This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 3, 2011 - For a Missouri U.S. Senate contest initially billed as a titanic neck-and-neck battle between two of the state's best-known family dynasties, the race between Republican Roy Blunt and Democrat Robin Carnahan took a surprising turn. Blunt won in a blowout.
The southwest Missouri congressman's victory margin of almost 14 percentage points was one of the largest in recent state history ... Blunt's stronger-than-expected showing came largely from his success in racking up huge pluralities in Republican rural Missouri, where he captured about two-thirds of the vote. A Democrat running statewide needs to keep down the Republican rural advantage to the mid-50s, percentage-wise.
At the same time, Blunt held down -- or eliminated, in some cases -- Carnahan's perceived advantage in the big-city suburbs around Kansas City and St. Louis. In recent elections, these areas have trended Democratic. As a result, her strong ending in the two cities' urban cores did not matter.
... Blunt's lopsided win swiftly prompted debate among experts over whether it signaled a permanent shift in Missouri's political allegiance.
David Robertson, a political science professor at the University of Missouri St. Louis, contended that Blunt's sizable victory was evidence of Missouri's continued conservative shift, particularly when coupled with the state's 2008 election results. Missouri voters had slightly favored Republican John McCain, who carried the state by less than 4,000 votes over Democrat Barack Obama.
That result broke one of the best bellwether records in the country. Until 2008, Missouri voters had sided with the national presidential winner in all but one election since 1904.
"Missouri is no longer a certain indicator of national trends," Robertson said, "because its voters have become slightly more conservative and Republican than the nation as a whole."
But Ken Warren, a political science professor at Saint Louis University and a pollster, argued that the 2010 U.S. Senate results actually bolster Missouri's bellwether image. Blunt's strong finish was indicative of the national Republican tsunami, he said.
In 2006, during the national midterm election, Warren noted that Missouri voters had swung the other way. Voters narrowly sided with the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, Claire McCaskill, in her successful ouster of Republican incumbent Jim Talent. McCaskill's win had been part of a national Democratic wave.
Warren declared that the 2010 results further underscore that "Missouri voters are highly susceptible" to the national political winds.
...
Carnahan spent 2009 holding public events highlighting her successes as secretary of state. Her campaign website displayed photos of Carnahan running her family's rural Missouri cattle farm and holding an online contest to choose a name for a new foal. The winning moniker: Moxie.
In the eyes of some, it was Blunt who displayed moxie as he sought to persuade Carnahan -- then leading in the polls -- to engage in early debates. She declined, saying such events would be unseemly before candidate-filing officially got underway in February 2010. By then, the political mood -- nationally and in Missouri -- had shifted. In January 2010, polls began showing Blunt in the lead. That is where he remained.
Carnahan unsuccessfully sought to take back the momentum with a new campaign theme that centered on her promise to fight the "bull" in Washington. Both candidates and their parties also set up special websites for particularly harsh attacks on their rivals. One of the state Democratic Party's most active sites targeting Blunt was called theveryworstofwashington.com, and one of the state Republican Party's attack sites was rubberstamprobin.com.
Blunt tackled potential trouble in the spring and summer when many Tea Party groups ... embraced his best-known primary challenger, state Sen. Chuck Purgason, R-Caulfield. Still, Blunt dispatched all nine of his GOP rivals in the Aug. 3 primary by collecting 71 percent of the statewide vote. Blunt then swiftly courted Tea Party support and ignited thunderous applause when he unexpectedly took the stage at a huge "9/12" Tea Party rally in St. Louis...
Carnahan had trouble attracting similar enthusiasm within Democratic ranks ... . She found herself having to explain to those in her own party why she agreed with Blunt, not Obama, when it came to retaining all the Bush-era tax cuts, including those for the wealthy.
...
Blunt's most successful line of attack dealt with more than $107 million in federal tax breaks in the stimulus program that went to a mid-Missouri wind farm co-owned by Carnahan's younger brother, Tom Carnahan. Although federal officials said that Robin Carnahan had no role in the aid, the matter showed up repeatedly in TV attack ads. Most of those ads ... were produced by several outside groups, notably the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and two new organizations — American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS — cofounded by former Bush aide Karl Rove. Combined, the independent groups have acknowledged spending more than $8 million attacking Carnahan in TV ads, fliers and automated phone calls.
That barrage overwhelmed the anti-Blunt ads aired in Missouri by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and several allied outside groups, including Commonsense Ten, Votevets.org and the League of Conservation Voters. ... During the final weeks, the state AFL-CIO and other labor groups also spent money on fliers and get-out-the-vote drives on Carnahan's behalf. But by then, even she was acknowledging that Blunt had the edge.
All the outside spending rivaled that spent by Blunt and Carnahan. Their latest campaign reports, filed in mid-October, showed that Blunt had raised $10.9 million, while Carnahan had collected $9.6 million. He still had $2.3 million to spend during the final couple of weeks, while she had less than $900,000 for her final push. ...
More Information
This article is an excerpt from the new book "Pensulum Swing," excerpted with permission of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, which published the book.
The book can be purchased at Amazon.com and/or check with local book stores.
