This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Aug. 31, 2012 - Even though President Barack Obama doesn’t appear to be competing for Missouri’s votes, some warn that the president – and the national Democrat Party -- needs to keep Jefferson County in mind as they gather in Charlotte to make their case to the nation.
“That’s the audience that he needs to win over,” said George Connor, head of the political science department at Missouri State University in Springfield.
“He has to win over the guys in Festus and Arnold,’’ Connor added.
He's referring to the blue-collar workers, predominantly male, who have been disaffected by the economy and, since 2008, have helped turn Jefferson County from Democratic-run turf to territory now governed by Republicans. The huge GOP surge in Jefferson County in 2010, for example, reflected the political shift nationally.
And regardless of whether Obama or Republican Mitt Romney carries Missouri in November, Connor’s point is that the same issues that plague Democrats in Jefferson County also likely pose a re-election challenge nationally for the president in this year’s true swing states -- notably Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
“The ‘Missouri issue’ is more of a problem for (the Obama campaign) outside of Missouri,” Connor said. “It definitely will be an issue in Ohio,” where most polls show the president with a precarious slim lead.
Democratic consultant Mike Kelley, former executive director of the Missouri Democratic Party, said that such talk about Jefferson County boils down to the importance of the small universe of non-aligned “independent voters, the Americans who have a relative who’s out of work.”
“People are fed up,” Kelley added, noting that their frustration extends to the continued blame game played by politicians in both parties, including Romney and Obama.
Jefferson County reflects the political reality in 2012, he said. "It really boils down to 12 or 13 counties in the entire country that will determine who will be the next president."
As the president addresses the nation in Charlotte, said Kelley, “He needs to explain in layman’s terms how his approach going forward will lead to success, and why going backward makes no sense.”
Such explanations must include, Kelley said, why the future of the economy will be linked, in part, to the successful implementation of the health-insurance changes in the Affordable Care Act. Health-care costs, the consultant noted, are a huge chunk of the nation’s spending – by average Americans as well as the government.
The challenge, observed Connor, will be Obama’s penchant for “lofty language” that could make it harder for him to reach his targeted audience. “He does not appeal well to average voters via television,” the professor said.
And that may explain why former President Bill Clinton has been tapped to address the convention during a prime-time speech in Charlotte, and why his remarks are among the most highly anticipated among Missouri’s Democratic attendees.
“Clinton has that way of speaking,” said Connor, that does reach working-class voters like those in Jefferson County.
Obama – and Romney – appear to lack that skill, the professor said. Both of the candidates’ running mates – Joe Biden and Paul Ryan – appear to be slightly more successful at it.
Missouri’s other notable swing county, with one of the best national records of siding with the presidential victor, is Jackson County, which surrounds Kansas City. Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders now is chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party.
Sanders recalled in an interview how the Democratic convention mood, nationally and in the state, appears to have changed dramatically since 2008.
Delegates take job seriously
In 2008, said Sanders, the four-day convention in Denver “was primarily a celebration” as Obama accepted the presidential nomination and peace was restored with his high-profile rival, fellow senator Hillary Clinton.
Now, Sanders says he’s prepared for a more somber mood as 109 Missouri delegates and alternates join thousands of party loyalists in Charlotte in the next few days to formally anoint Obama’s re-election bid.
“It’s a much more serious election,” Sanders said. “The mood is that there’s much more at stake.”
That’s certainly the opinion of several first-time Missouri Democratic delegates: LaDonna Appelbaum of northwest St. Louis County, Tim Ryan of Wentzville, Maureen Fauss of south St. Louis County, and Laura and Julio Castaneda of St. Peters.
In fact, several delegates offered up the same grave issue that they view as the top threat to Obama’s re-election.
“My only concern is voter suppression,” said Appelbaum. “There are these governors in other states who are being extremely political about this” by trimming voter rolls and reducing the number of days to vote.
Said Castaneda, a St. Charles County committeewoman: “This election could literally be stolen in some of these states.”
Castaneda said her family knows first-hand of the challenges facing legal immigrants and first-generation Americans as they seek to obtain the type of government-issued photo identification that some Republicans want to require.
Her husband and fellow delegate, Julio Castaneda, is an American citizen who was born in Mexico. Because of his birth certificate is in Spanish, she said, he couldn’t use it to get a Missouri drivers license because of a requirement that the birth certificate be in English.
The family was able to use the birth certificate, once it was translated, to get a U.S. passport – which she said then could be used to get a Missouri drivers license for her husband.
Laura Castaneda said her point was that such challenges now face millions of other legal foreign-born citizens, which she contended could result in many of them being denied the right to vote this fall.
Some Republican governors, she said, are “deliberating disenfranchising them” out of fear that many might otherwise cast ballots for Obama.
Luckily, she and others added, Missouri isn’t one of them – in part because Gov. Jay Nixon is a Democrat. He vetoed a bill in 2011 that sought to impose more photo-ID restrictions on voters, saying it unfairly targeted the elderly, the disabled and the poor.
Democrats gaining optimism about candidates
Nixon will be leading Missouri’s Democratic delegation in Charlotte, although the governor may not stay through the entire convention since he – and many other top Missouri Democrats – face their own re-election challenges in November.
The woman who is arguably Missouri’s nationally best-known Democrat – U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill – isn’t going to Charlotte, even briefly, because although she’s a delegate, McCaskill said she needs to remain back in Missouri on the campaign trail.
Ironically, area Democratic delegates expect to hear encouraging talk in Charlotte about her chances because McCaskill’s Republican rival – U.S. Rep. Todd Akin – is now a national name as well, as a result of his televised observations that victims of “legitimate rape" usually don't get pregnant.
Ryan said the flap over Akin (who has apologized) has helped highlight the two parties’ differences when it comes reproductive rights, including access to contraception.
Appelbaum contended that the controversy is sending a message to women of “what some in the Republican Party, the Tea Party, want to take away from us. They want to curb women’s rights.”
But Connor, the professor at Missouri State, warns that Democrats face the risk of focusing too much on touchy issues like reproductive rights, thus turning off potential swing voters who may have mixed views about the topic.
Appelbaum and her husband, Tom, are among several married couples where both spouses are delegates. Laura and Julio Castaneda are planning to bring their two school-age daughters, ages 8 and 10, so they can experience a presidential convention first-hand – and observe their parents’ role in it.
Many Democratic candidates staying home
It’s unclear if any of the other Missouri Democrats running for statewide office will join Nixon at the convention, or if they will take McCaskill’s route and stay home.
Either way, Sanders said he’s optimistic about his party’s chances this fall – nationally and in Missouri – even as the state has shed some of its bellwether status, and is seen more as GOP-leaning turf.
He called Nixon and McCaskill “marquee candidates’’ facing less-than-stellar GOP rivals. “The Republicans have candidates with major flaws,” Sanders said.
Among the problems? Some of the Republican nominees still aren’t well known, he said. Sanders asserted that he recently asked a crowd of 200 Kansas City area residents if they know who Nixon’s opponent was, and “only eight raised their hands.”
(Nixon’s GOP rival is St. Louis businessman Dave Spence.)
“My point was,” Sanders quipped, “ ‘Let’s keep it that way.’ “
Although not ceding Missouri to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the Democratic chairman said that even if Romney does carry the state – as most experts predict – Sanders asserts that the Republican’s political coattails will be short.
If that turns out to be the case, Missouri Democrats say the state’s Republicans must blame themselves. In 2006, Republicans controlling the General Assembly – and then occupying the Governor’s Mansion – eliminated Missouri’s straight-ticket voting option on ballots.
As a result, voters must cast individual votes for each contest – which has led to significant declines in votes, in general, for down-ballot contests.
Despite GOP assertions to the contrary, Sanders and area Democratic delegates contended that they’ve seen no evidence of the “energized Republican base” that swept many Missouri Democrats out of office in 2010.
In fact, Sanders asserted that Obama could well have a chance of carrying Missouri if his campaign decided to pour in money, staff and TV ads.
The latest polls haven’t been so encouraging. Most show the president trailing Romney in the state – although the amount has varied dramatically. Polls in recent weeks have shown Romney’s Missouri edge to range from one to 12 or more percentage points.
Connor sees those polls as more evidence of Obama’s “Jefferson County” problem.
Waiting for Clinton -- Bill, not Hillary
Despite their concerns about voting rights and other weighty matters, the first-time delegates emphasized that they are excited at the prospect of meeting thousands of like-minded Democrats who share their vision, and that of Obama and Biden.
“I am very proud to be a delegate,” said Fauss, a retired grocery-store cashier from south St. Louis County. “We have an agenda that’s for working people.”
She hopes the convention zeroes in on what she sees as a big threat to the nation’s economic health. “This country has become the land of the super rich,” Fauss said. “The rich have become the super rich, and the middle class has become the working poor.”
“We need to move jobs from overseas,” Fauss continued, adding that she hopes to hear talk at the convention about ending tax breaks for companies who outsource jobs.
Ryan, who was a volunteer – and later a paid worker – for Obama in 2008, said he’s proud of the president’s success in winning congressional approval of the Affordable Care Act. The measure’s efforts to expand insurance coverage are gradually winning public support, he said, and Democrats should be promoting that fact, not running away from it.
“It was the right thing to do, and he got it done,” Ryan said.
Castaneda said she’s proud to call the measure “Obamacare.”
Issues aside, the biggest draw for delegates – in any party – is a chance to spend time with like-minded activists, and hear from their political favorites.
The list of scheduled Democratic speakers is long, including former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, Virginia U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine (former chairman of the Democratic National Committee) and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Like the GOP convention, the key nights are Wednesday – when Biden will speak – and Thursday, when the president will deliver his acceptance speech.
At least one Missouri member of Congress made the speakers list: U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Kansas City, who heads the Congressional Black Caucus. Cleaver, who’s also a pastor, is a powerful speaker who’s often sought out to keynote Democratic events around the state.
As for Sanders, just as he did in 2008, he is eager to hear from Clinton. Only this time, it’s former President Bill Clinton, not his wife, now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“Everyone will be interested in what Bill Clinton will be able to say,’’ Sanders said, agreeing with several delegates who contended that the former president will likely make the strongest case to the public why Obama should be re-elected.
Laura Castaneda said she is eager to hear from Clinton, but she added, “It’s not so much that I want to hear the rhetoric. I want to see speakers who break through the rhetoric; I want to see people energized.”
The same could said for viewers, and potential voters, in Jefferson County -- and their counterparts around the country.
