Gephardt withdrawal puts state 'in play'

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Claire McCaskill got a call Tuesday morning from an old Missouri friend. After some friendly chit-chat, Sam Myers wanted to know whether the Missouri state auditor would consider backing North Carolina Sen. John Edwards for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"I just said I'm taking a long look at everyone," McCaskill said of her conversation with Myers, who lives in Columbia but travels as a campaign advance man for Edwards. "I think a lot of Missourians are taking that same fresh look."

Tuesday brought opening notes of a fresh Missouri waltz. St. Louis' Dick Gephardt took the first step, ending his second presidential campaign after a fourth-place finish in Iowa's caucuses.

Other candidates took the next tentative turns, courting support from Democrats in Missouri's suddenly competitive Feb. 3 primary. There are 74 delegates at stake, the largest single haul of that day's voting in seven primary states.

Gephardt's name remains on the ballot, but he is running no more. So Missouri's top Democrats, many of whom went door to door in Iowa for the 14-term congressman, began considering alternatives.

"Missouri is very much in play for the primaries," said Gov. Bob Holden, who was waiting on a signal from Gephardt about his preference. That signal didn't come Tuesday; Gephardt said at an emotional conference that he wasn't naming a favorite for the Missouri election just two weeks away.

The campaigns reached first to prominent Missouri Democrats because they are presumed to have organizational strength necessary to mount two-week campaigns from scratch. The officeholders are assumed to have a feel for what plays in Missouri, which sided with the White House winner in every election except one during the 20th century.

"But as we saw in Iowa, I'm not sure endorsements mean much," McCaskill said.

Attorney General Jay Nixon, the state's senior statewide Democratic officeholder, said he knows and likes Edwards, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. But Kerry may have earned extra good will with the three-term attorney general by campaigning for Nixon's losing 1988 and 1998 Senate bids.

McCaskill and Nixon each expressed misgivings about former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. McCaskill said Dean's high-octane, fist-waving speech after finishing third in Iowa on Monday evening "made me more than moderately uncomfortable because it seemed so over the top."

Nixon said Dean's opposition to war in Iraq may hurt him with many Missouri voters.

Dean spokeswoman Sarah Leonard said the campaign already has numerous Missouri supporters, most linked up by the Internet, "and we were always planning to compete in Missouri and we still are."