Talent urges rural voters to offset city 'machines'

ROLLA, Mo. -- Republican Jim Talent urged his rural backers on Sunday to get their country neighbors to the polls so that Tuesday's U.S. Senate election isn't "stolen from us in St. Louis."

"The folks on the other side are working their machines to turn out the vote," Talent, grounded by poor flying weather, said in a speech by telephone to about 200 volunteers in Rolla, hometown of Democratic Sen. Jean Carnahan.

Talent predicted he will win majorities in "upwards of 90" of Missouri's 114 counties, which would improve his showing in a losing 2000 governor's race, when he carried about 80 counties.

He implored his backers in Phelps County to get rural neighbors to the polls, while "hoping it's not being stolen from us in St. Louis."

"Win it by enough to where we don't have to worry about what's going on in St. Louis," Talent urged.

Talent and Carnahan are in the closing hours of whirlwind cross-state campaigning ahead of Tuesday's special election for the remaining four years of the Senate term won posthumously in 2000 by Carnahan's late husband, Gov. Mel Carnahan. She was appointed to the job and faces her first general election as a candidate.

Phelps County is an example of a rural county Talent needs to carry handily. Although the Carnahans have called the county home for nearly half a century, Mel Carnahan lost the county to then-Sen. John Ashcroft in the 2000 election, 8,426 votes to 7,604. The deceased Democrat still unseated Ashcroft by a statewide margin of about 40,000 votes.

During the same election, Talent outpolled Ashcroft in Phelps County, receiving 8,536 votes to Democratic gubernatorial opponent Bob Holden's 6,692 votes -- though Holden won statewide by about 1 percent of the vote.

Deadlocked in poll

Republicans said a new independent poll out Sunday, showing the Senate race deadlocked, would motivate their volunteers.

The Zogby International poll for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found Talent and Carnahan each favored by 46 percent of likely voters with six percent undecided. The survey of 800 likely voters, conducted Wednesday through Friday, had a sampling error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points. Two other recent independent polls, including a Zogby poll, gave Talent an edge.

"It's going to be a tight son of a gun," said John Powell, a Rolla businessman and former Missouri Republican chairman who attended Sunday's get-out-the-vote event at county GOP headquarters. "But I'd rather give these folks a scare to motivate them with close numbers, so maybe this poll is a good thing."

Talent's volunteers -- like Carnahan's -- spent the weekend distributing literature and signs door to door, often in cold rain and drizzle.

Michelle Hogan, owner of the Ground Round restaurant franchise in Rolla, blew up red and white balloons and helped hand out food as Phelps County volunteers spilled out onto the covered sidewalk at the headquarters in a strip mall.

"I've been educating my employees, getting them registered and urging them to vote for Talent," she said. "And on Tuesday, I'm a volunteer going up to St. Louis to help monitor the voting."

Scott Alford, a farmer and Wal-Mart manager from St. James, greeted friends at the Rolla gathering but said he didn't campaign door to door because he spent part of the day in church. "I am here now, though, and I'm dedicated and we will be turning out Tuesday, rain or shine," Alford said.

Talent started his Sunday in Kansas City, flew to Kirksville for a rally with volunteers and canceled his Rolla swing because of dense clouds, fog and rain.

He sounded hoarse but excited in phoning the Rolla headquarters, noting that "we're in a really, really tight race. This thing's up for grabs."

The Missouri election is significant nationally because Republicans and Democrats each hold 49 Senate seats, with one vacancy and one independent.

Democrats control the chamber, but Talent, former four-term congressman from St. Louis County, said voters should reject Democratic Senate leadership "mired in a status quo that's dominated by left-liberal policies."