How Holden & Co. pressure opponents and set the campaign stage

An imaginary conversation. Participants: Gov. Bob Holden, press secretary Mary Still and Democratic Party honcho Roy Temple, a Puxico native.

Holden: So it's set: I veto the two education bills and sign the two other bills this special session will send me.

Temple: Right. After what we've put our folks through, the union crowd and all, they'll be expecting a veto of something. Besides, we all know it's all about Claire.

(State Auditor Claire McCaskill is planning a challenge in next year's primary.)

Still: I wish we'd gotten more bang for the bucks our union friends laid out. Jeez -- five, six hundred thousand bucks for some limp TV and radio ads, plus a few newspaper ads and a boiler-room telephone operation, and all it did was piss off those House Republicans we targeted!

Temple: Better hope no one tumbles to the fact that I'm getting $185,000 a year to be the master strategist and that it's coming from 14 trial lawyers who agreed to be dunned monthly to pay me.

Holden: Claire must be climbing the walls. She's been shopping that one since before the end of the first quarter and can't get anyone in the press corps to report it. It's right there in the disclosure reports on file over at Ethics. What a bunch of saps those pressies are!

Temple: But back to the trial lawyers. This weekend's their convention down at the Lake. You goin', Bob?

Holden: Been on my schedule for months.

Temple: Here's the deal with Claire: She originally planned an announcement this month. Now she's postponed her announcement to September. Ha! Can you say "Never"?

Holden: You really think we can cut her off?

Still: You bet.

Temple: Here's how: First, the unions. We nailed them down two years ago with the executive order on collective bargaining. No one's ever delivered for them like you, Bob. Where're they gonna go? Second, the trial lawyers. We veto tort reform early next month, and they get a big fat return on all the jack they're paying me.

Still: Yeah, what's $185k to that crowd? A few dozen of them laid out $3 mill on trying to hold up the legislature last year and got their heads handed them by Hanaway and Kinder.

Temple: Third, the abortion crowd. We veto the 24-hour wait bill and get them dancing in the streets. It doesn't even matter if the House and Senate override . In fact, it may be better for us if they do. We're their embattled champion, battling the forces of darkness -- all those crazy Catholics. Where does Claire go then?

Still: Love it! Not only that, look at her money. She was telling the lobbyists last winter that she'd show having raised a half-million bucks in the first quarter. Then when she showed only $272,000, people started to talk.

Temple: Live by big talk, die by big talk.

Holden: What about her rich new Republican husband? What's he, a nursing-home guy from Ladue? Can't he write a big check?

Temple: Again, Claire talks a good game. We'll see. I can't see more than a million, a million-three."

Still: She better bring more than that!

Peter Kinder is assistant to the chairman of Rust Communications and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate.