Battleground Missouri
Though Missouri has just 11 electoral votes, campaigns and pundits traditionally pay close attention to the Show-Me State, because it has shown a keen ability to pick all but two presidential winners in the last century.
This year, this Midwestern state's bellwether reputation appears safe, for now. A recent crop of polls suggests the presidential race is far too close to call a week before Election Day - a reflection of national polls that indicate the same. A statewide Mason-Dixon poll released Monday in The Kansas City Star gave Republican George W. Bush a hair-thin one point lead, while a Zogby poll released the same day by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch showed two point advantage for Bush. But only the day before, Zogby's daily tracking poll had Democrat Al Gore in the lead by two points.
"A new day, a new leader," pollster John Zogby told the St. Louis newspaper. "This documents that it's anybody's ballgame in Missouri."
And there's a new player in the lineup - Jean Carnahan, widow of Gov. Mel Carnahan, who died last month in a plane crash. The popular Democratic governor had been locked in a tight U.S. Senate race against Republican incumbent John Ashcroft - and by law, his name will remain on the ballot. On Monday, Mrs. Carnahan said she would accept an appointment by the acting governor to serve in the Senate should her late husband win next week.
Political observers agree that Carnahan's death will likely spur turnout among Democrats on Election Day, which in turn will benefit Gore.
This week, the Carnahan campaign is sending out 750,000 mailers to state Democrats calling on them to preserve the late governor's legacy by voting on Tuesday. Gore's Missouri campaign said there's been a "groundswell of people" calling and offering to volunteer since Carnahan's death. Though hesitant to say the response would benefit the vice president, Gore' Missouri campaign spokeswoman Alex Zaroulis stressed that this is a race where every vote really does count and "Democrats are united and invigorated."
On the same day of Mrs. Carnahan's announcement, the state Republican Party issued a statement expressing hope that Senator Ashcroft's "experience will prevail" next week. A state GOP spokesman avoided direct comment on the prospect of Mrs. Carnahan succeeding her husband, as did the Bush campaign.
"Ultimately it's going to be hard to gauge what the ultimate impact of this will be from a turnout standpoint," said Bob Hopkins, a regional coordinator for the Bush campaign. "It's a very close race, but we're confident Governor Bush's message is resonating with voters."
"All of us are talking about a race we don't know anything about because there's no precedent," said Ken Warren, a political scientist at St. Louis University. Warren is among those who predict the support and sympathy for Carnahan will extend to the vice president. "What really elped is Gore came to Missouri" for the governor's funeral, he said. Bush didn't attend the services, but he eulogized Carnahan, privately expressed sympathy to the widow, and publicly paused for silence in memory of his fellow governor.
Warren also believes the potential of sending Mrs. Carnahan to Washington, D.C. will boost the turnout among women, whom Gore badly needs to make up for the support among men for Bush. Warren believes women in Missouri will seize upon the opportunity to send a woman to the Senate. "No question there's a gender issue here," he said.
Jim Davis, who teaches a course on the presidency at Washington University, agrees that Mrs. Carnahan's coattails will benefit Gore enough to help him win the state. But he doesn't think the vice president can carry the country, because he doesn't come across as likeable in the way Bush does.
"No question, issue for issue, Gore's positions are where the voters are. (But) if he can't sell himself, he can't sell his issues," he said.
Davis believes that at this stage in the campaigns, voters are looking at a contest between two individuals and that no amount of political ads can change that. Voters "go a lot with impressions. It's natural, it's a shorthand, it's efficient," he said.
St. Louis and Kansas City both rank nationally as two of the top ten most highly saturated markets in the country for presidential ads. Rick Hardy, a University of Missouri-Columbia political scientist, said the issues motivating voters this year are prescription drugs for seniors, Social Security, and education. While that mix reflects the nation as a whole, it's unusual for this state. "For 20 years we've had three issues: guns, babies (abortion), and taxes," said Hardy. "This year, there's not much of that."
Hardy, who ran for Congress twice as a Republican, believes Bush has been gaining momentum in recent weeks - and the recent polls suggest the Texas governor's level of support is slightly stronger than among Gore supporters. In the Mason-Dixon poll, 85 percent of Bush supporters said they would not change their minds, compared to 79 percent of Gore supporters.
Still, Hardy agrees the events surrounding Carnahan's death "might complicate things."