In today's Washington Post:
Thune Delivers on Campaign Vow
Senator's Future Brightens as S.D. Base Survives the CutBy Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 27, 2005; A06
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) sat tense, crouched and glowering as the base-closing commission delivered its verdict about Ellsworth Air Force Base in the ballroom of a Crystal City hotel yesterday, then leapt up gleefully when the bomber base's death sentence was commuted.
The 44-year-old's political career may have been spared as well.
Last fall, Thune unseated Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) in part by claiming that a Republican tight with the White House would have a better chance of saving the perennially impaired Ellsworth, a Cold War arsenal in the middle of the prairie. So it was potentially calamitous for Thune back home in May when the Pentagon put Ellsworth on the list of closure recommendations for the independent Base Realignment and Closure commission.
Thune, a former House member whose status as the Daschle slayer has made him a popular speaker before GOP groups, had long told the White House that losing Ellsworth -- South Dakota's largest employer after the state government -- was the one issue that could make him a one-term senator.
"There's something about my Scandinavian heritage that knows that life shouldn't be easy -- life's got to be hard," a relieved Thune said by telephone shortly after the commission's 8 to 1 vote to discard the Pentagon recommendation to close Ellsworth and move the base's B-1B bombers to Texas.
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