's raw, revisionist western, with muddier streets and grubbier lowlifes than most of its like-minded predecessors, is more than a shockfest of violence and profanity, though one is tempted to saddle it with an alternate title like "The Sopranoats" or "Rauncho Grande." It's a grim, evocative look at some of this country's ruggedest but most disreputable roots -- a meticulously detailed portrait of a time, place and people that makes even today, with its punishing headlines about suicide bombs and other terrorist atrocities, seem almost safe and sane.

Tomorrow's edition of the New York Times Magazine also has a piece about the new HBO show, headlined "True West." Excerpt:

The latest attempt to resurrect the western by making it darker, stranger and, perversely, more contemporary, is HBO's new series ''Deadwood,'' which tries to do for frontier dramas what ''The Sopranos'' has done for gangster stories. Set in the mid-1870's in a bloody Dakota Terrritory settlement where prospectors rush to claw the gold from sacred lands belonging to the Sioux, ''Deadwood'' is relentlessly obscene, overwhelmingly pessimistic and meticulously depraved. It's the brainy, complex feel-bad series of the year, and every year needs one, at least on cable TV. Its good guys are bad, its bad guys are good and its medium guys are both and neither.

Like most examples of the New Western, ''Deadwood'' wants to be both realistic and allegorical. First, its realism. The show includes unvarnished portraits of historical figures like the legendary gunfighters Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. It presents the old West as a creepy-crawly human sewer, wholly unworthy of nostalgia. In one scene, a corpse clad only in soiled long johns is dumped over a fence and eaten by hogs -- to no particular outcry from anyone. The girls at the local house of ill repute are rarely shown without copious cuts and bruises given to them by their drunken, moronic patrons. Just about every business transaction is crooked and every noble utterance a lie. The ongoing slaughter of humans and animals amounts to little but background noise. And addiction, real pathological addiction, is everywhere -- to dope, to sex, to gambling and most of all, to money, money, money.

You can read more about the new series HERE and HERE.

The Daschle Squeeze

[Note: Correction Appended.]

In 1995, Senator Tom Daschle got into some hot water after some of his Sopranos-like intimidation tactics came to light. The 5/7/1995 edition of the New York Times sets the scene:

Senator Daschle began working to remove the Forest Service’s authority over air safety after its inspectors had consistently complained that a carrier in Rapid City, S.D., B&L Aviation, was shoddily run and should be barred from obtaining government contracts. B&L is owned by Murl Bellew, a friend of the Daschles who taught the senator how to fly.

According to a February 13, 1995 AP report:

Daschle started pressuring the Forest Service in 1992 to end its inspection program and leave the job to the Federal Aviation Administration. Daschle’s wife, Linda, is the FAA’s deputy administrator.

A Forest Service memo refers to Tom Daschle’s effort as the "Daschle squeeze."

Earlier that February, Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes first reported the existence of the Forest Service memo describing Daschle’s tactics as the “Daschle squeeze,” and discussed it with Bill Dickson, an aviation inspector with the Forest Service. Excerpt from a transcript of the February 5, 1995 segment of 60 Minutes:

WALLACE: (Voiceover) [Daschle] then took his case directly to then Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, whose department oversees the Forest Service, and persuaded him to reduce the role of the Forest Service inspections. And that wasn't the first time Senator Daschle came to the aid of Bellew. In 1993, he personally met with federal officials to complain about what he called the 'dictatorial attitude' of Forest Service inspectors. On one occasion, an internal Forest Service memo referred to the senator's efforts as the 'Daschle Squeeze.'

What was the Daschle Squeeze?

Mr. DICKSON: Well, the effort was to--to close down the inspections that we did.

WALLACE: And you've said that you'd never seen political influence as strong as this ever before in your career?

Mr. DICKSON: No, I haven't.

(Footage of B&L Aviation)

WALLACE: (Voiceover) Now if Forest Service inspectors were so concerned about using B&L, why didn't they advise the agency to stop using the company? Well, Bill Dickson says he tried to warn his Forest Service superiors against hiring B&L, but he says that he received a warning in return.

Mr. DICKSON: It was a telephone conversation with a person who's since retired...

WALLACE: Who said?

Mr. DICKSON: ...who said that if you fight the senator, you'll lose.

WALLACE: Don't fight the senator.

Mr. DICKSON: Don't fight the senator.

(Emphasis added.)
Another occasion of the application of the "Daschle Squeeze" is reported in a piece headlined "Senator Blasted for Abusing Office, Seeks IRS Probe of Conservative Group." Excerpt:

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the tax-exempt status of the Rushmore Policy Council. The South Dakota-based organization has run advertisements that publicized the voting record of Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) on abortion and other family values issues.

What makes Daschle's activities in trying to crush dissent in his home state more ironic is his quote in a story headlined "Kennedy fuels Senate furor over Iraq." Relevant graf:

"Any time somebody speaks out criticizing this administration or its policies, there is this orchestrated concerted effort to attack those who criticize," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. "Criticizing those who are vocal in their personal criticism, their approach, their concerns, is McCarthyesque."

On another issue that seems relevant to the "Daschle Squeeze" recall my post a month ago regarding former Daschle staffer Amy Sullivan. Subsequent to that post, I received the following e-mail from Sullivan:

Hi,

While strolling around on the web I noticed this post of yours -- http://southdakotapolitics.blogs.com/south_dakota_politics/2004/week8/index.html#a0000938544 -- and wanted to give you a little more background. I'm a bit embarrassed, actually, that the post I wrote about the Daschle office has gotten picked up by a number of people as evidence of supposed "shady" tactics of Daschle and/or his staff. In fact, I wrote that piece in a fit of pique (of which I am not proud) after a long discussion with one of his senior aides. His advisors simply wanted to streamline his message during the campaign (a perfectly reasonable goal for any political office) and I disagreed with their assessment that my attempt to cheerlead for Daschle on my own might inadvertently hurt the effort when people like some bloggers (ahem) assume that I am working in cahoots with the Daschle office. That's all. I got miffed, wrote about it, and wish I hadn't.

I'd be much obliged if you'd correct the record -- I still adore everyone in his office and strongly believe that there's no one in politics I'd rather work for than Tom Daschle. One of the many dangers of the internet is that if you throw a written hissy-fit, it can get picked up and spread around, and I'd like to take this particular hissy-fit back if I could.

many thanks,

Amy Sullivan

I never responded to her e-mail, believing that "correcting the record" was her responsibility, as all I did was link to what she said. But she can't "correct the record" because the post she wrote has completely disappeared from her website. In fact, the entire archive of her posts over the past year has disappeared. You'll note that all of my links to her blog in the post of mine she complains about lead HERE. I'm not at all surprised that everything she has written about Tom Daschle has disappeared. I think it's clear that the Daschle people applied the "Daschle Squeeze" to her. To my mind, "streamlining the message" in this context is a euphemism for making damned sure South Dakotans don't know how liberal Tom Daschle truly is.

CORRECTION: I guess the archive CAN be found by clicking HERE and which I would have found, had I bothered to read the error page. My sincere apologies for my mistake. I made a cocky statement at the end of the post above which I've deleted, and which I regret.

Political advertising on blogs

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has an interesting story about political advertising on blogs, headlined "Low cost and high impact: Web ads score a political hit." Some political figures in South Dakota get mentioned. Relevant excerpt:

South Dakota has become a hotbed of political blog ads, with two candidates for statewide office launching them. Former Republican Rep. John Thune, who's trying to unseat Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, did a test run on libertarian/conservative InstaPundit.com and is likely to buy more time, said spokesman Dick Wadhams.

"We got a good response to something that didn't even exist two years ago," he said. "We're wading into what's clearly a new dimension of political campaigning."

Democrat Stephanie Herseth, who's trying to win a special election to replace former Rep. Bill Janklow, is advertising on several liberal blogs.

Since the ads began in early March, the ads have pulled in nearly $2,000 - more than the ads cost, said campaign spokesman Russ Levsen.

Kranz Watch

DVT offers a clarification of the reasonableness standard regarding the reportage of David Kranz, the dean of South Dakota political reporters:

SDP is advocating a civil reasonableness standard, i.e. would an ordinarily prudent person believe that Kranz could not be impartial given his past associations with Daschle, as opposed to a criminal-like standard of bias beyond a reasonable doubt.

Yes, obviously a civil standard is the way to go, and perhaps the best way to describe the standard is whether a reasonable person can be more than 50% certain that Kranz cannot be impartial in covering the Daschle v. Thune race given his close association with Democratic political figures past and present. A "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard is relevant only to criminal law and hence is irrelevant to the weighing of Kranz's impartiality.

In the context of the reasonableness standard, DVT also cites a piece written by Noel Hamiel, publisher of the Mitchell Daily Republic, headlined "Disclosure healthy, even for reporters, but college activities irrelevant." Hamiel basically sets a standard by which to weigh Kranz's impartiality, and states that Kranz's college activities are irrelevant to weighing Kranz's impartiality. Hamiel does essentially say, however, that the standard by which to weigh Kranz's impartiality should be applied to Kranz's post-college years. Hamiel says there should always be disclosure by the reporter of the nature of his relationships with specific political figures, and also discusses when a reporter should NOT cover someone. This is where the reasonableness standard comes into play. Could a reasonable person come to the conclusion that Kranz cannot be impartial given his close associations with Democratic political figures past and present? Stay tuned.

Daschle and Kerry

This Reuters photo was taken March 11, at the conclusion of a press conference in which John Kerry said he stood by his comments referring to President Bush and his advisers as “the most crooked ... lying group I’ve ever seen.”

What was that again about Tom Daschle supporting President Bush 75% of the time?

You can read the AP story regarding John Kerry's calumny HERE, where you can also find the photo below:

Does Herseth plan to endorse John Kerry?

The Hill carries an interesting article headlined "Some Dems to run away from Kerry." Excerpt:

A handful of House Democrats who look vulnerable in November’s election, plan to run away from their party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), and will not endorse him.

The holdouts are a minority of the 17 “frontliners” selected by the party leadership for member-to-member cash infusions, but their attitude reflects varying levels of comfort with how the New England senator will play in their districts.

Here in South Dakota, Democrat Stephanie Herseth, currently the frontrunner against Republican Larry Diedrich in the campaign for South Dakota's lone House seat, recently had this to say about her party's presidential candidate (according to an excellent report by Bob Mercer):

Now that U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts is the apparent Democratic nominee, Herseth was asked Thursday if he might be coming to campaign for her before the June 1 election.

She laughed. "I just don't see that there would be any interest from my campaign or the national party," she said.

Perhaps the better question to ask Herseth is whether she plans to endorse John Kerry.

UPDATE: Although Herseth seems hesitant about supporting John Kerry, Senator Tom Daschle has pledged to help raise $10 million for Kerry by March 25, according to a story in the Washington Times headlined "Clinton supports Kerry fundraiser." Excerpt:

According to a statement by the Kerry campaign Tuesday, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, Democratic strategist James Carville, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards and several former Democratic presidential candidates have signed on to a 10-day push to raise $10 million online to fight against the Republican incumbent.

Kranz Watch

DVT says it's unclear what standard of judgment I have in mind for concluding that David Kranz, the Argus Leader political reporter known as the dean of South Dakota political reporters, is too closely associated with Democratic figures past and present to report objectively and credibly on the 2004 Senate race in South Dakota. DVT suggests a "reasonableness" standard: whether Kranz's impartiality might reasonably be questioned. This reasonableness standard is henceforth adopted. I would argue, in view of the careful documentation of Kranz's bias by myself (link is to Kranz Watch archive) and others, that this standard has been met.

We know about Kranz's collaboration with Daschle on a mock Democratic Convention while both were in college in 1968; Daschle organized the convention, and Kranz wrote a purportedly unbiased report for the college newspaper on Daschle's involvement in organizing the convention, without disclosing his affiliation with Daschle. In 1976, Kranz wrote a piece for the Mitchell Daily Republic fondly recalling the convention. In 1986, then lieutenant governor Lowell Hansen wrote a guest editorial for the Argus Leader excoriating Kranz's biased coverage of the governor's race that year. Roll Call indicated that the AL's hysterical and vituperative bias in the 1990 Senate race was instigated by then managing editor David Kranz. And of course, over the past year, Kranz's biased reporting has been documented through the "Kranz Watch" feature on this blog. All of these instances described above indicate that the reasonableness standard has been met. Kranz's impartiality can reasonably be questioned.

Investigate Daschle's crushing of dissent

DVT says the Aberdeen American News editorial today, headlined "Investigation into drug bill numbers needed" is a move in the right direction for the newspaper's investigation of intimidation tactics on both sides of the political spectrum, including those a little closer to home.

FLASHBACK

It was a year ago today that Senator Tom Daschle, making a speech to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees shortly after meeting with President Bush, said that he was "saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war." As one can observe from the posts on my blog a year ago (scroll down), the country responded with outrage. Michael Barone supplied an interesting analysis of Daschle's comments.

In the days before the Iraq war, Steven Den Beste observed:

After we fight and win, a lot is going to come out about just how dreadful and brutal Saddam's government truly is. Relieved of fear of Saddam's secret police, we're going to see a flood of reports coming out of Iraq containing interviews with individual Iraqis who will describe personal horror stories. We're going to see shambling hulks of men maimed and broken by torture; crying women describing how they had to watch their own children be tortured to death. We're going to see photographs of terrible scars and disfigurements. We're going to hear about people being "disappeared". We're going to hear about mass graves, and public executions, and a lot else.

And Daschle and the rest of the Democrats who are now trying to take a stand against war are going to have to explain why it was that they opposed ending all that.

Den Beste's observations are remarkably prescient, particularly in light of a report last month in the Rapid City Journal headlined "Daschle satisfied with war progress." Excerpt:

Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., on Thursday praised the Bush administration's war and nation-building work in Iraq and said he has no serious concerns about the lack of weapons of mass destruction.

Daschle told state chamber of commerce representatives meeting in the South Dakota capital that he is satisfied with the way things are going in Iraq.

"I give the effort overall real credit," Daschle said. "It is a good thing Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. It is a good thing we are democratizing the country."

He said he is not upset about the debate over pre-war intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, an issue that has dogged President Bush as Democratic presidential contenders have slogged through the primary season.

Today, Tom Daschle is hoping that his constituents have forgotten the furor over his comments a year ago. We haven't.

UPDATE: DVT has a more cryptic explanation of the 2003 Tom Daschle compared to the 2004 Tom Daschle.

Unborn Victims of Violence Act to be placed on Senate calendar

DVT is reporting that the Unborn Victims of Violence Act will be debated and voted on next week when the Senate reconvenes. Tom Daschle is facing pressure from his caucus to kill the bill, an act that would be unpopular with his constituents. Once again Daschle must keep his colleagues happy by assisting their efforts to kill the bill, and simultaneously appearing to be vigorously supporting the bill (a highwire act discussed at length HERE). And apparently, Daschle's Democratic caucus is already conspiring to slip two poison pill amendments into the bill in an attempt to kill it. The same thing happened to the gun manufacturer immunity bill a few weeks ago, courtesy of Tom Daschle, who voted for two poison pill amendments that made the immunity bill a raw deal.

So the question to ask Tom Daschle at his appearance in Rapid City tomorrow is whether he's going to pull the same stunt with the Unborn Victims of Violence Act as he did with the gun manufacturer immunity bill.

Giago to explain why he's running

Tim Giago, the Native American journalist who is running against Tom Daschle in the Democratic primary, will be holding an event this Saturday, March 20, at the Little Wound High School Auditorium in Kyle, SD to explain why he's opposing Tom Daschle. So much for the rumor that Giago was dropping out of the race, a rumor that the Daschle v. Thune blog indicates may have been triggered by Daschle operatives, yet another example of Daschle's crushing of dissent. Will David Kranz, the dean of South Dakota political reporters, report on this event?

In other news from the town of Kyle, SD, John Thune was spotted there last week. A reader reports:

"[John Thune] wound up at Kyle talking to the Elders, going to a senior center for lunch, talking on KILI, then attending a feed at Pine Ridge and talking to the people who came in. He finished up shooting hoops with the "Thorpes" - the boys basketball team in Pine Ridge that is going to State. He's a really decent player."

It's fascinating to watch how vigorously Thune is reaching out to Native American voters. To my mind, playing basketball with the Thorpes is an ingenious method for connecting with the younger generation in the Native American community.

To influence the headlines is to influence public opinion

A few months ago, I expounded on how newspaper editors manipulate public opinion through the use of headlines. For a more recent example of a local newspaper attempting to influence public opinion through the use of headlines, read Mark Steyn's latest piece, headlined "Iraqi spy case shows media at it again."

Daschle's recess appearances in SD

The Senate is in recess this week. That means Senator Tom Daschle will be making campaign appearances around the state, pretending to be a Zell Miller Democrat rather than the John Kerry Democrat he truly is. And that means constituents have the opportunity to ask Daschle about certain issues he won't take a position on, or that he takes a number of positions on, depending on whether he's in Washington or South Dakota. Hopefully, members of the press will be present to record the conversation.

The last time the Senate was in recess, the Rapid City Journal reported that Daschle told a Chamber of Commerce gathering in Pierre the Bush administration's inability to find weapons of mass destruction was of little concern to him. These statements contradicted statements Daschle had made 10 days earlier in Washington, according to Time magazine, that President Bush had a "credibility chasm" on WMD.

So if you happen to be at a Daschle event this week (He's holding a free dinner at Central High School in Rapid City this Wednesday at 5:30PM, for example), there are a couple of issues to ask him about:

1) The Unborn Victims of Violence Act (Laci and Connor's Law). As an excellent guest editorial reported in yesterday's Argus Leader, Tom Daschle has yet to take a final position on a bill that would make it a federal crime to kill or injure an unborn child. South Dakota law already makes it a crime to kill or injure an unborn child. Given the Daschle campaign's penchant for accusing John Thune of lacking leadership because of his indecision on whether to run for the Senate, it's unseemly for Daschle to be dithering on an important issue like this. If you get an opportunity to ask Daschle about this, demand a commitment one way or the other. If Senator Dianne Feinstein of California can demand a commitment from Tom Daschle, a constituent certainly can too.

2) Ethanol. Be sure to ask Tom Daschle why he was out signing copies of his book when he should have been rounding up votes for the energy bill. As Senator Chuck Grassley stated, that was the one shot the ethanol bill had at becoming law. And Daschle blew it. If he says the revised ethanol bill is coming up again for a vote in the Senate, point out that it won't pass in the House, and won't become the law of the land. The ethanol bill had one shot at becoming the law, and Daschle didn't exercise his vaunted clout to muscle the thing through, when South Dakota farmers needed him most. And don't forget that Daschle's trial lawyer contributors wanted the ethanol bill dead because it gave liability protection to MTBE manufacturers. That might have been the reason Daschle voted for the bill, but didn't hang around to exercise his purported clout to get the extra votes necessary to pass the bill.

3) Gun control. Tom Daschle recently voted for stricter regulation of gun shows (to close the "gun show loophole"). But the entire state legislature almost unanimously supported a resolution "[r]ecognizing the substantial public contribution of gun shows and discouraging inappropriate attempts to regulate or restrict them." Why is Tom Daschle voting out of step with the near unanimity of the state legislature?

Word on the street

Word on the street is that Tom Daschle will be holding a fundraiser in Rapid City this week. The fundraiser will be held on March 17 at 7:30 P.M. at the home of Rapid City lawyer Doyle Estes, at a charge of $500 per person.

Be sure to take a look at "the Money Map," which gives a rough approximation of which areas of the country are contributing to each presidential candidate. I'm surprised to see that Pennington county leans Democratic in terms of contributions to presidential candidates. (Item via the April edition of The Atlantic.)

DOH!: It's not Pennington County that leans Democratic, it's neighboring Meade County. Thanks to all the readers who e-mailed to correct me.