8th District hopefuls hit the road to win votes

The road to Washington, D.C., has so far been one much traveled for candidates seeking to become the next congressman to represent the 30 counties of Missouri's 8th Congressional District.

Steve Hodges, a Democratic state representative from East Prairie, Mo., is spending the last weekend before voters head to the polls Tuesday hitting as many campaign stops in Missouri as possible. On Friday, he was in Centerville, Eminence, Winona, Willow Springs and Mountain Grove. On Saturday, he visited Dexter, Poplar Bluff, Lilbourn and Advance. Today he is scheduled to be in the Bootheel. On Monday, he plans to head to Cape Girardeau, Greenville, Piedmont and Fredericktown before heading home.

Jason Smith, his Republican opponent and Missouri's House speaker pro tem of Salem, is on a bus tour, making stops in Farmington, Cape Girardeau, New Madrid, East Prairie, Mountain Grove, West Plains, Poplar Bluff, Sikeston and Hillsboro, sometimes hitting those towns more than once through Tuesday, when he will end the day at home.

The major party candidates, along with Doug Enyart of the Constitution Party, Libertarian Bill Slantz and Thomas Brown and Dr. Robert George, who are running as independent write-in candidates, all hope to be chosen as a replacement for Jo Ann Emerson, who resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives in January to become CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

The campaign has included a history-making nomination process, where at one time as many as 15 Republicans were seeking the party's nod, multiple candidate forums, attack ads between Hodges and Smith and a call from third-party candidates for a change to the more than 30-year tenure of Republican representation for the district, which covers Southeast and Southern Missouri.

Smith, who has raised double the campaign funds compared to Hodges and appeals widely to a large conservative base, is a favorite headed into Tuesday. The election of Smith would mean a considerable change when compared with Emerson, who was seen as a moderate. Hodges also has been running on a conservative platform, but has said he largely agrees with the voting record and philosophy of Emerson, while Smith has expressed a desire to act much more conservatively if elected.

In the last two weeks leading up to the election, Smith also has managed to bring in major donations from national political action committees, including those of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Rep. Paul Ryan, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Rep. Aaron Schock, all Republicans. The committees each contributed $5,000, the maximum allowed under federal election rules.

Hodges has brought in some $1,000 and $2,000 donations from prominent attorneys and union groups, according to Federal Election Commission documents.

Because Tuesday's special election is a stand-alone event, local election authorities are predicting a fairly low turnout.

The district's counties with the most registered voters are Cape Girardeau, Jefferson, St. Francois, Phelps, Butler and Howell.

Cape Girardeau County Clerk Kara Clark Summers estimates 15 percent of the county's 51,605 voters will turn out.

Jefferson County Clerk Wes Wagner expects turnout to be between 6 and 8 percent, considering only the southern third of the county is included in the 8th District.

"I don't think our people realize they are in the district," Wagner said.

Wagner said his district has so far received only 400 or so absentee ballots, compared with more than 10,000 in the days leading up to the 2012 presidential election.

Phelps County Clerk Carol Bennett said she thinks there also will be about an 8 percent turnout there, while St. Francois County Clerk Mark Hedrick said he expects 12 to 15 percent of his county's 36,767, to cast ballots Tuesday.

Howell County Clerk Dennis VonAllmen said he was reluctant to guess at turnout, but "10 to 12 percent might cut it," he said. There are 24,000 registered voters in Howell County. Butler County Clerk Tonyi Deffendall said she is being optimistic with a 25 percent turnout prediction for that county's 26,618 registered voters, because she does not want to discourage anyone from voting Tuesday.

"I may be a little disappointed, but I hope not," she said.

Political analysts have said throughout the campaign that the turnout would be largely dependent on how visible the candidates make themselves.

Wagner, giving perspective on the campaigns' efforts, said he thought regular voters such as himself would have received more exposure to the race, but that he had been contacted only three times -- twice through mailing by Smith and once with a robo-call from Hodges.

Liz Abraham-Oldham, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Jason Kander's office, said by email Friday the office is not releasing anything formal on the estimated voter turnout, but provided an estimate of 72,596 voters, which is 14.97 percent of the registered electorate. The number is based on estimated turnouts that are sent to the secretary of state's office from local election authorities.

Previous general elections show decent turnouts in the 8th District, but those ballots always have contained other races and questions. In November 2012, 300,391 votes were cast in the congressional race, which Emerson won with a hefty 72 percent of the vote. The 2010 race brought 196,000 votes in a four-way contest, of which Emerson took 65 percent.

Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday.

eragan@semissourian.com

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