At 11 p.m. CST

U S SENATE
   (D) DASCHLE        TOM           122947       49          582           827
   (R) THUNE          JOHN          127767       51          582           827

Midnight CST

U S SENATE
   (D) DASCHLE        TOM           142073       49          692           827
   (R) THUNE          JOHN          148499       51          692           827

Hello All,

There is no way to respond tho this thread without outing myself. I am Will Schweinle. My wife and I resigned our USM Asst Professor positions in August 03 after realizing that we did not want to pursue tenure at USM. We both accepted positions at U. South Dakota and are glad we did--for the most part, anyway. We still miss our friends.

To quote educator, yes, "the Daschle-Thune race is truly unreal."

For the last two weeks, we have received at least 2 pre-recorded phone calls per day, per candidate. We kept waiting to receive a call from a real person so we could tell them that the last candidate to call before I go to the polls will lose my vote. Alas, no real people called.

There appeared, at least to me, to be more Daschle-Thune related TV ads than Bush-Kerry. Over the weekend, Thune ran a very classy, down-home, real-kinda-dad ad with his two teenage daughters. Both are cute as buttons, articulate and must have had some great coaching. It was the old "aw-shucks, I'm a real guy who doesn't take himself too seriously" sort of thing. That ad seemed to sway a lot of non-academic people around here. It was the buzz at the convenience store where I buy a cup of coffee on the way to work.

My academic colleagues tended to consistently favor Daschle.

This is just a weird state. That's all I can say.

Will