I think the cutting back on ad buys in battleground states has initiated the official death watch for the Kerry Kampaign--unless of course, the 'unco-ordinated' 527s are standing by to take up the slack for them.
Posted on 09/11/2004 11:12:29 AM PDT by bad company
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Posted on Sat, Sep. 11, 2004
Has swing state Missouri already swung?
By DAVID GOLDSTEIN and STEVE KRASKE The Kansas City Star
WASHINGTON –– Missouri has long been a pivotal swing state in presidential elections, but political pollsters, strategists and activists wonder if it might be swinging the Republicans' way.
Recent events hint that Sen. John Kerry's camp is acknowledging that by pulling back his efforts here and shifting resources elsewhere.
His campaign — surprisingly — did not include Missouri with the 14 other competitive states where it plans to run its latest round of television advertising.
“It's hardly a secret that Missouri is one of the toughest of the states (for Democrats) considered to be still in play,” said Jim Jordan, Kerry's former campaign manager who runs a grassroots voter organizing group called America Coming Together.
That seemed to be the message behind this week's news of the September ad blackout in Missouri and a USA Today-CNN-Gallup Poll giving President Bush a large post-Republican convention bounce.
Missouri Republicans were so fired up that they teased Kerry in a press release about his campaign swing into St. Louis on Friday, calling it his “farewell tour” of the state.
Kerry aides dismissed the Republican crowing, saying that both the candidate and his campaign advertising would be back. Indeed, many Democrats and Republicans said the gap between Bush and Kerry is probably not nearly as wide as the poll indicated.
“If this were October, I'd be nervous,” said Steve Glorioso, adviser to Claire McCaskill, Democratic candidate for governor. “Those numbers will readjust, and it will be back to a race within the margin of error.”
Noting that the president was just campaigning in Poplar Bluff, Lee's Summit, Sedalia and Columbia this week, Tony Wilson, Kerry's Missouri state director, said: “If the president needs to come to Missouri for a day and a half, he knows how close this race is. He's not going to Kansas.”
But Missouri, which now has two Republican senators and a majority of GOP congressmen, is looking more and more like “red state” Kansas. Shifts in population and the rise of culturally conservative issues as political touchstones have led most notably to the GOP takeover of the General Assembly in recent years.
“We've seen a very slow shift to Missouri becoming a more Republican state,” said state Sen. Matt Bartle, a Republican from Lee's Summit. “Rural Missourians who historically have been strong Democrats have on many of the social issues identified more closely with the Republican Party.”
If true, that could mean trouble for Kerry and other Democrats. Only once in the last 100 years has the White House winner not won Missouri.
“I'd advise them to target Missouri, with expectations not great.” said Mark Gersh, a Democratic political strategist. “You might have a chance to win there.”
Tad Devine, one of Kerry's chief strategists, talking to reporters during the GOP convention, described a strategy that would concentrate on four big states considered winnable: Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Ohio.
The sense is that Democrats appear now to consider Ohio a better possibility than Missouri, although in 2000 the two states each gave Bush 50 percent of the vote. In that election, Al Gore got only 39 percent of the rural vote in Missouri, again mirroring Ohio.
The USA Today-CNN-Gallup Poll showed Kerry behind in Missouri by 14 percent among likely voters, while only 9 percent behind in Ohio.
Crafting a strategy to win the White House without Missouri, however, would put more pressure on the Democrats to win states that already are in the must-win category, like Pennsylvania or Wisconsin.
“They've got to draw an inside straight,” said Tony Feather, a Republican strategist from Missouri who was the Bush campaign's political director in 2000.
“If they start walking away from a swing state, they've got to win Florida, they've got to win Ohio. There are just a limited number of places they can go that have swing potential.”
Some Democrats called Kerry's decision not to advertise in Missouri everything from an “ominous” sign for his chances to win the presidency, to a realistic appraisal of the state right now, to a potentially crippling mistake.
Some likened it to the decision in 2000 by then-Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore to pull out of Ohio late in the campaign when many supporters still believed it was winnable.
“I don't see winning without Missouri,” said Democratic pollster Fred Yang, who has surveyed the state for several candidates.
Kerry's advisers said money was set aside for Missouri and other states including Arizona, North Carolina and Arkansas for October.
Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee, which also had dropped Missouri from its current advertising campaign, reversed field Friday. It reinstated Missouri, along with Colorado, and plans to spend nearly $600,000 between the two states, where important statewide elections are very much up in the air.
In Missouri, where politics can be colored by a conservative tradition, a southern regional flavor and strong strain of religion, cultural issues have bubbled to the surface in a very public way.
The legality of the state's abortion laws has been argued repeatedly before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the right to carry concealed weapons was pushed through the legislature despite an earlier public vote.
Most recently, the state adopted a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage by a more than 70 percent vote, grabbing the attention of the entire nation.
The late Gov. Mel Carnahan, a popular Democrat with rural roots, was able to keep the shift of conservative Democrats to Republican causes and candidates at bay, according to several experts. But his progressive politics — he was pro-choice and for gun control — also hastened the erosion.
Lloyd Smith, who managed Republican Sen. Jim Talent's successful campaign against former Sen. Jean Carnahan in 2002, said many rural Democratic voters are “common sense conservatives.”
“The Democratic Party walked away from them on guns, the right-to-life and marriage,” said Smith, a senior adviser to the Bush campaign. “They look at those issues and say, ‘which party is standing with me on those issues?' It doesn't take much, in Baptist terms, to let go of the pew and walk down the aisle and be converted.”
But with other statewide Democratic candidates besides Kerry at risk this November, Missouri Democrats remain cautiously hopeful.
“I'm not ready to say (Missouri's) leaning Republican,” said longtime Democratic activist Woody Overton. “I'm not ready to give it up. It's a swing state.”
To reach David Goldstein, call
(202) 383-6105 or send email to
dgoldstein@krwashington.com.
To reach Steve Kraske, call
(816) 234-4312 or send e-mail
to skraske@kcstar.com.
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First glance
• The Kerry campaign does not include Missouri with the other competitive states where it plans to run its latest round of TV ads.
• Kerry and Bush talk guns and Iraq, A-2.
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© 2004 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansascity.com
I think the cutting back on ad buys in battleground states has initiated the official death watch for the Kerry Kampaign--unless of course, the 'unco-ordinated' 527s are standing by to take up the slack for them.
Go MO!
That's exactly what I was thinking. The 527s will probably take up the slack.
Kerry hasn't been showing very much.
Mo.. the Ohio of the west..
If F'n does give up on Missouri, then that leaves W needing to defend only Florida and Ohio to win. It also frees up the President to spend more time in places like PA, WI, IA, MN and MI. If W wins a couple of those states, it becomes virtually impossible for Kerry to prevail.
In the end, Kerry is going to have to continue contesting MO on some level. He cannot afford to simply give it away if he still hopes to win.
If it's not close they can't cheat. We still gotta work.
If Bush can carry the Kansas City area fairly solidly, he'll win the state. He has the rural parts wrapped up. The KC votes would counter the legal and illegal voting in St. Louis, and Kerry would be toast. I expect we'll see Bush in the KC area again soon.
I've been concerned about St.Louis & K.C. But after the rally Monday I can guarantee you that Southeast Mo. will do it's part to offset the big cities! Not only are we for Bush, we can't hardly wait to proudly punch our cards!
GO MO, indeed. I think the lead will be too great for St. Louis City to succeed in their fraud, although it won't stop them from trying.
Are ther monitors at the sights in St Louis?
I don't know. I'm pollwatching out here in the burbs but we don't get too much of the bring out your dead group.
So9
> only has to do well in the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City, which are unbelievably and mildly leftist, respectively
The population of the City of St. Louis is, what, a couple hundred thousand. The metro area exceeds two million. There are poor suburbs, rich ones, old leftist ones, and new family-value ones. The key to winning in Mo is 1. energizing the family, faith, business and gun oriented voters in the rich, poor, and family burbs, and 2. demoralizing the lefty nutballs in places like Webster Groves and Kirkwood (which is a direct result of #1, so energizing the conservatives is the whole game).
I guess I would also add: we also need to be careful not to alienate the remains of the outstate FDR democrats who are, as the article says, actually conservative, but feel very guilty voting republican. The same goes even more for the blacks, who will take another generation not to feel bad voting for republicans. But getting the votes of people who are actually conservative but also never will trust big business is an important part of "compassionate conservatism" and in fact may justify a lot of W's apparent big-governmentism.
The only reason the RATs may spend money there is to help Salazar in his Senate campiagn against Coors, but GWB will not lose. I have no worries about that state whatsoever.
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