U.S. Senate race finds opponents lobbying for votes in Cape

By RUDI KELLER

Southeast Missourian

Missouri's two major party candidates for U.S. Senate made Cape Girardeau their battleground Wednesday with Republican incumbent Jim Talent reaching out to shore up his conservative base and Democratic opponent Claire McCaskill hoping to energize area supporters.

Talent spoke to a statewide gathering of the Missouri Baptist Convention, thanking them for strong opposition to embryonic stem-cell research and gay marriage.

"I am grateful for your work in opposition to Amendment 2," Talent said to the delegates representing 2,100 Southern Baptist churches in Missouri. "I believe, as you do, that it would create a constitutional right to clone a human being. Cloning human beings is wrong. Destroying them is wrong, and it is certainly wrong to put a right to do that in the constitution."

Amendment 2 on next Tuesday's ballot would protect all stem-cell research in Missouri, including the use of embryos created by cloning techniques, from legislative interference. The amendment would make it a felony crime to attempt to create a living clone. It would also bar the legislature from removing state funds unrelated to stem-cell research from a research facility that also engages in embryonic stem-cell work.

Talent is hoping to hold off McCaskill, who has been state auditor since 1999. Libertarian Frank Gilmour and Progressive Party candidate Lydia Lewis are also on the ballot.

McCaskill stopped for breakfast campaigning at the Bob Evans restaurant near Interstate 55, greeting individual supporters who had packed the eatery's tables in anticipation of her arrival.

In an interview afterward, McCaskill distanced herself from a statement made by U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., taken by many to be an insult to the education level of members of the armed forces.

"I think what he said was dumb and that is pretty much it," McCaskill said.

McCaskill, who backs Amendment 2, said she has received an avalanche of donations in response to the controversy surrounding conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh's mocking denunciation of actor Michael J. Fox for his appearance in an ad for her campaign.

The campaign has received more than $500,000 in donations, many of them small, from all over the country, McCaskill said.

"We even got money from people who disagree with us on the issue but were so offended that Rush Limbaugh would attack someone who was obviously debilitated from a disease," she said.

McCaskill said she doesn't see a strong chance she will defeat Talent in Cape Girardeau County. But a strong showing here would show that her message is winning over undecided voters, she said.

Tough to win over

In 2002, McCaskill received 40 percent of the Cape Girardeau County vote in her bid for re-election as state auditor. In 2004, she took just 34 percent in a failed bid to become governor.

Talent, who is seeking a full six-year term, won his current post in 2002 when he defeated Jean Carnahan. He received 69.7 percent of the vote in the race to serve the remainder of the term won by the late Mel Carnahan in 2000.

After greeting McCaskill, Jerry Petite of Scott County said he's against Talent "because he doesn't hunt or fish." The Republican-led Congress is shortchanging veterans, Petite said, and a prescription drug plan for seniors is far too complicated.

"We've had enough," he said.

Talent and his supporters have been running ads attacking McCaskill, questioning whether her husband has paid his taxes and, in the case of one ad run by the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, saying she would "lie and cheat" to win.

The ads are not working, McCaskill said.

"People are tired of a campaign that has been all about a character attack on me and a character attack on my family," she said.

The Missouri Baptist Convention was a friendly audience for Talent, giving him a standing ovation during his remarks on stem cells and cheering strongly again when he mentioned their efforts to approve a state constitutional ban on gay marriage in 2004.

Talent did not directly ask the convention audience to vote for him. Instead, he told them that there is little on which he and they disagree.

On gay marriage, he said, "you are representing the will of the people on this."

"It is a matter of common sense and truth to many of us," he added.

Baptists are an important base of voters who believe in traditional values, Talent said. "You want a more just and a more decent society and you have all worked effectively for that, certainly in the last two elections."

rkeller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126