The following article by Steve Kinsella was posted on the Star Tribune website April 4, 2018:
The lesson from the former senator is one that some of Minnesota’s U.S. representatives should learn.
It was late 1987 or early 1988, and my boss at the time, then-U.S.-Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, had just arrived back in the state from Washington, D.C., as he did roughly every two weeks. He was headed to north central South Dakota for a series of face-to-face constituent meetings.
I was nervous and had repeatedly contacted the staff person who would accompany Daschle on the trip, to make sure everything would go as smoothly as possible. My anxiety was due to the fact that he had recently taken a couple of controversial votes in the eyes of many of the people who lived in that region of South Dakota, a state that has never been overly embracing of Democrats.
But this region of the state was particularly tough for Democrats, even for South Dakota. As a longtime Democrat activist from the area told me once, “you could run Jesus Christ on the Democrat side of the ballot against a dog on the Republican side, and Jesus wouldn’t pull over 30 percent of the vote.” His analysis wasn’t far off. Continue reading “Political representation: Daschle’s example shows why you meet constituents face to face”