Tom Daschle
Thomas Andrew Daschle is an American politician and lobbyist who represented South Dakota in the United States Senate from 1987 to 2005. A member of the Democratic Party, he led the Senate Democratic Caucus during the final ten years of his tenure, during which time he served as Senate Majority Leader and Minority Leader.
After leaving the United States Air Force, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1978 and served four terms. In 1986, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, becoming Minority Leader in 1995 and Majority Leader in 2001, becoming the highest-ranking elected official in South Dakota history, a position tied by John Thune in 2025.
In 2004, he was defeated for reelection in a close race by John Thune, who would go on to become Majority Leader himself. Later, he took a position as a policy advisor with a lobbying firm, became a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and co-authored a book advocating universal health care.
Daschle was an early supporter of Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, and was nominated by President-elect Obama for the position of Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services after the 2008 election. However, Daschle withdrew his name on February 3, 2009, amid a growing controversy over his failure to properly report and pay income taxes. He is currently working for The Daschle Group, a Public Policy Advisory of Baker Donelson, a large law firm and lobbying group.
Early life and education
Daschle was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, the son of Elizabeth B. and Sebastian C. Daschle, both of German descent. His paternal grandparents were Volga Germans. He grew up in a working-class Roman Catholic family, the eldest of four brothers.He attended Central High School in Aberdeen before becoming the first person in his family to graduate from college when he earned a Bachelor of Arts from the Department of Political Science at South Dakota State University in 1969. While attending South Dakota State University, Daschle became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega. From 1969 to 1972, Daschle served in the United States Air Force as an intelligence officer with the Strategic Air Command.
In the mid-1970s Daschle was an aide to Senator James Abourezk.
House of Representatives (1979–1987)
In 1978 Daschle was elected to the United States House of Representatives at the age of 31, winning the race by a margin of 139 votes, following a recount, out of more than 129,000 votes cast. Daschle served four terms in the House of Representatives and quickly became a part of the Democratic leadership.Although Daschle was not seeking the vice presidency, he received 10 delegate votes for Vice President of the United States at the 1980 Democratic National Convention. Several others also received protest votes, but incumbent Vice President Walter Mondale was nevertheless renominated easily.
United States Senate (1987–2005)
In 1986, Daschle was elected to the U.S. Senate in a close victory over incumbent Republican James Abdnor. In his first year, he was appointed to the Finance Committee.Party leadership
In 1994, he was chosen by his colleagues to succeed the retiring Senator George Mitchell as Democratic minority leader. In the history of the Senate, only Lyndon B. Johnson had served fewer years before being elected to lead his party. In addition to the minority leader's post, Daschle served as a member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee. South Dakotans reelected Daschle to the Senate with 62.1% of votes in 1998.At various points in his career, he served on the Veterans Affairs, Indian Affairs, Finance, and Ethics Committees.
When the 107th Congress commenced on January 3, 2001, the Senate was evenly divided—that is, there were 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. Outgoing Vice President Al Gore acted in his constitutional capacity as ex officio President of the Senate, and used his tie-breaking vote to give the Democrats the majority in that chamber. For the next 17 days, Daschle served as Senate Majority Leader.
Upon the commencement of the Bush administration on January 20, 2001, Dick Cheney became president of the senate, thereby returning Democrats to the minority in that body; Daschle reverted to the position of Senate Minority Leader. However, on June 6, 2001, Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont announced that he was leaving the Senate Republican caucus to become an independent and to caucus with Democrats; this once again returned control of the body to the Democrats and Daschle again became majority leader.
Democratic losses in the November 2002 elections returned the party to the minority in the senate in January 2003, and Daschle once more reverted to being minority leader.
Daschle recounted his senate experiences from 2001 to 2003 in his first book, Like No Other Time: The 107th Congress and the Two Years That Changed America Forever, published in 2003. With Charles Robbins, he has also written the book The U.S. Senate, part of the Fundamentals of American Government series.
Anthrax case in 2001
In October 2001, while he was the Senate Majority Leader, Daschle's office received a letter containing anthrax, becoming a target of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Some of his staffers were confirmed to have been exposed, as well as several of Senator Russ Feingold's staffers and Capitol police officers. His suite at the Hart Senate Office Building was the focus of an intensive cleanup led by the Environmental Protection Agency.Views on abortion
Daschle has a mixed voting record on abortion-related issues, which led the pro-choice organization NARAL to give him a 50% vote rating.In 1999 and 2003, Daschle voted in favor of the ban on partial-birth abortion, and supported legislation making it a crime to harm an unborn child when someone attacks a pregnant woman. Investigators into the 2001 anthrax attacks, which included Senator Daschle's Capitol Hill office, suspect that alleged anthrax mailer Bruce Ivins may have chosen to target Daschle over his views on abortion, although Ivins's lawyer disputed this alleged motive.
In 2003, Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Carlson reportedly wrote to Daschle, criticizing his stance on abortion as conflicting with Roman Catholic teaching, and stating that Daschle should no longer identify himself as a Catholic.
2004 Senate election
In the 2004 Senate election, John Thune defeated Daschle by 4,508 votes, 50.6% to 49.4%. It was the first time that a Senate party leader had lost a bid for reelection since 1952, when Barry Goldwater defeated Ernest McFarland in Arizona. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist visited South Dakota to campaign for Thune, breaking an unwritten tradition that a leader of one party would not actively campaign for the defeat of the other.Throughout the campaign, Thune, along with Frist, President George W. Bush, and Vice President Cheney, frequently accused Daschle of being the "chief obstructionist" of Bush's agenda and charged him with using filibusters to unjustly block confirmation of several of Bush's nominees. The Republican candidate also drove home his strong support for the war. In a nationally televised debate on NBC's Meet the Press, Thune accused Daschle of "emboldening the enemy" in his skepticism of the Iraq War.
When the race began in early 2004, Daschle led by 7% in January and February. By May, his lead was just 2% and summer polls showed a varying number of trends: Daschle or Thune led by no more than 2%, but some polls showed a tie. Throughout September, Daschle led Thune by margins of 2–5% while during the entire month of October into the November 2 election, most polls showed that Thune and Daschle were dead even, usually tied 49–49 among likely voters. Some polls showed either Thune or Daschle leading by extremely slim margins.
Post-Senate career
Career and public service
Following his reelection defeat, Daschle took a position with the lobbying arm of the K Street law firm Alston & Bird. Because he was prohibited by law from lobbying for one year after leaving the Senate, he instead worked as a "special policy adviser" for the firm.Alston & Bird's healthcare clients include CVS Caremark, the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, Abbott Laboratories, and HealthSouth. The firm was paid $5.8 million between January and September 2008 to represent companies and associations before Congress and the executive branch, with 60% of that money coming from the healthcare industry. Daschle was recruited by the former Republican Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. Daschle's salary from Alston & Bird for the year 2008 was reportedly $2 million.
Daschle was also a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. In addition, he served as National Co-Chair of ONE Vote '08, along with former senator Bill Frist. He and former senators George Mitchell, Bob Dole, and Howard Baker formed the Bipartisan Policy Center, dedicated to finding bipartisan solutions for policy disputes. Daschle is also a co-chair of BPC's Health Project.
In 2003, Daschle received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member Senator Bill Frist.
In May 2005, South Dakota State University, Daschle's alma mater, conferred upon him an honorary doctorate for public service. In May 2011, Daschle was further honored with an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Northern State University in his hometown of Aberdeen.
In late September 2005, Daschle caught the attention of the media by reactivating his political action committee, changing its name from DASHPAC to New Leadership for America PAC and procuring a speaking slot at the Iowa Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner. He continued to keep a relatively high-profile among Democratic interest groups. These moves were interpreted by the media as an exploration of a potential 2008 Presidential candidacy. On December 2, 2006, he announced he would not run for president in 2008.
In an appearance on Meet the Press on February 12, 2006, Daschle endorsed a controversial warrantless surveillance program conducted by the National Security Agency, explaining that he had been briefed on the program while he was the Democratic leader in the Senate.
In addition, Senator Daschle is a member of the board of trustees for the Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley. The center is focused on finding solutions to address the crisis of extreme poverty and disease in the developing world.
Daschle is a Member of the Global Leadership Foundation, an organization which works to support democratic leadership, prevent and resolve conflict through mediation and promote good governance in the form of democratic institutions, open markets, human rights and the rule of law. It does so by making available, discreetly and in confidence, the experience of former leaders to today's national leaders. It is a not-for-profit organization composed of former heads of government, senior governmental and international organization officials who work closely with heads of Government on governance-related issues of concern to them.
Daschle also served as vice chair of the board of directors of National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.
Daschle is a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One.
Daschle is the co-chair of the national advisory board at the National Institute for Civil Discourse. The institute was created at the University of Arizona after the 2011 shooting of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords that killed six people and wounded 13 others.
In 2019, Daschle was named to the advisory board of Northern Swan Holdings Inc., a cannabis investment firm. Daschle stated: "I believe it is imperative to loosen the restrictions on cannabis so we can research its properties and fully understand how patients can benefit from its medicinal use." In 2020, Daschle endorsed Constitutional Amendment A, a ballot initiative to legalize cannabis for recreational use in South Dakota.
In 2021, Daschle co-wrote an op-ed for The Hill criticizing proposed cuts to pandemic preparedness programs, describing them as "unthinkable" in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.