Dem Priorities in the Coming House Races: Part Two

Ronny Richardson, the executive director of the Missouri House Democratic Campaign Committee, gave me his take, last week, on the top tier House races. He opined that three districts in St. Charles County are hot spots this year and that Columbia’s got a race to watch.

In H.D. 16, Kristy Manning is challenging newly minted state rep, Mark Parkinson. Parkinson narrowly won the Feb. 5th special election against Tom Fann (51.6 percent to 48.4 percent). I wrote about Manning in March, when she surprised everyone by filing, and again in April, when Fann decided to leave her with a clear field and run for the St. Charles County Council himself.

One of Kristy’s biggest advantages–after being a hard working, articulate campaigner who is very knowledgeable about St. Charles politics–is that the Republicans think she’s too liberal for the district. They’re underestimating her just as they underestimated Rebecca McClanahan in H.D. 2 two years ago. When Manning filed, we got this from a commenter at Political Fix: “An aide to Joan Bray is running in St. Peters? Wow, she ought to get a couple of dozen votes.” Another commenter had this advice: [S]tart crying in your beer now Manning supporters. Let the games begin.”

Far be it from me to change any Republican minds. In fact, Mr. Parkinson, I was kidding about all that “underestimating” business. You don’t have a thing to worry about next November. Trust me on that.

The second race of note in St. Chuck is H.D. 17, where Kenny Biermann is going to take another shot at Schneider. Biermann is well known in the community after all his years on the school board, and last time out he came achingly close (51 percent to 49 percent–295 votes short). In fact, McCaskill won in that district in ’06. It’s likely Biermann got so near to winning because Schneider didn’t see him coming. She’ll take him seriously this time. She’ll spend more money. But Kenny learned his lesson last time too. He learned that he could have worked just a little bit harder and pulled it off. He’s taken that lesson to heart.

And that’s one of the beauties of House races. Shoe leather can beat money. It’s always better to have money than not have it, of course, but remember the classic recent example. In 2002, Clint Zweifel was the only Democrat to topple an incumbent Republican–against all expectations, even within his own party. And he did it by knocking on 14,000 doors.

A House candidate can win that way. Senate candidates, as well as statewide and Congressional candidates, face too large a voter pool to win purely with shoe leather. But Biermann and Manning know that contacting voters one on one is what will win the day for them.

The last St. Charles race for us to look at is the 18th, an open seat, where Democrat Tim Swope will face either Anne Zerr or Matthew Seeds–probably Zerr, the harder working of the two. She’s a former Democrat, and Swope is a former Republican. How often does that happen?

This is certainly a winnable district for the Dems. In 2006, Democrat Joe Koester came within about 5 percentage points (52.8 to 47.2) of catching a popular incumbent, Tom Dempsey. The seat was vacated when Dempsey ran for the Senate last September and won. If Koester could do that against Dempsey, Swope could–if he works hard enough–win in a race for an open seat.

But enough about the St. Louis Metro region. There’s an interesting race happening in Columbia (H.D. 24). In 2006, the incumbent, Republican Ed Robb, won by only 231 votes. His opponent that year was a hard worker, Ronny tells me, but not willing to throw a punch. Ed Robb didn’t hesitate to get down and dirty, so Ritter lost. Chris Kelly, the Democrat facing Robb this year, will have no such qualms about throwing punches.

In fact, it’s kind of his style. He’s Trumanesque in his fiestiness. And he isn’t so much running against Robb individually as against generic Republicans:

“The witch burners are in Jefferson City and for people to simply do nothing in the face of political extremism is not sufficient,” Kelly said. “This community and this district owe the state of Missouri more than doing nothing. We need someone to say these things are right and these things are wrong. I understand objective good and evil and I will struggle for objective good.”

Kelly is well known in the 24th, having served perhaps a dozen years in the state lege before term limits were instituted. Since then, he’s been a district court judge and a columnist for the Columbia Tribune.

Ed Robb should be worried.

Tomorrow I’ll give you the scoop on what Ronny thinks about the top tier races in the western part of the state.

Photo of Chris Kelly courtesy of the Columbia Tribune