Given its status as one of the Democrats' most promising Senate pick-up opportunities this year, much attention has already been paid to Claire McCaskill's bid to unseat Republican incumbent Jim Talent in Missouri. But Democratic strategists looking to 2008 may want to pay even closer attention -- especially to McCaskill's unusual efforts to increase her support among rural voters. McCaskill's is a strategy that upends the typical Democratic approach to statewide campaigning in red states.
McCaskill, Missouri's state auditor, is trying to learn from her own failed attempt to win the 2004 governor's race against Matt Blunt. In 2004 McCaskill did very well in Missouri's two major metro areas, St. Louis and Kansas City. In the city of St. Louis, she won 78 percent of the vote. In St. Louis County, Missouri's largest by far, she received 55 percent, while in Jackson County, which includes Kansas City, she triumphed with 62 percent. But McCaskill lost to Blunt statewide, 48 to 51 percent, by doing so poorly in Missouri's numerous rural counties. (109 of Missouri's 114 counties are rural.) McCaskill won just eight rural counties, and not one of those with more than 51 percent of the vote. (Kerry did even worse, winning only one in the entire state.)
McCaskill's 2004 "metro" strategy turned off the vast majority of Missouri's rural voters; her agenda and campaign appeal largely failed to engage cultural issues that resonate with them. But this time she has not made the same mistake. She announced her candidacy in Houston, Missouri, the small rural town where she spent some of her childhood, and has adopted a concerted rural campaign strategy that goes beyond such symbolic gestures.
As McCaskill campaigns in Missouri's countryside, she talks about building up the nation's defense, defeating the terrorists, supporting the troops, and not "cutting and running." She argues for a stronger military -- one that is willing to spend more money providing our troops with the body protection they require and the medical treatment veterans need after they return home. She warns of the future military threats posed by Iran and North Korea and she insists that Israel should have the right to protect militarily its borders against Hezbollah, which she considers an aggressive terrorist organization.
McCaskill's positions on domestic issues also yield little to Republicans. As the former Jackson County prosecutor and present Missouri state auditor, McCaskill comes across as tough on crime and credible on fighting government waste and mismanagement. On immigration, she criticizes the Bush administration from the right, arguing that too many illegal immigrants are allowed into the country who take jobs away from Americans, including many Missourians. In a similarly populist vein, she also attacks the Bush administration for promoting corporate loopholes that encourage American companies to outsource jobs overseas. Of course, these policy positions play well in metropolitan Missouri, where labor unions are strong, but they also resonate in rural Missouri where unemployment is particularly high (5.7 percent in 2005 as compared to 5.3 percent in urban Missouri, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture).
She is not giving Talent much to campaign on in rural Missouri regarding environmental, energy, or agricultural issues either. McCaskill aggressively pushes environmental programs that are popular with rural voters, including regulations for clean air, clean water, and improved natural resource management. She also advocates energy independence policies, arguing that shifting to alternative fuels such as ethanol would enhance national security while benefiting Missouri's farmers. And she has several other ideas for helping Missouri farmers and ranchers, including proposals for giving them more local control. (For example, she opposes Bush's mandatory Animal ID program, designed to trace animal disease outbreaks, on the grounds that potential health benefits are outweighed by the loss of independence for producers and the financial burden it places on family farms.) McCaskill also opposes Bush administration trade policies that she argues make it increasingly difficult for Missouri's farmers and ranchers to compete in the world marketplace.
There's a possibility that McCaskill's rural electoral strategy may actually backfire. It may not increase her rural vote strength enough to compensate for alienating and eroding her political base in the St. Louis and Kansas City metro areas. However, she feels this is a gamble that she must take, and has admitted this openly to political supporters who have complained that she is not spending enough time with them. In a recent interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, McCaskill admitted that spending so much time in rural Missouri may cause urban voters to feel neglected, but she says that she has asked them to “please be patient” and that they have generally responded, “Don't worry about it. Get out to the country.” Missouri congressman Emanuel Cleaver certainly agrees. At a Congressional Black Caucus social function last month, he told me that while some McCaskill supporters in Kansas City had been complaining that Claire has been largely ignoring them, he believed “her rural strategy is a must” and that she will have to campaign hard in rural Missouri to stand any chance of defeating Talent.
How is McCaskill actually fairing in rural areas? Two Research 2000 polls this summer showed McCaskill polling in the mid to upper thirties as a percentage of rural voters. These figures are similar those she pulled in Missouri's rural counties in her loss to Blunt two years ago. But she's only banking on a marginal increase in rural support, and such an increase would be difficult to detect since sub-groups in polls have large error margins. We will probably have to wait until after Election Day to compare actual vote totals in rural counties to see if she improved her rural percentages from 2004.
Meanwhile, one irony is that while McCaskill is moving to the right to capture the hearts and minds of rural voters, Talent is moving (modestly) toward the center to try to win the support of urban-suburban voters. He joined liberal Democratic senators Edward Kennedy and Russ Feingold to increase Pell Grant awards to make college more affordable, breaking with the Bush administration, which had actually proposed cuts to the program. Talent has also tried to gain more support in the black community by helping to secure passage of the Sickle Cell Treatment Law and consponsoring a bill to authorize an investigation into the 1955 murder of Emmett Till.
Talent is a smart, polished campaigner who is skilled enough in Machiavellian politics to convince many voters that he is a lot more moderate than he really is. Although McCaskill is similarly experienced on the campaign trail, the question is whether she can match Talent's effectiveness and convince rural voters that she really is "one of them." She is not pro-life, she favors gun control, and she favors a very high-profile and controversial stem cell research ballot initiative that will also be decided on election day. Of course, Talent is the quintessential Republican on these issues. If Claire wins this toss-up race (a USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted late last month shows her leading Talent 48 to 45 percent among likely voters and 44 to 39 percent among registered voters), it is likely that Democrats eyeing the 2008 candidacy for president will take notice of her rural strategy. Given the recent, grim history of Democratic electoral defeats in states with large rural populations, it's a strategy worth serious consideration.
Kenneth F. Warren is a professor of political science at Saint Louis University and president of The Warren Poll.
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