Missouri Senate Race Close in Final Week

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MELISSA BLOCK, host:

We're going to hear more now about the Senate race in Missouri and it is a close one. Incumbent Republican Jim Talent faces Democratic State Auditor Claire McCaskill. And for months polls have shown them running in a dead heat.

We're joined by Stephen Smith. He's a professor of political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis. Thanks for being with us.

Professor STEPHEN SMITH (Washington University): My pleasure.

BLOCK: Have you seen any late movement at all in the polls or are they really locked in place?

Professor SMITH: They've been locked in place for two months. It looked like Claire McCaskill was a little bit ahead during the middle of the summer. Jim Talent caught up around Labor Day and the polls have been within two or three points of each other ever since.

BLOCK: What are both candidates doing to woo some important voting groups here? I'm thinking in particular of African American voters and rural voters in Missouri.

Professor SMITH: Well, that's right. The rural vote in Missouri is under lots of - getting lots of attention by both campaigns. You know, the reason is that Missouri is a divided state. It has two large metropolitan areas, St. Louis and Kansas City, and they vote fairly Democratically. The rest of the state is far more Republican and far more conservative.

Both candidates feel that in past elections they neglected rural Missouri. Jim Talent lost a race for the governor and he himself, I think, has said that if he had given more attention to rural Missouri he would have picked up more votes there and overcome some of the disadvantage he had in the cities. And Claire McCaskill, who was a candidate for governor, too, believes that she can do better in rural Missouri than she has in the past.

BLOCK: I have also seen a couple of ads from Jim Talent where he's specifically targeting African American voters.

Professor SMITH: Well, he is. He has an ad in which there's an African American gentleman telling us about how Jim Talent went to bat on the sickle cell disease issue and that this issue is especially important to African Americans. Clearly, Talent wants to do something to peel away some of the African American vote that will go overwhelmingly to McCaskill.

BLOCK: There are two high profile ballot issues on November 7 in Missouri. One would raise the minimum wage. The other would protect stem cell research. What impact do you see those having on the outcome of the Senate race?

Professor SMITH: Well, the minimum wage issue cuts pretty much along party lines and so its net effect isn't too great. The stem cell issue is another matter, though. It's an issue in which it appears that a majority of Missourians favor the constitutional proposition, which would guarantee the right to conduct embryonic stem cell research. That issue is cutting in favor of the Democrats and that will work to Claire McCaskill's advantage.

BLOCK: Now, President Bush will be in Missouri tomorrow at a public rally with Jim Talent,as I understand it the first public event they've had together all year, which I imagine would help him with the base. But what about independent voters?

Professor SMITH: Well, I think Missouri voters are sort of like national voters in their balance of opinion about the president so I read the president's visit to Missouri as a sign that the Talent campaign and the Republicans in the state are really now aiming at turnout. We're down to the last few days and what they hope to do is simply motivate their own voters to get out to vote. They're probably not going to persuade too many voters to shift their vote in their direction.

BLOCK: What else are you going to be looking for in the last few days of this campaign?

Professor SMITH: Well, this is really one of the ugliest campaigns I think we've seen. Congressional campaigns have never been pretty. We always tend to think that they're getting worse and worse and worse, but you know, I think this year they actually are. There's so much money poured into negative ads and these ads are being sponsored, probably to the tune of 60 or 70% of them, by outside groups.

And I think there's an awful lot of people who are going to talk about doing something about this in the future, because it really does contaminate our politics. It does tamp down turnout because people get fed up with it and it might affect outcomes.

Now in this situation, it's unclear how it's going to affect outcomes, but it clearly is nasty and the last month's worth of campaigns in Missouri and Minnesota and Tennessee and New Jersey and Ohio, I think, is persuading a lot of voters that something is deeply wrong with how we're running our campaigns.

BLOCK: Stephen Smith, thanks so much.

Professor SMITH: My pleasure.

BLOCK: Stephen Smith is a professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis.

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