Now that it is 2006 at last, we will be seeing more press coverage of the 2006 Missouri senate race which looks to be very competitive. Most people think that Claire McCaskill has a shot at defeating incumbent Republican Jim Talent IF she can raise enough money.
St. Louis Post Dispatch political columnist Jo Mannies has a column out today about the race that focuses on money but ties it, not to Claire and Jim, but to Hillary Clinton and Jack Abramoff. I don’t think it is off base.
Abramoff is a black eye for Talent, who in recent months has returned $5,000 in donations that he’d received from Abramoff, his old law firm and two of the Indian tribes who were Abramoff clients.
Clinton is a potential liability for McCaskill, who is accused of distancing herself from such figures because critics cast them as urban liberals out of touch with mainstream Missouri.
Both candidates deny such assertions, while their state political parties continue to repeat them.
Do not underestimate the depth with which some people in Missouri, especially outstate Missouri, hate Hillary. Last fall my mother went down to Southern Missouri to visit some of her relations and came back with this story. Her cousin, a very bright woman who worked in social services, was telling her that she didn’t know how to vote. She mostly voted Republican these days but she hated Bush’s record. But she couldn’t bring herself to vote for Kerry because she couldn’t stand ‘that Hillary Clinton’ and didn’t want to do ANYTHING that might help Hillary become president. (Yes, my mother pointed out that a win for John Kerry would help insure Hillary was not near the white house for at least 8 years.)
But the “culture of corruption” meme is also becoming strong here.
In any event, I agree with Mannies that this is not yet about the public, its about fundraising.
But Dave Robertson, a political science professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, contends that the public isn’t the real audience.
“They want to discourage fundraising and discourage grassroots supporters,” Robertson said.
To do that, both political camps are testing out two long-standing political tactics:
Link your opponent to polarizing figures.
Attack the opponents’ out-of-state allies.
Clinton and Abramoff are natural targets for such strategies, since they are polarizing AND out-of-state. Same for DeLay and Dean.
I’m not really sure that Dean is as polarizing here in MO as people think he is. But, then, I’m a Dean fan so I’m a little biased. In any event, Dean seems to be willing to be “behind the scenes” in the states and no one can complain if a candidate gets assistance from their national party. So I see Delay being a bigger liability than Dean.
What would be a real help to Claire would be if Blunt could only be brought down in the Abramoff scandal. So keep your fingers crossed.
