What killed Claire?
Many pundits have cited many reasons why Democrat Claire McCaskill lost the Missouri governorship to Republican Matt Blunt this year. But no one of whom I am aware has cited her relative weakness in the City of St. Louis.
Weakness? McCaskill carried the city by over 82,000 votes, winning 77.8% of the vote. She would have liked to have been that “weak” everywhere! But the point is relative weakness, that is, compared to other Democrats in the same election.
While McCaskill ran nearly two percentage points better (1.8% to be exact) than Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry statewide, she ran 2.5 points behind Kerry in the city. She trailed Kerry in 26 of 28 wards, ran even with him in one and ahead of Kerry in just one. In St. Louis County, she ran ahead of Kerry, but by less than half a point.
Closer examination of the returns suggest why this may have been. The two wards where McCaskill matched or bettered Kerry were the city’s most conservative, southwest city’s 12th and 16th. In the more progressive wards where McCaskill trailed Kerry, her campaign’s attempts to blur the differences between herself and the conservative Blunt may have struck a sour chord with voters seeking genuine progressive leadership.
Moreover, in nine wards McCaskill even ran behind U.S. Senatorial nominee Nancy Farmer, whose doomed campaign against popular Sen. Kit Bond garnered Democrats’ lowest statewide percentage. And these wards weren’t anywhere near Farmer’s home base in Skinker-DeBalliviere. Seven of these wards (7, 9, 11, 15, 20, 24, 25) are in integrated white-majority areas, where many working young adults (the bourgeois bohemians or “bobos”) now call home. (The 20th has a black population majority but a white voting majority.) Most of them are south of I-44 and east of Grand.
What might have enticed up a couple thousand progressive Kerry-backing bobos to split their tickets for Blunt? It may well have been McCaskill’s own campaign. In a pre-election post (October 20), I speculated and warned that many of the young workers that Kerry’s campaign (and George Soros’ big-bucks GOTV efforts) were drawing to the polls were being repelled by the McCaskill campaign’s relentless belittling of 33-year-old Blunt’s age and accomplishments. In particular, the television and radio ads hypothesizing a Blunt job interview for the governor’s job with an obnoxious, condescending interviewer may have reminded young workers of their own unpleasant experiences in performance appraisals by unappreciative “dead wood” supervisors.
The same thing did not take place in Missouri’s other urban center, Kansas City. McCaskill enjoys great personal popularity there because of her service there as both a state representative and county prosecutor. Kansas City voters regarded her as one of their own. McCaskill’s ads deftly highlighted that Kansas City service without ever mentioning that she had moved away to St. Louis County.
Weakness? McCaskill carried the city by over 82,000 votes, winning 77.8% of the vote. She would have liked to have been that “weak” everywhere! But the point is relative weakness, that is, compared to other Democrats in the same election.
While McCaskill ran nearly two percentage points better (1.8% to be exact) than Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry statewide, she ran 2.5 points behind Kerry in the city. She trailed Kerry in 26 of 28 wards, ran even with him in one and ahead of Kerry in just one. In St. Louis County, she ran ahead of Kerry, but by less than half a point.
Closer examination of the returns suggest why this may have been. The two wards where McCaskill matched or bettered Kerry were the city’s most conservative, southwest city’s 12th and 16th. In the more progressive wards where McCaskill trailed Kerry, her campaign’s attempts to blur the differences between herself and the conservative Blunt may have struck a sour chord with voters seeking genuine progressive leadership.
Moreover, in nine wards McCaskill even ran behind U.S. Senatorial nominee Nancy Farmer, whose doomed campaign against popular Sen. Kit Bond garnered Democrats’ lowest statewide percentage. And these wards weren’t anywhere near Farmer’s home base in Skinker-DeBalliviere. Seven of these wards (7, 9, 11, 15, 20, 24, 25) are in integrated white-majority areas, where many working young adults (the bourgeois bohemians or “bobos”) now call home. (The 20th has a black population majority but a white voting majority.) Most of them are south of I-44 and east of Grand.
What might have enticed up a couple thousand progressive Kerry-backing bobos to split their tickets for Blunt? It may well have been McCaskill’s own campaign. In a pre-election post (October 20), I speculated and warned that many of the young workers that Kerry’s campaign (and George Soros’ big-bucks GOTV efforts) were drawing to the polls were being repelled by the McCaskill campaign’s relentless belittling of 33-year-old Blunt’s age and accomplishments. In particular, the television and radio ads hypothesizing a Blunt job interview for the governor’s job with an obnoxious, condescending interviewer may have reminded young workers of their own unpleasant experiences in performance appraisals by unappreciative “dead wood” supervisors.
The same thing did not take place in Missouri’s other urban center, Kansas City. McCaskill enjoys great personal popularity there because of her service there as both a state representative and county prosecutor. Kansas City voters regarded her as one of their own. McCaskill’s ads deftly highlighted that Kansas City service without ever mentioning that she had moved away to St. Louis County.
posted by St. Louis Oracle | 11/21/2004 08:33:00 PM
2 Comments:
Thanks for exposing a portion of the rest of the story.
However, you failed to notice that this is most likely due to vote fraud 2004. Claire McCaskill easily WON the election 2004 if the real votes were counted! It was quite obvious Greene, Jasper, Newton counties delayed returns until Blunt's regime knew what was happening in St. Louis. It is very obvious in numerous states in the USA the so called Bush mandate was mere vote fraud of various degrees and means. The Blunt regime did the same manipulating the vote in St. Louis, city and county, and in the other counties where they knew a complete fraud audit would never be permitted.
Wonder how Bekki Cook lost by such a slim margin? Look to Buchanan, and St. Charles County for additional portions of FIXED SELECTIONS 2004.
Wonder why the Rethugs also made sure Robin Carnahan won? Think about it---she will make sure nothing is done about vote fraud 2004-will most likely stop Bekki Cook from even insisting on her automatic recount and asking for a fraud audit, and rubber stamp Pappa and Jr. Blunt's intentions for making free and fair elections even more a thing of the past for 2006-2008 and beyond.
I have no problem identifying myself---I just didn't have time to register, etc. this a.m. Marvalene Pankey, Democratic Party nominee Mo. House 133, 2004 and vote fraud researcher since 1994. mpankey2004@yahoo.com
Marvalene is too modest in identifying herself. She is also a former state chair of the Reform Party of Missouri, and she personally ran against Matt Blunt for Secretary of State in 2000, winning 7101 votes (0.3%) as the Reform Party candidate.
While I like conspiracies as much as the next guy, I seriously doubt that Blunt could have influenced vote counts in St. Louis City and County, where the count was under the direction of Boards of Election Commissioners appointed by Gov. Holden.
As to Marvalene's friend Bekki Cook, she ran relatively poorly in St. Louis City and County, in an area where Greens and other leftists actively railed against Cook (e.g., on the St. Louis Independent Media Center web site) for her role in denying the Green Party's Mary Ann McGivern's candidacy for attorney general in 2000. (See my earlier post, later featured on the IMC site, about not voting a straight ticket.) It was "payback time" for the Greens and other progressives (McGivern is a hero to folks appalled at the antics of the Slay/Schoemehl school board), and they may well have played a role in Cook's loss.
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