John Thune, a Republican, was elected senator in a close contest in 2004 and re-elected without opposition in 2010. He grew up in Murdo, on the dusty plains west of the Missouri River, a small town with a cluster of restaurants and motels at the interchange of Interstate 94 and U.S. 83. His father, the son of a Norwegian immigrant and a Navy veteran of World War II, was a teacher and the family was Democratic. He graduated from Biola University in La Mirada, Calif., and from the business school at the University of South Dakota. As a high school freshman, he met Republican Rep. Jim Abdnor, who spotted Thune at a grocery checkout counter and recalled that the young man had missed only one of six free throws in his high school basketball game the previous night. They kept in touch, and years later, when Abnor was in the Senate, he hired Thune on this Washington staff, where Thune worked from 1985 until Abdnor lost a bid for re-election to Democrat Tom Daschle in 1986. Read More

John Thune, a Republican, was elected senator in a close contest in 2004 and re-elected without opposition in 2010. He grew up in Murdo, on the dusty plains west of the Missouri River, a small town with a cluster of restaurants and motels at the interchange of Interstate 94 and U.S. 83. His father, the son of a Norwegian immigrant and a Navy veteran of World War II, was a teacher and the family was Democratic. He graduated from Biola University in La Mirada, Calif., and from the business school at the University of South Dakota. As a high school freshman, he met Republican Rep. Jim Abdnor, who spotted Thune at a grocery checkout counter and recalled that the young man had missed only one of six free throws in his high school basketball game the previous night. They kept in touch, and years later, when Abnor was in the Senate, he hired Thune on this Washington staff, where Thune worked from 1985 until Abdnor lost a bid for re-election to Democrat Tom Daschle in 1986.

Thune returned to South Dakota in 1989 and, at age 28, became executive director of the state Republican Party. In 1991, he was appointed state railroad director by Gov. George Mickelson and in 1993 he became director of the state Municipal League. In 1996, Thune entered a race for the state’s open at large seat in the U.S. House. The favorite in the Republican primary was Lt. Gov. Carole Hillard. But Thune attracted the support of religious conservatives and won the primary 59%-41%. In the general election, he faced Democrat Rick Weiland, a former state director for Daschle. Thune opposed all tax increases and promised to serve only three terms. He won 58%-37%. In the House, Thune was chosen as freshman class representative to the Republican leadership. He was re-elected, 75%-25%, in 1998, the largest percentage margin ever for a statewide candidate in South Dakota.

At a White House dinner in April 2001, President George W. Bush urged Thune to challenge Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson in 2002. Daschle, who had become Senate Democratic leader in 1995, pledged to do everything he could to protect Johnson and got him a seat on the Appropriations Committee. In his challenge to Johnson, Thune argued that South Dakota would be better off with a bipartisan Senate delegation. Johnson argued that he and Daschle made a uniquely powerful team and emphasized votes he had cast for Bush administration policies. The two candidates spent about $6 million each, a record amount for South Dakota, and the national parties and independent groups spent much more. On defense issues, Thune tried to make an issue of Johnson’s opposition to the Gulf War in 1991, but the impact was mitigated when Johnson announced he would vote for the pending resolution authorizing war in Iraq. He also noted that his son, Brooks Johnson, served with the 101st Airborne Division in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 and could be sent to Iraq, which he later was.

The election was the closest in the nation that year. During most of election night and into the morning, Thune led in the count. Then the last two precincts came in, from Shannon County, which includes most of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It voted 92%-8% for Johnson, putting him over the top by a margin of 524 votes—in percentage terms, 50.1%-49.9%. Many Republicans urged Thune to contest the election. But on Nov. 13, he said: “The people of South Dakota have been subjected to one of the longest and most expensive campaigns in South Dakota history. I choose not to subject them to more.”

Thune went to work as a lobbyist and consultant in Washington. He was urged by Republican leaders and family members to run in 2004 against Daschle, who had beaten lightly funded opponents in 1992 and 1998. As minority leader in a 51-49 Republican-controlled Senate, Daschle remained a pivotal figure, a frequent but not strident critic of the Bush administration. Thune’s favorable ratings remained high after his defeat, and early Republican polls showed him running slightly ahead of Daschle, and it was clear Thune would enjoy the full support of the Bush White House. Bush, who had carried South Dakota 60%-38% in 2000, was at the top of the ballot that year. In January 2004, Thune announced that he would take on Daschle.

He sought to portray Daschle as the chief obstructionist to the Bush agenda in the Senate. To underscore the idea, Majority Leader Bill Frist traveled to South Dakota to stump for Thune, breaking with Senate tradition of party leaders refraining from campaigning against each other. Daschle ran ads in the summer of 2003, arguing that a freshman senator could not hope to match his influence in Washington and emphasizing the federal largesse he had brought to South Dakota. He also emphasized his support of some Bush initiatives. Thune portrayed Daschle as a political insider who lived in a $2 million house in Washington and had lost touch with the folks back home. The state Republican Party sent a mailer attacking the work of Daschle’s wife, an aviation industry lobbyist. One attack ad showed Daschle as a bobble-head doll, nodding in unison with bobble-head dolls of liberal Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. It was the most expensive congressional election of the year, as both national parties and numerous third-party interest groups poured millions of dollars into South Dakota. By the end, they had spent $35 million.

The closely fought race brought a huge turnout, up 23% from 2000. Thune won 51%-49%, the first defeat for a Senate party leader since Democrat Ernest McFarland of Arizona lost to Republican Barry Goldwater in 1952. The popular vote margin was 4,508—small, but more than eight times the margin by which Thune had lost to Johnson two years earlier. The contours of the vote were similar. Thune narrowly lost Sioux Falls’ Minnehaha County, but won fast-growing Lincoln County by a bigger margin. He carried Mitchell, North Sioux City, Pierre and Rapid City’s Pennington County and the Black Hills counties around it. He also increased his share of the vote significantly in the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian reservations, where his decision not to challenge the election outcome two years earlier may have earned him goodwill. Daschle won most of the counties in eastern South Dakota. Nationally, Thune was celebrated by Republicans as a giant-killer. He became a talk show favorite, a fundraising star and a celebrity among Republican freshmen.

In the Senate, Thune established a mostly conservative voting record, especially on cultural issues. One of his first legislative efforts was intensely local. In May 2005, Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City, with nearly 4,000 local jobs and half of the nation’s B-1 bombers, was placed on the base closing list, despite Thune’s campaign promise that a Republican senator with good relations with the Bush administration could protect Ellsworth. The initial news was “like a death in the family,” he recounted. “In Washington, you can’t count on anybody else to fight your battles.” With South Dakota colleagues Johnson and Democratic Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, Thune made the case to save the base to the commission, the Pentagon and White House officials. They generated a crowd of more than 10,000 and a pep-rally atmosphere at a base closing commission hearing in Rapid City, and the base survived.

Thune also helped author a section of the 2008 farm bill establishing a permanent disaster program to provide financial aid to farmers whose crops are harmed by natural disasters. He also successfully fought for the inclusion of a provision creating financial incentives for manufacturers that produce cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass, which is abundant in South Dakota. As gas prices climbed in the summer of 2008, Thune helped form a bipartisan group of senators that pushed for more offshore oil drilling. On an energy initiative helpful to his state, Thune in July 2009 won passage of an amendment to the defense bill requiring the Air Force to obtain half of its domestic jet fuel from synthetic blends produced in the United States. Earlier, he worked to get the Senate to agree to an annual mandate of 8 billion gallons of ethanol production by 2012.

He also has been active in issues involving Native Americans. In April 2009, Thune joined with Democrats Johnson and Indian Affairs Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan to successfully pass $400 million for the Emergency Fund for Indian Health and Safety as part of the omnibus appropriations bill. Decrying high murder rates on the reservations, Thune called on the Bureau of Indian Affairs to provide better law enforcement, and in July 2010, he won passage of his Tribal Law and Order Act, which paved the way for retired military personnel to be recruited as reservation police.

On national issues, Thune supports proposals for a biennial budget, a presidential line-item veto and a joint committee on deficit reduction, which would reduce spending by 10% of the previous year’s budget deficit. Over the years, Thune has supported many earmarks for his state, but in 2010, he voted for the successful two-year moratorium on earmarks. In July 2009, Thune tried to amend the defense authorization bill with a provision allowing holders of concealed weapons permits in one state to carry their weapons to other states with similar laws. It received 58 votes, but not the 60 needed to stop a filibuster and pass. Thune spoke out against the labor unions’ card check bill, which would effectively abolish the secret ballot in unionization elections, and voted against the 2005 Central American Free Trade Agreement. Although he opposed many of President Barack Obama initiatives, Thune supported the president on policy in Afghanistan, including his decision to send in additional troops in late 2009.

Thune was one of the first Senate Republicans to endorse John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, and he was mentioned as a possible running mate after McCain won the party’s nomination. Thune moved up the Republican leadership ladder in June 2009, when he became Republican Policy Committee chairman after the resignation of scandal-plagued John Ensign of Nevada.

After two close Senate races in two years, Thune prepared early for his 2010 re-election campaign, visiting the state often and raising $6 million by February 2010. Leading South Dakota Democrats took a pass on the contest, and the party did not field a candidate. He thus became only the third Republican senator to run unopposed since direct election of senators began in 1913. He ultimately raised $12.5 million, and used part of it to contribute to relatively moderate Republican Senate candidates like Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Carly Fiorina in California, Mark Kirk in Illinois and Rob Portman in Ohio.

His leadership political action committee sent money to Republican gubernatorial nominees in Iowa and South Carolina, stirring speculation that Thune might run for president in 2012. And Thune indeed flirted with the idea during the closing months of 2010. Thune told National Journal that November, “We are taking a look at it. … The one thing I know is that we need to get a candidate out there who can take on this president and hopefully defeat him and his agenda and get us back on a path.” But in February 2011, Thune issued a statement saying that he would not run. “I feel that I am best positioned to fight for America’s future here in the trenches of the United States Senate,” he said.

Thune’s rapid rise to the top of the Senate ranks has continued. In September 2011, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. surprisingly announced that he would resign from his Republican Conference Committee chairmanship in January 2012, implying that the position forced him to become too partisan. “What I’m giving up is a seat at the table for more independence,” Alexander told The Washington Post. Thune almost immediately announced his intention to run for the conference committee position, which would make him the third-ranking Senate Republican. No one else has stepped forward to challenge him. In an early August appearance on NBC’s Meet The Press, Thune also left the door open for a vice presidential nomination in 2012. “I don’t think you rule any options out in politics,” he said.

Thune displayed some willingness to reach across the aisle in 2011. During the tense negotiations over whether to raise the debt ceiling, Thune remained optimistic that a deal would get done. And unlike some conservatives in the Senate, such as Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., Thune voted for the final agreement negotiated by the Republican leadership and the Obama White House. Thune, a member of the Agriculture Committee, introduced a bill in September with Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. amending the tax code to allow the creation of charitable, tax-exempt agricultural research organizations, similar to medical research groups that already exist.