Thomas A. Daschle was born in Aberdeen on December 9, 1947 – today is his 75th birthday.
Daschle is a major figure in South Dakota’s political history. Daschle’s twenty-six year career in Congress – eight in the U.S. House and eighteen in the U.S. Senate – is eclipsed among South Dakota Democrats only by his longtime colleague, Tim Johnson. But though Johnson’s career was the longer of the two, Daschle was the more prominent, as he became the first (and to date, only) South Dakotan to serve in Washington as majority leader or minority leader.
In an increasingly Republican state, the Daschle/Johnson era of South Dakota politics is becoming a distant memory. Daschle’s public career ended eighteen years ago with his loss in 2004 to John Thune, who recently won a fourth U.S. Senate term, exceeding Daschle and Johnson’s three terms each.
That is not to diminish Daschle’s outsize role in South Dakota’s history in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Tom Lawrence of The South Dakota Standard recently interviewed Daschle and wrote a nice article to commemorate Daschle’s 75th birthday. Rather than attempt to outdo him, I would encourage you to read Lawrence’s article.
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