Oh, why not? - Missouri 2010

Politics & Elections
1

As far as I know, very few of us here are likely to care. There’s Frank, &, um, Danimal moved to DC… But there are Florida & Connecticut threads, so let’s have a Mo. thread.

Missouri’s US Senate race is likely to be reasonably close. No TEA Party candidates here, just a couple of insiders.

Robin Carnahan, present [del]head of sneaky vote-counting[/del] Secretary of State. Daughter of the late Gov. Mel Carnahan (famously elected to the Senate, over an incumbent, after he died). eta: Her mother Jean briefly served as an appointed Senator, & has publicly said she regretted voting for the authorization of force against Iraq & thought the Congress was bamboozled by those who said they had the intelligence. (I just added this sentence because this paragraph was so sparse.)

Roy Blunt, my present [del]horrible horrible[/del] Congressman, former US House GOP Whip (Majority & Minority, variously) who resigned that post when he realized Boehner ran the House GOP & he wasn’t moving up. Now hoping to advance in the Senate, with new arms to twist–possibly arms more frail with age. The Congressman so famously corrupt that we say he left his wife to marry a lobbyist from [del]Philip Morris[/del] Altria Group, Inc., so he could be literally in bed with his favorite corporate donor. (Last I heard, Mrs Blunt was still lobbying despite the passage of rules to prohibit Congressmen’s wives working as lobbyists–she was grandfathered in.) Also, father of Matt Blunt, who parlayed his own term as [del]head of sneaky vote-counting[/del] Secretary of State into one [del]widely derided[/del] underwhelming term as governor.

Ah, yes, a lovely bunch of people. I’m backing Carnahan (& I voted against her father both when he was alive & when he was dead[sup]1[/sup]). Not because of her so much as because of her opposition:[ul][li]Blunt was part of a GOP House leadership I have come to despise.[]I have no desire to reward the “filibuster everything” Senate GOP with more seats.[]I do not support the silly “starve the beast” plans of the GOP to massively cut constructive domestic spending (infrastructure, education, EPA, etc.) in the name of “shrinking government.” Especially considering that no one in the GOP has the stones to actually cut back Medicare[sup]2[/sup] anyway, & they admit they won’t until everything else is a smoking ruin. I’m afraid that we have to accept that we’re stuck with the ridiculously expensive pension programs, & move on. Raise taxes to cover the actual general welfare spending we’ve neglected, & fix what we can.[]Also, I am apparently a Communist or something.[]Oh wait, I remember, I’m a conservationist, & a fiscal-responsibility conservative by upbringing. That’s why I hate the party. :mentally kicks the collective shin of the GOP:[/ul]Oh, well, your mileage may vary.[/li]
Feel free to throw in any other Mo. races.

I confess I haven’t paid much attention to the State Auditor race, & my local General Assembly, State Senate, & US Congress districts are bloody bloodity blood red, so I don’t know if there are any actually competitive districts.

(I was serious when I said I wanted to replace the state senate with an at-large proportionally elected body. Regionalism + gerrymandering -> completely unaccountable legislators & possible one-party rule by a minority party.)

I hear Ike Skelton has amildly interesting challenger, but I don’t know if she’s a serious threat.
_ _

  1. Yes, I voted for Ashcroft. I think. It was ten years ago. I was raised by fundies, I’m sorry.

  2. Medicare, the Program that Will Bankrupt Us All[sup]TM[/sup], or the single-payer plan that taxes every business in the country to pay for the most expensive minority of Americans, but not for the taxpayers. And the GOP wants to save this godforsaken mess instead of reforming it to cover more Americans? I don’t even know what you people are smoking.

2

Is Missouri red, blue, or purple?

3

Red, getting redder, IMO. One of the few “purple” states to hold out in 2008. Large swaths of rural southern types balanced by two shrinking urban areas with large, wealthy, low-tax-type suburbs and exurbs.

I hope the Senate race is close, but I’m not really seeing it. Blunt will likely overcome his son’s damage to the family name and waltz in. One factor is that we recently elected McCaskill, so there’s a bit of a sense (at least amongst people I’ve talked to) that “one of each” is a reasonable compromise…

I think it’s even reasonably likely that Skelton loses - that’s a pretty red district. At best I’d say it’s 50-50. One of those districts that will tell us whether it’s a wave or a landslide or a tsunami or a washout or… well, just how bad it’s gonna be for the House Dems.

At least I’ll get the chance to vote for two Carnahans, and one of them will win.

4

I’d say maroon, maybe. Missouri had a long record of voting for the winner of the Presidential election. Until 2008, when it went McCain.

Much of the southern bit is frighteningly red, the heirs of the Ozark Mountain freeholders. Cape Girardeau is Rusty Limbaugh’s hometown (which proves nothing about demographics, but yeah, people like him can be found). I read recently that Springfield is the whitest city in the US. Roy Blunt won the US House 7th District (SW Mo.) by ~70% last time.

And then there’s “Little Dixie” further north. The banks of the Missouri had slaver plantations ante bellum, & are considered more “Southron” culturally. I don’t know what the politics are like there now.

That said, the real population centers are St. Louis & Kansas City, which seem more stereotypically “urban US.” Majority-minority districts & like that.

But–& I’m not finding the cite right now–a majority of voters went for Dem legislative candidates in either 2006 or 2008, but got a comfortable GOP majority in both state chambers. Gerrymandering whoo. Maybe the political establishment is more knee-jerk Reaganite & less open to new ideas than the center of the electorate.

5

I’m dreading the Senate election. I absolutely cannot stand either of the two major candidates. I’ll probably vote for Jonathan Dine, even though he doesn’t stand a chance.
Skelton is an odd duck. He’s the one Democrat even members of my mom’s die-hard Republican family would routinely vote for. He’s well-liked, so if he loses this year, it really will be due to backlash to the Dems and not because his opponent is the better candidate or better liked.

I’m just not really getting warm-fuzzies about any of the candidates in any of the elections that will be on the ballot - state, local, congressional. That’s a first for me, because I’ll usually find a few candidates I can really get behind, but not this time.

6

And the elected executive officers are mixed.

since 2008:
Governor: Dem
Lt. Governor: GOP
Atty Gen.: Dem now (left GOP in 2007 to run as Dem)
Secretary of State: Dem
Treasurer: Dem

since 2006:
State Auditor (only statewide executive officer up for reelection this year): Dem

7

Well, I’m supporting Carnahan on this logic:

  1. I’m not voting for the GOP in any case. Learned the hard way to support Democrats against budget-busting pro-corruption anti-environment–oh, I’m ranting again.
  2. If Carnahan gets in & does well, I’m willing to let her be re-elected, even as I’m sure I will be griping about something.
  3. If Carnahan gets in & does badly, she may be out in six years, with people saying, oh, she was promoted past her level of competence.
    4.If Blunt gets in, I’m afraid he’ll get into leadership & then be “too important to remove.”
  4. I want to see the GOP wither away some more, at least until they abandon their plans to gut all regulatory agencies.
8

The state legislature is, and will be for the forseeable future, Republican. It is St. Louis and Kansas City that make state-wide races competitive. Therefore, the legislature wishes to cripple the cities.

The legislature has maintained a state law passed during the Civil War that puts the Police Board in St. Louis under state control. The school board in St. Louis is under state control.

There is a referendum on the ballot this year that could deny cities (St. Louis and Kansas City, currently) the ability to have an income tax. That earnings tax is one-third of the income of the city of St. Louis.

9

Oh, yeah, the petition drive was out this summer for that. I think it was the same (black) lady that does all the other petitions that I often look at & go, “well, that’s a dumb idea.” I didn’t sign that one.

I wonder who’s behind it really.

10

Per the KC Star - retired businessman Rex Sinquefield (made his money running mutual funds or something). He has apparently given $10.7 million to the cause, against $450,000 fighting it.

It’s a classic example of spin - the committee for is called Let Voter’s Decide. The proposition doesn’t actually remove the tax in St Louis and KC - it just requires a vote every five years to reauthorize it. Which doesn’t sound so bad, except that once they deauthorize, it can’t come back - so you can only decide once to be against it, but get to decide many times to keep it.

In addition, no other city in MO would be allowed to institute an earnings tax.

Joe

11

Looks like Blunt will win the Senate.

Carnahan really needed to gain traction in the debates, and I don’t think she did. She was motivated for more than one reason; talk is that the DSCC is about to pull money from Missouri.

And you know what else? Where has our DINO governor Jay Nixon been throughout this campaign? I haven’t even heard of him showing up for Dem candidates for the legislature, let alone the national positions.

12

I voted today; it looks like I will be travelling on the 2nd.

This is, I believe, the first time I have ever voted a straight Democratic ticket. There has always in the past been a Democrat or two I didn’t like. I’m not sure if this says more about me or about Missouri Republicans.

And what the hell is with the constitutional amendment the legislature proposed that makes the position of tax assessor in counties with a non-charter government an elected office, except in counties with a population between 600,000 and 699,999? This amendment points directly at, and only at, the city of St. Louis. Of the five counties in Missouri with charter government, three already elect their tax assessors. Only Jackson County, and St. Louis City do not. Why exempt Kansas City? It’s a good idea or it isn’t.

I voted no on the proposition to ban earnings taxes by cities. This one only applies to (ahem) St. Louis, and Kansas City. You know, all these jerks want to act like the only reason nobody moves to St. Louis is the earnings tax. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the state legislature won’t let St. Louis voters run their own city! The state controls the school board and the police board, and wants to eliminate the earnings tax and force the city to elect a tax assessor whether it wants to or not. Why would I want to live in a place that the conservatives in Jefferson City feel free to take aim at whenever they like? Where are all the Tea Partiers chanting about local control when we need them?

And, as a die-hard liberal Democrat, I voted yes on the .25 of a cent addition to the sales tax in Creve Coeur, even though I’ll pay that every time I walk over to Dierberg’s after work. I only wish that the county, state, and national governments had the balls to admit that a tax increase is part of the solution to our current problems.

13

I’ve been meaning to post something about the various ballot issues, & putting it off.

My impression? Just because the referendum process lets you put something on the ballot doesn’t mean you should. The various (statewide, Mo.) issues this general election run from toxic to insipid, & we don’t need a damn one of them, except maybe the dog breeder one. Where’s a (UK)LibDem to talk about excessive laws now?

Note that I am a self-described pro-regulation authoritarian who thinks Libertarians should be made to pit-fight badgers. [/hyberbole]

Seriously, it’s the possibility of this crud passing that’s made me think lately tyranny might be preferable to rule by the barely aware. If they mostly go down in flames, I may regain my affection for democracy.

14

The proposal to elect an assessor applies to St. Louis County, not the city.

I despair of the whole damn thing. I despair that the commercials say that those sneaky bureaucrats could slip in a city earnings tax without anyone knowing, despite the fact that no tax in Missouri gets enacted without a vote. I despair of both the Blunt and Carnahan campaigns in general. I despair that the puppy mill bill even has to be put to a vote.

And don’t even get me started on the local issues!

15

You’re absolutely right. Somehow in my reasearch I missed the distinction. Which makes it even more senseless, as the county already voted earlier this year to do that. No amendment necessary. Fortunately, further information does not make me wish I’d voted differently; I voted against it in August, and I still oppose it.

16

The latest polls have Blunt leading Carnahan 49-40.

That’s about the same lead (maybe a little more) that Blunt had in July. Four months of mudslinging, vile, name-calling, charges and countercharges, negative campaigning on both sides, that hasn’t changed anyone’s mind.

17

Since calling land line phones results in a 5 percent slant toward the conservative side, the race seems reasonably close.

18

The annoying thing about the Prop A ads are the constant refrain of “let the voter’s decide!”.

Well, Sparky, the reason we elect representatives is so that we can have people study issues and hopefully come up with good decisions (in theory, anyway). If we don’t like the decisions, then the voters can decide to put someone else in office.

Referendums are generall, I think, a bad idea - look how well things are working in California. They just give the elected reps an easy out to making a hard decision - “let’s have a referendum!”.

Joe

19

I’m with you, Folacin. I think the Hancock Amendment (requiring a referendum on tax increases in Missouri) was a rather bad idea–consider the effect in the present economic climate. The budget shouldn’t be at the mercy of people who aren’t looking at both sides of the ledger clearly.

20

Have you seen any polling on this issue? I am also opposed to it (for pretty much the same reasons) but have to think it will pass handily.