This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 7, 2009 - U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill has a message for all the fellow Democrats in Missouri embroiled in various squabbles, some internal and some with Republicans, over the millions of dollars of federal stimulus money that's starting to flow into Missouri.
"I think everybody needs to take a deep breath,'' McCaskill said late Saturday, after she delivered her banquet speech to about 500 Democrats attending Democrat Days in Hannibal.
She said she'd offered assurances to that effect on Friday during a talk with St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, who ignited a lot of attention last week when he appeared on CNN and questioned the legality of the initial stimulus-project spending by the Missouri Department of Transportation, which has directed the bulk of the stimulus money for rural projects. Slay believes that Missouri's urban areas in general, and St. Louis in particular, are being short-changed.
McCaskill said she'd reminded Slay that more stimulus project money would be forthcoming to East-West Gateway Council of Governments, which oversees some transportation spending in the St. Louis metro area.
"It's the age-old rural-urban fight over MoDOT spending,'' the senator said. "There was nothing done that violated any laws.''
She emphasized that she understood how Slay felt, and that she agreed that the state's urban areas deserve their fair share. But rural areas do as well, McCaskill said.
Her observations underscored, in part, the fear of some Missouri Democrats about any dispute that could peel off some of the rural support that the party's now-statewide officials needed to win election last fall. McCaskill has been preaching the woo-rural-voters message since she used that approach to help her narrowly defeat then-U.S. Jim Talent, R-Mo., in 2006.
State Sen. Frank Barnitz, D-Lake Spring and one of only two rural Democrats in the state Senate, said this weekend that he was furious over Slay's CNN comments. "He's out of touch with Missouri. He doesn't understand that Missouri is a whole state, not just his city,'' Barnitz said.
State Sen. Robin Wright Jones, D-St. Louis, said she was "shocked and dismayed'' by Slay's comments. "I try to create good will with other senators,'' Jones said. "It was dismaying for me as a freshman senator to have to answer for my mayor."
(An aside here: There is a bit of tension between Jones and the mayor anyway, because Jones believes that Slay privately supported her Democratic rival for the state Senate, now-former Rep. Rodney Hubbard.)
Despite such jabs at Slay, Jone and Barnitz were among rural and urban Democrats who complained all weekend about what they viewed as inappropriate actions by Republican legislators to prevent the state from spending the stimulus money on programs that could help people who've lost jobs, their health coverage, their retirement savings and perhaps their pensions.
Said state Rep. Rachel Storch, D-St. Louis: "The bottom line ... the federal government is sending us money to bail out Missouri families, and Republicans are saying 'No.' "
Expect to hear that complaint from Missouri Democrats, rural and urban, a lot in the coming months -- and perhaps in the 2010 elections. They may want to avoid talking about MoDOT.
