Show Me the Votes!

 

by Pa Rock

Missouri Voter

Missouri's primary election is tomorrow, the election where each party chooses its official candidates to run in November's general election - a contest which is now less than one hundred days away.  Missouri does not register voters by their professed political parties, and because of that the state's primary is "open," which means that a voter may request any party's ballot when he or she shows up to vote in the primary.

I live in southern Missouri, a region of the state that has been firmly under the GOP's thumb for a generation. There is only one actual race on this year's Missouri Democratic primary ballot in my county, and that is the contest for US Senator where eleven candidates are vying to be the nominee.  In fact, there is no Democratic nominee running for election for most of the offices listed on the ballot in this part of the state.

Republicans in Missouri have over twenty candidates running for the open US Senate seat, and several of the lesser races here in southern Missouri have contests between two Republican candidates.  

Overall, the GOP remains in better shape than the Democratic Party across Missouri.  The only serious unknown heading into tomorrow's election will be the impact of the energized political discussion about abortion and women's health care rights.

A bright spot in tomorrow's primary is that two Republican members of Congress are vacating their seats in order to run for the Senate, and the latest polling indicates that neither is likely to receive the Senate nomination.  The 7th district's Billy Long, who represents southwest Missouri including Springfield, Branson, and Joplin, is, according to Survey USA, running fourth with just eight percent of the vote, and Vicky Hartzler, whose district covers a big swath of western and central Missouri, is running third at fourteen percent according to the same survey.  Both appear headed home for the time-being, but Hartzler is likely to reemerge as a candidate for governor in 2024.

The top two GOP senate candidates, according to Survey USA in a poll released last week, are a pair of Erics.  Eric Greitens, the state's former governor, was forced to resign that office a few years ago when it was revealed that he had been involved in a sordid affair with his hairdresser, and then had duct-taped the poor woman to a piece of exercise equipment in his basement - naked - and photographed her, and then blackmailed her with those photographs in an attempt to keep her from going public about their affair.  Greitens' wife left him and took the kids and moved out-of-state.  She is now accusing him of physical abuse toward her and their young children.  Survey USA has him in second place in the Republican primary for US Senate with twenty percent of the vote.

And the Big Kahuna in the GOP senate primary is state attorney general Eric Schmitt, a right-wing extremist who has spent his single term in office cranking out expensive and useless lawsuits against the federal government - and one against the government of China - with the ultimate intent of keeping his name in the news.  Schmitt is loudly anti-choice, and a significant backlash to the Supreme's Court's overturning of Roe could jeopardize his efforts in the general election, although the Survey USA poll indicates that is unlikely to happen.  Schmitt's political extremism can be highlighted with the fact that Ted Cruz came to Missouri to campaign for him.

The Democratic contest for US Senate is a two-horse race.  St. Louis nurse and socialite Trudy Busch Valentine, the daughter of beer colossus Gussie Busch, announced her run for the office on the final day of filing.   She has run a lackluster campaign, and refused to debate her major opponent, Lucas Kunce, for the Democratic nod.  Her campaign strategy seems to be two fold:  make no waves, and employ a healthy dose of noblesse oblige to paint her political efforts as "paying back" to the state for all the advantages that were given to her by virtue of her being born to great wealth - sort of "I don't need to be senator, or even want to be senator, but I owe it to all of you to do this job for you."  

Lucas Kunce, the other major Democratic candidate, is a former marine who served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He refuses to take PAC money or corporate donations, and has raised more money through small-dollar donations than any of the other candidates in either party.  Kunce has campaigned relentlessly across the state for more than a year, and he has built an extremely strong presence on social media.  He promotes himself as a populist.

Survey USA has Busch Valentine defeating Kunce in tomorrow's primary, but that did not keep the editorial board of her hometown newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, from strongly endorsing Lucas Kunce in the primary.   The editors cited the financial struggle of Kunce's family as he was growing up, his ultimate Ivy League education, his war record,  and his experience representing the US as an arms negotiator with Russia.

In comparing Kunce and Busch Valentine, the editors from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said that they had "grilled" both candidates in interviews, and found Busch Valentine lacking.  They stated:

"Valentine came off as unprepared and unconvincing.   She would not fare well in a debate against the likes of Greitens or Schmitt - which might explain why she refuses to appear in a television debate against Kunce.  The contrast between the two couldn't be more stark."

While I generally respect the predictive ability of good polls, and Survey USA has a good track record, I still can't help feeling that they may have missed the mark in Missouri, especially with the Democratic ballot.  Generally those of us who grew up here prefer to be "shown" rather than told, and the "showing" will come with the actual vote count.

Show me the votes!