By Disregarding Missouri, Kerry Gambles With History
By: Administrative Account | Source: CNSNews.com
October 8, 2004 6:41AM EST

By Robert B. Bluey
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
October 08, 2004

St. Louis (CNSNews.com) - Missouri, considered a battleground state earlier this year, has become a second-tier priority for Sen. John Kerry, who canceled his television commercials here last month and has made only two visits since the Democratic convention in July.

No presidential victor - with the lone exception of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 - has won the White House in the last century without carrying Missouri. But with President Bush leading in polls here, the Kerry campaign made a decisive shift in strategy.

"The last time a Democrat won the White House without winning Missouri was 1824," said Paul Sloca, the Missouri GOP's communications director. "I think John Kerry is resigned to the fact that Missourians aren't being duped by his tax increase and lack of direction on defense message."

Missouri Republicans have worked overtime to convince voters that Kerry simply isn't interested in the state's 11 electoral votes. Sloca said he could recall only one time this year when Kerry visited. In fact, Kerry has made others trips, including ones in August and September.

But the lack of television ads - neither Kerry nor the Democratic National Committee is currently running any - has dramatically changed the state's political significance, said Joel Rivlin, deputy director of the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project.

"Missouri's just not the priority it was earlier in the year," said Rivlin, whose group bases its findings on advertising data compiled by Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Much of the money that could be spent in Missouri, Rivlin said, has ended up in Minnesota, Nevada, Wisconsin and swing states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Massachusetts senator returned to Missouri on Thursday to prepare for tonight's debate with Bush at Washington University in St. Louis, one of the metropolitan areas where Kerry enjoys more support than the president.

Winning those urban areas is crucial to Kerry's chances, said Robert Salisbury, a professor emeritus at Washington University. He said there might be more reason to devote campaign cash to volunteers rather than commercials to spur voters there to the polls.

Democrats, meanwhile, resent claims that Kerry has ceded the state. Even though no ads are airing on television, the DNC continues to pay for a number of radio spots.

"There has been a continuous shipment of staff and resources into the state as well as a ton of surrogate travel here," said Christine Glunz, the DNC's communications director in Missouri. "This is one of the most aggressive field operations in the country."

Glunz said there are 23 field offices up and running, which is more than triple the number the Democrats had here in 2000.

Bush topped Gore by 78,786 votes (or about 3 percentage points) in the 2000 election in Missouri. But as some political pundits suggested to CNSNews.com, all things are not rosy for the president, and some bitterness might be on display at the town hall debate.

"Missouri did take somewhat of a pounding in the last couple year economically," said Marvin L. Overby, a politics professor at the University of Missouri. "Kerry will certainly pound away at that point, I would think. There's going to be an element of the audience sympathetic to that."

Glunz suggested it might be in Kerry's best interest to highlight some of the economic problems in the state, much like Sen. John Edwards did at the vice presidential debate in reference to Cleveland.

"Here in Missouri, people have a lot of anxiety about the economy," she said. "There are factories in all areas of the state, especially in middle Missouri, which have had to close their doors. People feel the effects every day of not earning the income they did four years ago."

But while the economy is likely to come up, so too are social issues, on which many Missourians base their vote, according to Richard J. Hardy, who teaches politics at the University of Missouri and is one of the few conservatives on its campus.

Hardy said there are two types of Democrats in Missouri: Liberals (found mostly in Kansas City, St. Louis and university communities) who would always vote for the Democrat presidential candidate; and other "out-state" Democrats (found in the suburbs and rural areas) who tend to hold conservative values.

"The issues that concern them are abortion, gun control, taxes, and in recent years, the gay rights issue," Hardy said.

It was these voters who turned out at the polls in August to overwhelming approve an amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and woman. The measure passed with 71 percent of the vote. Now the Missouri GOP wants to capitalize on that issue to help Bush on Nov. 2.

Overby said the state's unique characteristics - as a political bellwether and geographical center of the country -- make it important. On social issues and the economy as well as the war in Iraq, he said, Missouri generally treads the way the nation moves.

"You get the elements of all different types of political and geographical cultures here," Overby said. "The state really reflects the country to a large extent, so there are going to be a lot of people with different views."

Email this Article

Printer Friendly Version