Since Archpundit inexplicably covers only one race in Missouri, I figured I’d take up the slack for the rest of the state. 

First up is St. Louis County executive. I’m limiting the choices to the big three: Charlie Dooley (D), Gene McNary (R), and Kurt Odenwald (R). All three strike me as nice men who mean well, and in the interest of full disclosure I’ll point out that in the distant past I have been to Gene McNary’s house where I was supplied with free food and drink. But for me, the race is pretty simple. I can’t tell the difference between Charlie at the helm of state and Buzz when he was secretly in the hospital, only Buzz got a lot more attention. Gene’s platform, near as I can tell, is the county was great when I ran it 50 years ago, and it will be great if you just put me back in charge. And Kurt’s centerpiece is a “redevelopment fund.” In other words, this race just makes you want to jangle your keys and chant boring. But I know who I’m voting for. Both Charlie and Gene strike me as the kind of guys who never had to worry about their weight one day of their lives. So I’m voting for the stout guy, yep, short and plump Kurt is my man.

For governor, the field is crowded, but again the reality is that only three have a shot: Matt Blunt (R), Claire McCaskill (D), and Bob Holden (D) the incumbent otherwise known as “one term Bob” – even by Democrats. Bob has all the charisma of a dead mackerel, and Claire apparently can be bought for $10,000 and a case of beer. All Matt has to do is sit back, watch Bob and Claire claw each other’s eyes out, run the same ads they’re running against each other, and coast to victory. OK, maybe people will vote for Karen Dee Lee Skelton-Memhardt on the theory that’s really two people, but I think people with hyphenated last names are at a disadvantage in Missouri.

Kit Bond is up for re-election as senator this year. In the interest of full disclosure, I have an aunt who claims to have been Kit’s nanny a long, long time ago. Sensing blood in the water, the democrats are running everybody, but the favorite to win the primary is Nancy Farmer. I always confuse her for Jill Farmer, a blonde babe who was a local TV consumer reporter before she retired to raise a family and appear in TV commercials. Jill replaced Mandy Murphey as the consumer reporter for Fox 2, another blonde babe but one who I dislike for two reasons – Mandy had a perpetually big smile which got in the way of stories where a big smile wasn’t called for, and she misspelled “Murphy” so now I’m constantly encountering her fans who want to stick an ‘e’ in Murphy. If enough people confuse Nancy with Jill, she has a shot. Otherwise, Missourians will vote their interest – no other senator is as entertaining as Kit Bond, and he is ruthless in looking out for our local interests, the rest of the country can go hang.

Jay Nixon should win as Attorney General again – he’s done a fine job and with challengers with names like Dewey Crepeau I don’t see much danger for him.

The race for state treasurer is crowded – both because the current governor used the office as a stepping stone and the incumbent is running for an office without term limits. I have no idea who’ll win nominations in this race. State Senator Anita Yeckel complained in a letter to the editor at the Post today because they described her legislative record as lackluster (I wonder what they called Russ Carnahan’s?) by pointing out her many accomplishments as a legislator. What she misses is that the Post editorial board only cares about guns (against), gays (for), abortion (for), and God (against). Since her legislation had to do with overhauling banking and small business regulation, stamping out Meth labs, and brownfield development — important stuff but not what they care about — her record is “lackluster.” My favorite, Al “convicted felon” Hanson is running for treasure instead of auditor. He’ll probably get my vote again, but since it wasn’t enough for a victory last time, I doubt it will be enough this time.

I expect Todd Akin to cruise to victory in the 2nd district as Gephardt and Clay swiped a lot of Democratic voters from the district during the 2000 redistricting to keep themselves from falling below 60% in their elections.

And now we come to the third district where the scramble is on to fill Dick Gephardt’s old slot. I don’t think a Republican could win in the district (see above paragraph). So Steve Stoll is my man in this race. Archpundit loves Jeff Smith. Frankly, I’m not impressed. Here’s a guy who teaches political science at Washington University and what are the quotes he gets in the paper — “Bush is a complete moron” and “Somewhere a village in Texas is missing it’s idiot” (which is a Molly Ivins’ line). Impressive analysis, Professor. What’s his big policy idea — universal healthcare. Maybe he’s brilliant and that’s what it takes to win in the third. But for a guy of youth, intelligence, and boundless energy, it seems an old, stupid, and tired platform to run on.

There are two constitutional amendments on the primary ballot. The first is an amendment for the gambling industry (again) so that Rockaway Beach can have a casino. While I’m personally tired of amending the Missouri constitution every couple of years to extend gambling (first we had riverboat gambling, then slots, then boats in moats), they’ve all passed so I guess this one will pass too. Then every dried up old town will be asking for an amendment so they can have a casino. I guess this way some of the gambling money stays here in Missouri to pay for all the ads the industry floods us with to get the amendments.

The second amendment is to define marriage to be between a man and a women. I think it will pass in socially conservative Missouri. There was a big fight earlier between Holden and Blunt as to whether the vote should be held during the primary or the election – Holden hoping to get his base out for the primary and Blunt his base out for the election. Holden won in the Missouri Supreme court, so we’ll be voting on it in the primary. Since I’m all for enshrining discrimination in the Constitution, I’m all for the amendment. If it passes, all the dowdy gays will move to Massachusetts or California while all the swinging gays will come here and gamble in Rockaway beach.

Yesterday’s election went well IMHO, both nationally and locally. Sadly, Al Hanson (convicted felon) wasn’t voted Missouri’s State Auditor, but then I didn’t expect that. But all the Amendments, Propositions, etc. actually went the way I voted, something that hasn’t happened before. Some of them were very close, what were people thinking close in some instances. Some people wanted to send the tax on cigarettes through the roof, and that was only narrowly defeated. It might have passed if they had only proposed to hike them to the roof I suppose. The logic on this was classic Catch-22 (which, BTW, I saw at the Kirkwood Theatre in my yute) — not only would the tax stop a whole bunch of smokers from smoking, it would also generously fund a bunch of Good Programs, some of which were, natch, anti-smoking programs. How it could raise money if people actually stopped smoking (or forced people into the black market, more likely) was never explained.

The only sadness in the results was that Craig Borchelt lost to Buzz Westfall for county executive, even though I expected it. The only thing that Buzz ever did to recommend himself to me was to call a judge a liar, although the trouble was it involved a case he badly blew as county prosecutor (Dennis Bulloch – which, having occurred pre-internet doesn’t exist as far as Google is concerned, but you can read the book). After he was first elected to county exec, it was like he joined the witness protection program, which was fine by me, except he has a propensity for scandals that somehow never seem to matter.

Missouri, fine bellwether state it is, now has a Republican House and Senate for the first time since, ah, oh, Harry S Truman was still a state legislator. Our current Democratic Governor is wildly unpopular, even with yellow dog Democrats who wouldn’t vote for him for dog catcher (that’s a direct quote from an acquaintance who has never, and I mean never voted for a Republican, not even once). Missouri, like most states, got into a budget crunch earlier. The same day Governor Holden announced a new initiative to improve math education, he also announced that a 3 percent reduction in expected revenue would require an 18 percent cut in state expenditures. So in a couple of years we won’t have Holden to kick around anymore, although it could easily be a different Democrat.

It’s not often you get the chance to vote for a convicted felon, so I didn’t pass up my opportunity and voted today for Al Hanson. You get ample opportunity to vote for people who will go on to commit felonies, some of whom will be convicted later, but in this case it was all out of sequence so I got to vote for somebody after they had already been convicted and paid their debt to society. Amazingly enough, neither the Kansas City Star or the St. Louis Post Dispatch bothered to point out Mr. Hanson’s felony record until after he won the Republican primary, but afterwards they were all over the story. 

After that I followed a simple procedure – vote Republican in competitive elections (e.g. Jim Talent), Libertarian in laughers (e.g. Darla Maloney AKA somebody other than Todd Akin who’s going to win) – I’ve voted for so many who’ve lost over the years I kind of enjoy it now, nobody if it was an unopposed Democrat (e.g. Robert McCulloch, who I won’t vote for because in Kinkogate he signed off on a search warrant of Kinko’s to catch somebody who sent a non-threatening but wistle blowing fax), against judges if I didn’t know anything about them or didn’t like the sound of their name (as good a system as any IMHO), against taxes, and against changes to the Missouri Constitution except for St. Louis Home Rule (I figure any change has to be for the better). 

I’m one of those people who know how I’m going to vote before I even leave for the polling place – heck, my mind is pretty much already made up for the 2004 elections already and I don’t even know who’s running or what the amendments and propositions are. I’m generally not swayed by personality or advertising. Last election when MSNBC kept following a focus group of undecideds who couldn’t make up their minds until apparently they were in the voting booth, I thought they were out of their minds. I would shout at the TV, “If you can’t tell the difference between Bush and Gore, stay home you idiots!” So contrary to the get out the vote message you’ll be bombarded with, my message is if you’re not sure, don’t vote.

I won’t be glued to the TV watching the returns tonight if only because I have Cub Scout Roundtable and so will be otherwise constructively engaged. But I’m sure I’ll pay close attention to the 10 O’Clock news and pore over the paper in the morning. It’s my duty as a citizen, after all.

Jim and Jean had a couple of debates this week – Jean wouldn’t agree to any more, and its obvious why. She wouldn’t even be an hors d’oeuvre for Russert. But that isn’t a reason to not vote for her – she’s really no worse than George W. Bush, and in some ways better. I’m sure she’s a very nice person, I wouldn’t hesitate to let her watch my kids, and I have no doubts that she was a fine wife, mother, and teacher. But her only qualification was that she was married to a hack politician (that would be Mel Carnahan), and the only reason she’s currently a senator is that her husband had the terrible misfortune to die too close to the election to have his name removed from the ballot, and the only reason to vote for her now is that she is a plain label, vanilla Democrat. She hews the party line in toto, and doesn’t depart a hairsbreadth from it.

She hasn’t a clue about Social Security – how it works or what it’s problems are. But she does know the party doesn’t want it changed in the slightest, except by another bi-partisan commission like those that have fixed it in the past. Of course she leaves out the part about how those commissions did it by cutting benefits and raising taxes (she’s for not raising taxes and cutting benefits personally, but if the commission recommended it, well …), and how the one back in the eighties hit upon the novel idea of collecting more taxes for Social Security than needed, allowing the excess money to be spent as general revenue. But she doesn’t want another hand picked commission to recommend privatization, like the last two bi-partisan commissions did, even the one hand picked by Clinton. Putting that surplus tax money in the hands of people as part of Social Security weakens it you see, while continuing to spend it on building another four lane highway in West Virginia, that strengthens Social Security. All she knows about Social Security is that the word “privatization” scares the old people, so the important thing is to be against that, make sure you associate that with your opponent, and pass the buck on how to fix Social Security’s upcoming deficit.

In the first debate, Talent questioned her vote against the Department of Homeland Security (she supports one, just with union protection, unlike what the President wants). I don’t recall much reaction at the time, but her campaign manager must have decided afterwards that it would be a good angle to complain that Talent had impugned her patriotism. (When a poll claimed her support among Missouri Men had dipped, she immediately had a skeet shooting photo-op and boasted of her firearms prowess to prove her manhood; poor Talent could only talk about how much he liked fishing). So now she’s running ads calling Talent “despicable”, wrapping herself in the flag – and I mean that literally, her add shows a rippling flag on the left half of the screen while she sits at her senatorial desk on the right and gazes with firm conviction into the distance towards the flag – and wagging her finger (kind of like another better known politician, although without the lip biting) at Talent at the next debate she’s so mad now. 

I plan on voting for Talent, even though I don’t like the way he said “Missour-rah” and “gubmit” during the debate (got to keep that outstate base happy), or the way he runs from the word privatization with respect to social security, or the way he’s claiming he’ll be able to help education as a Senator . In a close election, he’s pandering and playing it safe. Well, he is a politician, and if I wanted some nice old lady, I’d vote for Carnahan, who BTW isn’t exactly going for a profile in courage herself, more like the same profile in focus group tested sound bite and attack ad. Instead, I’ll plump for somebody who can think for himself, shares my values (and, I admit it, biases), and might make a difference beyond who controls the Senate – yeah, that’s important too, but at least I’m getting two birds with my one vote.

More sound and fury over provisional balloting. It amazes me how we don’t devote the resources necessary to the most basic task of a democracy (please, nobody tell me we live in a republic, not a democracy) – to accurately and fairly vote. It’s crazy the way we take voting for granted, as if it needs no money and no oversight. The St. Louis election board is notoriously awful – poorly maintained voter rolls, poor communications, and one year they even switched ballots between congressional districts. Quite frankly, they need all the help they can get, and we need to spend a little to make democracy work. When you realize how much money government at all levels handles, it makes sense to spend more than a pittance on one of the most basic functions of democracy – voting.

Think we’ll know the outcomes of the election by the morning of Nov 6? Think again. There is a new thing under the sun, provisional ballots, which allow people to vote if they are not on the rolls on election day, with their status to be verified later. Missouri is just one of many states that offer it; next election all states will by federal statute. So the Talent vs. Carnahan race, which could swing the Senate to the Republicans the moment it’s certified, could take up to two weeks to have a winner determined. When you consider the polls for this race are close, and Talent lost his last election (for Governor) by only 20,000 votes, the decision really could hinge on the provisional ballots. Once again we will have teams poring over votes, deciding whether or not they count. And if the past is any guide, most of them will be from black urban voters. Won’t it be fun when the Sharpton circus comes to town with cries of disenfranchisement?