Previous coverage:

Jay Nixon in Johnson County on Wednesday night

Ike Skelton (and just about everyone else) in Johnson County

Robin Carnahan’s remarks:

[applause] Thank you all so much. It is, it is such a thrill to be here, Ike, to be with you. I’ve always heard about this picnic, both from you and my folks. And I think this is the first time I’ve actually been to this particular event. So, I am, I am thrilled to be able to be a part of it. You mentioned Jim Kirkpatrick. You know his picture is on the wall in my office down in Jefferson City, so not a day goes by that I walk in the door that I don’t see him and feel inspired by the public service that he gave to this state. And particularly on days like this, which we just made it through an election. You know, that’s one of the jobs of the Secretary of State, to work with all the local election officials and get us through these miraculous things that keep our democracy going. And I look at Jimmy and I smile and just feel honored to follow in his footsteps…

…I want to say a couple of things. One is, my mother sends her greetings. She’s doing really well. She is a grandmother again. And so is taking care of a little one who’s seven or eight months old now, my brother’s daughter. She’s also doing a lot of writing. She has another book that may come out. So you all keep your eye out for that. And she’s doing a lot this year in political campaigns. Surprise, surprise. [laughter] And here’s what she’s doing. She’s traveling around the country to help Barack Obama. And she’s been to seven or eight states. [applause] And she’s doing it because she thinks he’s the leader that we need right now. And I know that we all had to come together after the primary. And we all had to think about the direction that the country and our state needs to go.

But I’m reminded, you know I grew up in Rolla, we grew up on a farm, and you know, on a farm there’s always a list of things that are broken, aren’t there? And on our farm there’s a long list. And, even if you’re not a farmer you’ve got a list of things that need to be fixed. And it seems to me as a nation and as a state we have that same kind of list, don’t we?

We all have that list. And on my list, I’ll tell ya, near the top, is making sure we have access to affordable health care. For everyone. [applause] And on my list is education. making sure we got access to good and affordable education for all of our kids. [applause] And on my list has gotta be this deal with the economy and oil and, you know, this deal with gas prices. It’s not just something that’s about at the pump. It affects every single thing we’re doing. Anybody notice food prices? How much they’ve gone up? [voice: “Oh, yeah.”] Guess what, folks? It’s related to oil prices. It has to do with how far we’re transporting our food, what it costs to get there, what it costs for fertilizer. How many people in this room know how much fertilizer prices have gone up since George Bush has been president? [several raised hands] Yeah. Four times my fertilizer has gone up. And guess what? All these other inputs that we put into the farm that we have, have gone up. And the outputs of the cattle we sell haven’t. Farmers are getting squeezed, small business people are getting squeezed, everybody’s getting squeezed in this economy.

So this election, to me, is just about what’s going on, what’s on that list of things that we need to be fixed, and, and who we think is gonna go about crossing stuff of the list and going about fixin’ things. And folks, we’ve had the republicans there for eight years. Givin’ ’em a chance to fix stuff. And I think it just comes down to whether we think we’re going in the right direction or the wrong direction and things are getting marked off the list. And I want to be a part of solving problems. And I think that’s what this election is going to be about. And I hope that you’ll talk to your friends and neighbors about it.

You’ve got a congressman here who goes about fixing things that are broken. And trying to keep things from being broken in the first place. He is the leader who said when this war first started, “Watch it. Be careful. Be careful getting into this and be careful getting out of this.” And his words were not heeded.

We need to make sure that his words are heeded. This is a man who is wise and knows what needs to happen in our country. And I think the only way we make that happen is to have change in this election. So, I’m asking you to vote for change this year to help Ike. We don’t need to change Ike. We need to [applause] change the people that are up there with Ike.

So that’s all I gotta say. We got a lot of good food and fellowship tonight. And thank you all for what you’ve done for me and my family and all your prayers over the years. And, and just thanks for sending us Ike. [applause]

Sam Page’s remarks:

[applause] Thank you. It’s good to be back again…

…Well thanks for inviting me. We were here two months ago for a rally. And I was, somebody caught me on the way out and said, “You know, you have to come back here the day after the election, that’s a really big event, and Ike Skelton gets everybody together.” So it got penciled in on my calender and I’m just, I’m just glad to be here tonight with all of you.

I got to meet a few people and shake some hands. It’s really, it’s really neat to see how many people actually voted for me out here in this side of the state. [laughter] ‘Cause I don’t think I met anybody who said they didn’t vote for me yesterday. [laughter]

I do want to apologize for one thing. I know that a few of you out there got some robocalls waking you up at two o’clock in the morning telling you to vote for Sam Page. I can tell you that wasn’t from my campaign. We know what that’s about. That’s the kind of silliness we see in an election. No one in Missouri can remember when an incumbents went after a challenger while the challenger was in a primary. And you don’t do that if you’re winning, you do that if you’re behind.

But I’ll tell you, I grew up in southern Missouri in a small town. My mom was a teacher. She was a single mom. She taught us the value of hard work. My family’s all in the logging sawmill business. And I grew up working in the back of the sawmill and I learned, learned what hard work was. But I was lucky enough. I went to UMKC on a Curator scholarship, went to medical school, met a nice girl there from St. Louis who was in my class from medical school. And we follow that rule that a lot of you live by, you go, you move to where your wife’s parents are from  and your life is a lot easier. [laughter] It’s a, we’ve been living in Creve Couer for a while. I’ve got three kids. They attend local public schools. They’re all in the same grade school. It’s three doors away from our house. So it’s gonna be a little easier on the car pool next year.

I’m excited about the opportunity to change the direction of the state. Now we know that Jay Nixon is is gonna be our next governor.[applause] Jay needs to be able to govern with both hands. He’s got a lot of, lot of things we need to turn around in Jefferson City. He doesn’t need to have one hand behind his back trying to fight off a lieutenant governor who’s trying to undermine him. And I’m running for lieutenant governor because I want to support Jay and his policies, not just presiding over the state, but to be there to build a bully pulpit for senior issues, to run the office of senior citizen advocacy, to make access to affordable health care an issue again in Missouri. Make it a priority again in Missouri.

We have the money in this twenty three and a half billion dollar budg
et to make health care a priority. And we can’t afford not to. In the past three years, now going on a fourth year, we’ve left one point six billion dollars of federal matching money in Washington. Your federal taxes, money you already paid, went to other states that had different priorities in health care, more mainstream priorities in health care then what we have in Missouri under this leadership. We need to change that.

Now, the cost of taking care of the uninsured doesn’t mysteriously disappear. It’s shifted. It shifted down to anyone who had traditional health insurance. And you saw your premiums go up twenty per cent over the past three years. You can thank this administration for the increase in your health care premiums, if you’re lucky enough to have health insurance.

We need to change the direction of this state. I went to medical school to help folks. I ran for office for the same reason. I like solving problems. I like helping people. I look forward to serving as your next lieutenant governor. Thank you. God bless you. God bless Missouri and God bless the United States of America. [applause]