 Oahe was supported by party leaders like George McGovern but blocked by environmentalists as well as the Democratic President at the time, Jimmy Carter.This splintering was only magnified by the fading of McGovern from the political spotlight, a liberal mainline Protestant who had tried to keep himself and his party insulated from the religiously conservative backlash against liberal social policies.While most couldn't avoid the rightward drift of the state's politics (including McGovern himself), two Democratic representatives and senators, Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson, followed in his footsteps, each winning elections over the course of two decades in spite of an increasingly conservative statewide electorate that has generally voted for Republican presidents, governors and legislatures in recent election cycles.