The journey of U.S. Sen. John Thune to be the new Senate majority leader began 20 years ago in one of the hardest fought, consequential Senate elections in the last 60 years.

The 2004 South Dakota senate race was second only to the presidential campaign where President George W. Bush was challenged by Massachusetts U.S. Sen. John Kerry in terms of national exposure.

Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota was the most powerful Democrat in America as he approached his reelection campaign in 2004.

Daschle was elected Senate minority leader in 1994 but became Senate Majority Leader in 2001 when Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont switched parties giving Democrats a majority. Republicans won a Senate majority in 2002 but Democrats kept Daschle as their minority leader.

Daschle was a skilled and strategic leader on the Senate floor and he obstructed much of the agenda of President George W. Bush. He initially considered running for president in late 2003 but decided to seek what he thought would be a safe campaign for reelection.

John Thune was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1996. He challenged Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson in 2002 where he was heavily favored but Daschle’s formidable political operation ran Johnson’s campaign and defeated Thune by just 524 votes.

The campaign was marred by accusations of voting irregularities on South Dakota’s Native American reservations and Thune was urged by Republican leaders in Washington, D.C. to challenge the election results. But Thune refused saying he would not put his beloved state through such a controversial process based on unsubstantiated claims.

As Daschle continued to be the most high profile Democratic leader in America while obstructing the Bush agenda, his political base of support in South Dakota started waning. Daschle had easily been reelected in 1992 and 1998 after unseating a Republican senator in 1986. But 2004 looked different.

When Daschle was first elected as a congressman in 1978, he was a pro-life Democrat with a streak of fiscal conservatism. But after he became the Democratic leader, he became more liberal which was at odds with his conservative state.

When former Congressman Thune entered the race in January 2004, Daschle had millions in the bank and had already been running television ads for six months. The prevailing view of many national Republican leaders was that Thune could keep the race close and prevent Daschle from raising money for other Democratic candidates across the nation, but he could not actually win.

But they forgot to tell John Thune and his campaign that his challenge to Daschle was a mere diversion incapable of actually toppling the Senate Democratic leader.

Thune labeled Daschle the “chief obstructionist” in the Senate while Daschle touted how powerful he was as the Senate minority leader. Thune’s retort was what good was political power if it was used to the detriment of the state he represented.

Daschle started the 2004 campaign with an eight-point lead. After Thune went on the air with its first ad in July, the gap quickly closed and the campaign was a slugfest for the next four months.

The Daschle campaign told the media that Thune would begin with an intensely negative ad. How surprised they must have been when Thune’s two precocious teenage daughters starred in the first ad that highlighted his deep South Dakota roots and his work for the state.

A nationally televised debate on NBC’s Meet the Press moderated by the late, great Tim Russert seemed to turn the tide with Thune aggressively confronting Daschle about saying one thing in South Dakota while voting differently in Washington.

The race was deadlocked at 48-48 as both campaigns built massive turnout operations and soaked the airwaves with television ads.

As the Daschle campaign grasped the reality they could lose, they cynically filed a lawsuit the night before the election against the Thune campaign falsely alleging intimidation of Native American voters on South Dakota’s reservations. Convening in a federal courtroom at 8 pm in downtown Sioux Falls, the hearing was conducted by a federal judge with close personal and professional ties to Daschle.

No evidence was presented proving the alleged intimidation but in the early morning hours on Election Day, the judge allowed the Daschle campaign to save face by telling the Thune campaign to quit doing something it was not doing to begin with.

Thune accomplished something that had not been done in 52 years when he defeated Daschle by 4,508 votes. The last time was in 1952 when U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater unseated Senate Democratic Leader Ernest McFarland in Arizona.

The Daschle campaign consisted of very talented but ruthless operatives. With their boss out of the Senate, they went to work for newly elected U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. They were with Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign and in the White House. They were certainly not the “B” team.

For those MAGA detractors who don’t think Senate Majority Leader John Thune is tough enough to lead the Senate, they don’t understand his steely competitive nature underneath his South Dakota charm.

John Thune got up off the mat of defeat in 2002 and two years later unseated the most powerful Democratic leader in the nation who had not lost an election in 26 years.

And that is why John Thune is the right Republican to be the Senate majority leader in 2025.

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican state chairman who was campaign manager for Senate Majority John Thune when Thune unseated Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle in 2004.