Bush Targets S. Dakota, Louisiana for a Tax Edge

President Bush took the fight for his $1.6-trillion tax cut plan Friday to two states he carried last November, where moderate Democratic senators face reelection challenges and his popularity drew large, cheering crowds.

At the first stop, in Sioux Falls, S.D., Bush found friendly territory. He won the state by a margin of 60% to 38% in November. But it is also home to two Democratic senators--Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, and freshman Tim Johnson. And that made his visit here all the more curious as he escalated his campaign for tax relief.

But the White House figures it can successfully mine the politics of South Dakota, Louisiana and other small states--where Democrats, the president hopes, may be susceptible to popular pressure to vote for his 10-year tax cut proposal, and he’s in a position to apply it.

And so, over a 24-hour period, Bush flew 2,326 miles, from Washington to Fargo, N.D., and then to Sioux Falls on Thursday, and on Friday from Sioux Falls to here. He spoke at rallies in each city, with four targets in mind: North Dakota’s two Democratic senators and the two Democrats, Johnson of South Dakota and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, whose first Senate terms expire next year.

Such is the mathematics of the tax vote in the Senate this year. With the chamber divided evenly, 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, and not every Republican vote certain, Bush is looking to put whatever pressure he can on a slim number of Democrats to vote for the proposal.

And what better targets than those who are up for reelection in states that he carried handily in November? Bush explained the tactic at the start of the week:

“I think there’s some methodology in my travel,” he said. “I’ll be going to states where we’ve got a good chance of convincing members in states where maybe there’s some obstinence.”

White House advance crews worked successfully to fill large halls for the president. A crowd of about 10,000 filled the North Dakota State University sports arena in Fargo on Thursday evening.

An Air National Guard hangar, large enough for perhaps half a dozen F-16 fighter jets, was filled Friday morning in Sioux Falls.

Bush told them that “the Congress did the right thing--they heard the call” when the House voted Thursday for the centerpiece of the tax plan, lowering income tax rates.

The measure now goes to the Senate.

“I want you all to remind folks who need to be reminded,” the president said.

Melding his cut-the-taxes with his trim-the-budget message, Bush said: “The problem is, some of the folks in Washington are used to spending orgies.

“You’re just an e-mail away from making a difference in somebody’s attitude. You can have a positive effect.”

As a television light erupted in smoke, sparks and flames, he paused and then said: “It’s a sign from above.”

There’s no certainty that the White House effort to take its campaign deep into the senators’ political turf will work. Indeed, it could backfire, some think, by driving Johnson and Landrieu into the embrace of their fellow Democrats. And in North Dakota, neither Sen. Byron L. Dorgan nor Sen. Kent Conrad is up for election. Conrad has been one of the leaders of the opposition to the Bush plan.

As for Johnson, “this just reinforces that he’ll be with his Democratic colleagues,” said Thomas E. Mann, a congressional expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Ditto Landrieu, Mann predicted.

This is because they can seek the protective coat of popular senior senators, both Democrats, in their states--for Johnson, that would be Daschle, and for Landrieu, there’s John B. Breaux, a centrist Democrat.

Still, each has reason to be wary.

Johnson won by a 2% margin in 1996 and Daschle confounds Republicans by winning handily.

“I don’t know why that happens,” said Ron Maendl, who drove 150 miles from his 2,000-acre farm in Frankfort, S.D., to see the president.

“You bet I voted for [Bush], and I pray for him every day,” Maendl said at the back of the crowd in the hangar.

In Louisiana, Bush won, 53% to 45%, and Landrieu won by the slimmest of margins, with 50.2% of the vote.

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush intends to keep up the pressure.

“The president is going to continue to travel across the country to bring his tax-cutting, education-improving, debt-relieving message to the public and urge the public to call their representatives to vote for it.”

Even in places, apparently, that presidents rarely visit.

“While the last president took seven years to come to South Dakota, this one took seven weeks to come to South Dakota,” said the state’s Republican governor, William Janklow.