Missouri's Monster Mash

It’s a battle between two 800-pound gorillas, with each trying to claim the middle of the political spectrum.

Come Nov. 8, one of Missouri’s two biggest political names will be out of work. Will it be incumbent Republican Sen. John Ashcroft, a freshman who went to Washington in 1994 in the GOP's congressional landslide? Or will it be Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan, who must step down as governor in accordance with the state's term-limits laws, and who therefore wants to oust Ashcroft from the Senate?

“They’re both very well-liked,” said Carnahan campaign spokeswoman Sara Howard, who notes that each has an extraordinary 90 percent name-recognition among Missourians. “Their positives and negatives mirror each other. The race is a dead heat. They are literally neck and neck, with about eight or nine percent of the voters undecided.”

Ashcroft is trying to portray Carnahan as a tax-and-spend liberal, says Terry Jones, professor of political science at the University of Missouri, while Carnahan is going after Ashcroft’s conservative Senate voting record on social issues.

“It’s been about who is the extremist and who is the centrist,” said Jones. “To win the normal Republican margins in suburban Missouri … Ashcroft will have to moderate, at least rhetorically, some of his social views. Carnahan will try not to let him get away with that.”

Specifically, Ashcroft will be hammering away at a $400 million state tax increase passed in 1993 - early in Carnahan’s administration. Carnahan, who will be touting his state’s progressive patients’ bill of rights and his tough-on-crime record (which includes an endorsement from the state’s Fraternal Order of Police), will use his war chest to point out Ashcroft’s staunch opposition to abortion and his ties with the conservative wing of the GOP.

For his part, Ashcroft, on his campaign Internet site, refers to himself as the “original” supporter of a patients’ bill of rights, though Carnahan’s site points out that Ashcroft voted against the Senate version of that bill.

The Ashcroft campaign did not respond to requests for comment from CBSNews.com.

Carnahan will also hammer Ashcroft on the senator’s opposition to the nomination of an African-American judge, Ronnie White, who is now sitting on the state’s supreme court, to a federal judgeship.

Jones says this issue can be used as a lever to turn out African-American votes in support of Carnahan. In this extremely tight race, a few thousand votes from Missouri’s African-American population could turn the tide, Jones points out.

Money should not be an issue, experts say; each man should have enough dough to blanket the state’s airwaves with television ads. Two recent polls published in the Show-Me State’s major newspapers put the race well within the margin o error, with Ashcroft leading by about one percentage point among likely voters.

Adding to the drama of this election is the less-than-friendly personal relationship between the two men.

“They don’t particularly care for each other,” says Jones.

The differences in their personalities are stark. Ashcroft is seen as a slick, dynamic politician, whereas Carnahan is seen as a no-nonsense plodder. The son of a minister, the 58-year-old Ashcroft is a textbook Christian conservative and a career politician. At 66, Carnahan, whose father was a Missouri congressman and a public school teacher, came to politics after a stint in the Air Force as an investigator.

There is also some contentious personal history between the two men. Before Ashcroft became a senator, he served as the state's governor - his administration preceded Carnahan’s. In Missouri, the governor and lieutenant governor are chosen separately by voters, and for a time during Ashcroft’s gubernatorial administration, the lieutenant governor was none other than Mel Carnahan. Jones describes the relationship between the two men during that time as “strained.”

“Ashcroft just totally excluded Carnahan from any role in state government whatsoever,” said Jones.

All the more incentive for each man to pull out all the stops as the campaign rolls toward Election Day.