Carnahan, Talent come to Cape area for support

HIGH-STAKES CAMPAIGN

By Sam Blackwell ~ Southeast Missourian

In a campaign with national ramifications, U.S. Sen. Jean Carnahan, D-Mo., and Republican challenger Jim Talent both made their first serious plays for Southeast Missouri votes Saturday.

They took much different approaches in appearances in Cape Girardeau. Carnahan spoke with seniors at Chateau Girardeau about the Medicare prescription drug plan she advocates. In remarks to an overflow crowd that filled the retirement home lobby, she never mentioned the campaign. But both Democrats and Republicans are trying to land on the right side of the issue and know seniors will vote in November.

Talent, flanked by U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, talked to a group of 50 farmers and Republican activists at an event billed as an agriculture roundtable discussion. Under an oak tree in a farmer's front yard, Talent talked up the contrasts between his own views and legislative experience and those of Carnahan, who won election over John Ashcroft in 2000 after her husband, Gov. Mel Carnahan, died in a plane crash. Talent is a former four-term member of the U.S. Congress and former house minority leader in the state legislature.

National attention has focused on the race since control of the Senate hangs by a single vote. Carnahan is viewed as vulnerable because she has held office only two years and the race between her late husband and Ashcroft was narrowly lost by the Republican, 50 percent to 48 percent.

Paul Summer, the ex-military man who was host for Talent's visit, thinks experience is the big difference between Carnahan and Talent. Democrats have over-credited Carnahan with leadership on some issues solely to help her get re-elected, he said.

Environmental ad

The Sierra Club is running a TV ad in St. Louis thanking Carnahan for her environmental stands. Conservative groups have begun running radio spots attacking Carnahan's position on the estate tax that Republicans want to repeal by 2011.

A Sierra Club endorsement plays less well in conservative Southeast Missouri than in St. Louis. "The Sierra Club has not endorsed Jim Talent," Emerson remarked. "I think we're lucky they haven't."

Talent calls the national spotlight on the campaign "a mixed blessing." It brings the president to Missouri, as it did in a March fund raiser for Talent, but all the advertising from different sources also can confuse the issues.

"We don't want the election determined by 30-second ads," he said.

Carnahan will be happy when the campaign reform law takes effect after the November elections. "I would much rather spend my time doing this than on the phone trying to raise money," she said.

Thursday, the House passed a $350 billion Republican-backed prescription drug plan which has a $250 deductible and higher monthly premium than the Senate version Carnahan backs, which has no deductible. In another year, one when voters would not be reeling from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she might have criticized the Bush administration for backing the plan pharmaceutical and insurance interests prefer.

Instead she spoke of seniors who take half a pill instead of the whole one prescribed in order to conserve money and handed out membership forms for the Prescription Drug People's Lobby.

She said the lobby is meant to counteract the ratio of six prescription drug company lobbyists for every U.S. senator in Washington. The mailing address for the lobby is her own.

Republicans have accused Carnahan of ducking debates with Talent, but her campaign has said it would be inappropriate to debate him until he becomes the official candidate after the primary election. Dan Leistikow, a Carnahan spokesman, said no debate proposals have been rejected.

Urging the Republican activists, many of whom are running for office themselves, to get out the vote in November, Emerson cautioned that Carnahan will be the recipient of sympathy votes. She knows. Emerson acknowledges that sympathy played a role in her 1996 election. She won the seat of her husband, U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson, after his death from cancer.

"You can't touch it and you can't feel it. You just know it's there," she said. "A lot of people feel that way about Mrs. Carnahan. Our job is to get the vote out."

Emerson didn't discuss her current campaign -- she faces a Gipsy Republican in the primary, and a Democrat and a Libertarian have also filed for the seat.

Earlier Saturday Talent was talking to tenants at a St. Louis housing project. He said he has not written off the traditionally Democratic urban vote. Voters in the housing project have the same values and concerns people in Southeast Missouri do, Talent said: Jobs and home ownership.

After leaving Cape Girardeau, he was off to Dexter, Mo., to speak to a group at a family pharmacy and then to Poplar Bluff, Mo., before joining his wife, Brenda, on a flight to St. Joseph, Mo., Saturday night.

Carnahan was to meet with Democratic activists after Saturday's talk at the Chateau Girardeau.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

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