Free Republic

Republican Senator Jim Talent is tied with his Democrat Claire McCaskill in the first Rasmussen Report for this election 2006 match-up. The early election poll finds both candidates attracting 46% of the vote.

The state Auditor announced this afternoon that she will run for the Senate in 2006, providing a huge boost to Democrats in Missouri, who were looking for a challenger to Republican Jim Talent.

By this time next week, if she keeps her word, state Auditor Claire McCaskill will finally have ended Missouri's most popular political parlor game. After moving the deadline for months, she has promised to announce by Labor Day whether she's running for reelection or for the U.S. Senate.

After a weekend trip to Nantucket Island, Mass., where she met with a bevy of Democratic senators, McCaskill says she hasn’t made a final call about whether she will challenge Republican incumbent Jim Talent next year. The weekend gathering was sponsored by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and featured talks by Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, who leads the committee, Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado, Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and several other senators.

State Senator Chuck Graham announces he won't be a candidate, increasing pressure on state Auditor Clare MaCaskill to run.

Democratic state Sen. Chuck Graham, a symbolic leader of stem-cell research supporters, said he will probably challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Talent, who has endorsed legislation to criminalize a certain kind of stem-cell research.

State Sen. Chuck Graham, D-Columbia, says he'll drop his own plans to possibly challenge Talent if McCaskill opts to run.

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - A plane carrying three U.S. senators bound for a campaign event in Missouri landed in Alabama after pilots reported problems with the landing gear, a Republican official said. Ann Wagner, co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and the Missouri Republican chairwoman, said late Monday that a plane carrying Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Sens. Peter Fitzgerald, R-Ill., and Rick Santorum, R-Pa., reported problems with its landing gear and landed at Mobile. A police report at Mobile Regional Airport indicated that a Challenger 250 landed safely Monday at 3:28 p.m. CST after reporting its landing...

Republicans are filled with glee, as Democrats fall all over themselves, trying to diminish the fact that Bill Clinton's former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, was caught stuffing classified documents and national secrets down his drawers, in his jacket, in his socks, and in a leather portfolio, in order to steal them from the National Archives, and to later destroy some of them. (Berger returned some documents, but only after he was caught.) Watergate, meet BVDgate. For the past thirty years, many observers have thought it the height of paranoia for Pres. Richard Nixon's men to burglarize the offices of...

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) and U.S. Senator Jim Talent (R-MO) issued the following statement regarding John Kerry's visit to Independence, Missouri: "Harry Truman loved to play poker, but John Kerry can't come to Independence and bluff his way through his record of indecisiveness and defense budget cuts. Harry Truman is known for the sign on his desk that read 'The Buck Stops Here.' When Truman made a decision, he stood by it. John Kerry sees major decisions as opportunities to advance his political career," said Bond. "I have the honor of serving in Missouri’s Senate seat...

<p>In the debate over traditional marriage, the cultural dominoes are falling in the wrong direction. Activist judges, who specialize in taking issues away from the people and deciding those issues instead, intend to make traditional marriage a thing of the past. Their decisions, like the one that will allow Massachusetts clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples this week, and the aggressive political and legal strategy driving them, make clear that protecting traditional marriage will require amending the Constitution.</p>

Arlington, VA - U.S. Senator Jim Talent (R-MO) issued the following statement in response to Senator Kerry's remarks on gas prices: "John Kerry is playing politics with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is the kind of thing you support when you have no energy policy. In 2000, Kerry said that manipulating the reserve would not impact gas prices, but now he's using it to draw attention away from the fact that he supported an additional 50 cents per gallon tax on gasoline. Kerry needs to explain why his only energy policy has been one of obstructing the President's comprehensive efforts...

<p>In 1965, the federal government, in its "War on Poverty," began paying very substantial cash and benefit packages to lower- income Americans. This impulse to help was a good thing, but there was a catch to it; the government required, as a condition of public assistance, that recipients not engage in the private activities that traditionally get people out of poverty.</p>

ST. LOUIS - The son of the late Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan and former U.S. Sen. Jean Carnahan launched a bid Wednesday to fill the congressional seat being vacated by presidential hopeful Dick Gephardt. State Rep. Russ Carnahan, speaking before supporters in a St. Louis park, called the campaign "an opportunity whose time has come." His mother sat in the crowd, smiling. "I think he can make a great contribution," she said. "He hasn't asked me for advice yet." Gephardt, the former House minority leader, is not seeking re-election in 2004 as he bids for the White House. The 3rd...

May 6, 2003 On Monday, a caller told me, "If it weren't for you out there leading the charge, whatever Bush wants to do domestically would be DOA. I can't find the Republican leadership anywhere." Sadly, I know what he means. It's best illustrated on judges. The GOP leadership is whining away about how they just don't have any power to get the judges confirmed, and yet they do. They are in the majority - by one vote. We have a couple of Republicans who are off the reservation, but that wouldn't matter were it not for the total unanimity...

<p>JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Republican Jim Talent could become the newest member of the U.S. Senate as early as this week, when Missouri Secretary of State Matt Blunt is scheduled to certify the Nov. 5 election results.</p> <p>Blunt, whose father is U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri and the new House majority whip, is scheduled to certify the results at 1 p.m. Thursday in his state Capitol office.</p>

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 — State polls showing that more than half a dozen Senate seats were still within either party's grasp prompted Republicans and Democrats today to intensify their feverish campaigns for control of the chamber. Seeking to influence the truly undecided voters — and to make sure those who have made up their minds go to the polls — both parties marshaled volunteers to ring doorbells and hand out leaflets. They also paraded big-name politicians and star-quality supporters before the cameras and drowned out commercials for consumer goods with advertisements extolling their candidates and assailing their opponents. Politicians and...

"Pray as if it all depended on God; work as if it all depended on you." Close, possible pickups: South Dakota, Missouri, Georgia, New Jersey and Minnesota. Possible losses: Arkansas, New Hampshire, Texas, North Carolina If lightening strikes, may pickup: Iowa South Dakota: John Thune, current Congressman, (articulate, affable, attractive in an August debate with Johnson) running against Tim Johnson, current Senator. Last poll: 40%-40% announced just before the debate Link to www.johnthune.com John Thune for South Dakota P.O. Box 516 Sioux Falls, SD 57101 New Jersey: Doug Forrester (bio: former assistant state treasurer, now small businessman and university instructor)...

Thousands of radio listeners in Missouri and across the nation heard U.S. Senate Candidate Jim Talent discuss the issues in the Missouri Senate race Wednesday evening. But they didn't hear from Jean Carnahan. As nationally syndicated host Jim Bohannon explained, Carnahan declined the show's invitation to appear in a segment with Talent, and declined to be interviewed by telephone separately, either before or after Talent's interview. Bohannon's Wednesday night program originated live from the Ozark Empire Fair in Springfield, Missouri, and was carried on 40 radio stations in Missouri and 400 stations coast to coast. Carnahan's decision to stay away...

<p>The Missouri Democratic Party is calling on Republican Jim Talent to make public his billing records for his work last year as a lobbyist for a Washington-based firm.</p> <p>Democrats allege that the $231,000 that Talent received wasn't for bona fide work, and that the Washington lobbying firm may have served as an illegal conduit for financial aid from three Republican-leaning businesses.</p>