When I read about Sam Graves’ latest obsessive rant, I thought about a conversation between author David Rakoff and the Family Research Council’s Robert Knight, published in Rakoff’s Fraud. Rakoff had called up Knight to see if there was any common ground that he could find between the gay and lesbian community and cultural conservatives. Knight spent most of the hour talking about anal sex, to which Rakoff wryly noted that he, as a gay man, had never spent so much time in his life discussing anal sex in such exhaustive detail.

Which brings me back to Sam Graves. With all of the problems in our nation, while Main Street and Wall Street tank, health care costs precipitously rise, real wages sink, and we face an energy crisis worse than anything since the 1970s, the only thing Graves can talk about is the “homosexual agenda”.  I find Graves’ obsession a little suspicious.

Kay Barnes is a successful businesswoman and has actually managed and worked to revitalize a major US city. Sam Graves has little to show for his time in Congress. It’s no wonder that all Graves can do is grumble out the side of his mouth like a crazy uncle.  

John Nance Garner, vice president under FDR from 1933-41, famously said that the office of vice president was “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” And I assumed that the obscurity that has settled like a shroud over many a vice president was also the usual fate of lieutenant governors. Sam Page set me straight.

Peter Kinder, he said, in presiding over the state senate, pushed through a tax credit for Paul McKee worth $100 million. That kind of power ain’t warm piss. Furthermore, among the dozen boards Kinder sits on are five or six that influence health care policy in this state, including the Senior Citizens Advocacy Board–a critically important board, considering that health care is a preeminent concern of seniors.

So Dr. Page, I stand corrected.

The question then is how Page would use the power of the office if he had it. His focus, he tells me, would be on health care, since he is a physician, and bringing good jobs to Missouri. Easy to say, but what politician doesn’t claim he’ll bring good jobs to his state or the country? So I asked him what he meant by that, and his policy prescriptions make sense.

In reference to Page’s focus on health care, for example, I pointed out that over 61 percent of Americans, in a recent poll, indicated they were satisfied with their current insurance and not interested in switching to government administered insurance. Sure, he agreed, we learned about that attitude when the Clintons tried to change the system. But the uninsured need to be taken care of. That number increased by 100,000 last year alone in Missouri, bringing the total number to almost 800,000 people in our state.

Not only are Republicans proud of kicking people off Medicaid and unwilling to see how morally reprehensible that is, but they have been financially irresponsible as well in forfeiting $1.56 billion in federal aid.

As far as improving the jobs outlook, Page is appalled that our unemployment is higher than it’s been in the last twenty years. “And with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the financial sector will continue to take a beating.” He says that if Missouri wants to lure good jobs with pension benefits here, it must concentrate on workforce development. We need health care for all Missourians and strong, science based curriculum.

And we need to provide disincentives for companies that take jobs out of Missouri. When the Bombardier deal was pending last spring, Page introduced an amendment in the House which would have required Bombardier to repay the tax credits it was being granted if it left the state. That amendment failed on a party line vote–and Kinder opposed it.

That’s one example of how Kinder is out of touch with what Missourians need. Page is confident that if he can get the word out about his own values, they will resonate with a majority of voters. Translation for “get the word out”: Money. And it looks as if he’s going to be competitive with Kinder on that front. His campaign has aimed to have at least 2/3 as much funding as the Kinder campaign. That would be enough, he thinks, to get the necessary ads on TV. He doesn’t need as much as Kinder, first because “it’s more expensive to sell a bad message” and second because he (Page) uses his resources more responsibly.

Right now, Page has about $644,000 on hand to Kinder’s $920,000. And note where the money has come from: Page’s contributions are the grassroots kind from hundreds of small contributors. Kinder, on the other hand, would be behind in money on hand if it weren’t for three contributions of $100,000 each from members of the Humphries family, which owns the Tamko Shingle Co. in Joplin.

So, the money front doesn’t look like it will present problems, and there are a couple of other reasons to be optimistic that Page could unseat this incumbent. First, he’s sandwiched on the ballot between Nixon, who leads Hulshof by 15 points, and Robin Carnahan, a shoo in. Really now, how likely is it that voters will punch the button for Nixon, switch to the Republican side for Kinder, and then go back to Carnahan? It’s true that there have been four elections out of the past twelve where the people elected a lieutenant governor from the opposite party of the governor, but that only happens when the governor’s race is close and when the lieutenant governor is a particularly strong candidate.

Kinder isn’t. Here’s how weak he is: he felt called upon, even before the primary, to pull the dirtiest of tricks in an effort to prevent Page from winning the nomination. It almost surely was Kinder who paid for 6-8 robocalls to some voters, in the wee hours of the morning, purporting to be from Page.

Page expects more Republican dirty tricks before election day, but he’ll deal with them as best he can, knowing that scummy behavior is the trademark of people with no real message to sell.

If you’d like for the almost unheard of happen, a downticket candidate unseating an incumbent in a statewide race, here’s where you can go to contribute to Sam Page.

Update: Did I forget to mention that Page’s polls show the race dead even? Shame on me.

On September 12th Rasmussen released a survey of 700 likely voters taken in Missouri on September 11th. The margin of error is 4.5%.

In the governor’s race Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon (D) continues (and has expanded) his lead over Congressman Kenny Hulshof (r):

Nixon – 54%

Huslhof – 39%

Rasmussen continues:

…Nixon is supported by 92% of Democrats and has a 17-point lead among the state’s unaffiliated voters. Eighty-one percent (81%) of Republicans say they will vote for Hulshof.

The Democratic attorney general leads by 23 percentage points among women and six points among men….

One focus of an NYT article reprinted in the Sunday Post-Dispatch is that Sarah Palin has been, both as a mayor and as a governor, inclined to skip that competence thing and hire her buddies.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

By that rationale, I should be the president’s advisor on air pollution because I love to breathe. It’s a well documented fact that I have always efficiently used and appreciated oxygen.  

Palin is also, according to the NYT article,  vindictive (Troopergate is only the tip of the iceberg) and secretive. “Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business.” (Shades of Matt Blunt!) But they attempt to look transparent: “A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account ‘when there was significant state business.'”Mmm-hmmm.

Another example: Palin claimed that a study by state scientists on the effects of global warming showed that it wasn’t harming polar bears. In fact, she has sued the federal government to block putting them on the endangered species list. But a University of Alaska professor used a federal records request to obtain the e-mails of the scientists. It turns out, of course, that they concluded the polar bears are indeed in trouble.

To give the devil her due, she did help pass a bill that tightened the rules governing lobbyists, and she did get the tax code rewritten so that the state got a larger share of oil and gas sale proceeds.

But the bottom line is that her slip is showing. Or, to quote an editorial in the Sunday P-D:

This is not change. This is politics as usual. This is George W. Bush in red patent-leather, peep-toe Naughty Monkey pumps.

Photo courtesy of STLtoday.com

Both states have a large number of people with smart mouths, a patriotic attitude, and a certain fondness for a particular turn of phrase…

Yep, that’s The one and only genuine original Show Me Progress McSame bumper sticker.

And in Anchorage, Alaska, our good friend Mudflats reports on two very interesting rallies held on the same day.

The first was with and for Sarah Palin (r):

Infiltrating the Palin Rally in Anchorage.

…I walked in to the large “Eklutna Room” where the rally was to be held. More TV cameras than I have ever seen in my life were set up on risers all around the room. The room itself, when filled to capacity, holds 5000 people. I tried to eyeball it, and I’d guess there were 1000 or so there. Everyone was pushed into the center of the room where the podium was set up….

Go. Read the whole thing. The photos are priceless.

Do people in Anchorage, Alaska read Show Me Progress? Heh.:

Photo by Mudflats

The second rally was not “for” Sarah Palin (r):

‘Alaska Women Reject Palin’ Rally is HUGE!

…It’s a good thing I wasn’t tailgating when I saw the crowd in front of the library or I would have ended up in somebody’s trunk.  When I got there, about 20 minutes early, the line of sign wavers stretched the full length of the library grounds, along the edge of the road, 6 or 7 people deep!  I could hardly find a place to park.  I nabbed one of the last spots in the library lot, and as I got out of the car and started walking, people seemed to join in from every direction, carrying signs.

Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage.  The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators).  This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state.  I was absolutely stunned.  The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by.  And even those that didn’t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute.  This just doesn’t happen here…

[emphasis in original]

Go. Read the whole thing. The photos are amazing.

I’m proud of those good folks in Anchorage Alaska. This native-born Alaskan isn’t voting for McCain/Palin, either.

We’ve written about this race between the challenger Carla Keough (D) and the incumbent Barney Fisher (r) before. It always seems to revolve around money:

Barney Fisher: Don’t lend him money  

125th Legislative District – second quarter campaign finance reports

More on the 125th Legislative District

The Missouri Ethics Commission and the 125th Legislative District

The word on the ground is that Carla Keough is outworking the republican incumbent. The money situation doesn’t look too grand for that same incumbent either, according to the 30 day after the primary election report filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission on September 4th:

Committe[e]: CITIZENS FOR BARNEY FISHER 2008

1. TOTAL RECEIPTS FOR THIS ELECTION PREVIOUSLY REPORTED $17,095.00

2. ALL MONETARY CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED THIS PERIOD $1,150.00

7. TOTAL ALL RECEIPTS THIS PERIOD (SUM 5A + 6A) $1,150.00

9. TOTAL ALL RECEIPTS THIS ELECTION(SUM 1B + 7A – 8A) $18,245.00

14. TOTAL ALL EXPENDITURES MADE THIS PERIOD (SUM 11A + 12A + 13A) $3,491.57

15. TOTAL EXPENDITURES THIS ELECTION (SUM 10B + 14A) $14,443.20

28. MONEY ON HAND AT THE CLOSE OF THIS REPORTING PERIOD (SUM 25 + 26 – 27) $3,801.80

[emphasis added]

My, oh my. A republican incumbent with under $4000.00 cash on hand two months before the general election. With a challenger. I don’t think he’ll be doing much campaign surrogate work for David Pearce’s (r – advocate of automotive deer hunting) senate run, do you?

Let’s take a look at the contributions to Barney Fisher’s campaign:

Detailed Summary of Contributions And Loans Received

Committee: CITIZENS FOR BARNEY FISHER 2008

Report Date: 9/4/2008

Metz Banking Co Nevada, MO 08/19/2008 $325.00

NFIB PAC Washington, DC 08/15/2008 $325.00

12. TOTAL ANONYMOUS CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED FROM PERSONS GIVING $25 OR LESS $0.00

13. TOTAL MONETARY CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED FROM PERSONS GIVING $100 OR LESS $0.00

14. TOTAL IN-KIND CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED FROM PERSONS (NOT COMMITTEES) GIVING $100 OR LESS $0.00

[emphasis added]

And there are five local contributors reported on the itemized list.

Let’s take a look at his expenditures:

Detailed Summary of Expenditures And Contributions Made

Committe[e]: CITIZENS FOR BARNEY FISHER 2008

Report[ ]Date: 9/4/2008

advertising $10.00

volunteer food $42.74

volunteer food $55.42

donation $25.00

volunteer food $32.91

parade supplies $49.16

donation $50.00

parade supplies $22.76

donation $16.00

volunteer food $31.73

Metz Bank nevada, MO 07/28/2008 travel expense $100.00

old settlers Bates County, mo 08/16/2008 $100.00

walmart nevada, mo 08/18/2008 travel expense $150.00

american express dallas, tx 08/22/2008 advertising $642.92

tweten & co nevada, mo 08/25/2008 advertising $285.20

metz bank nevada, mo 08/25/2008 travel $100.00

creative design nevada, mo 08/25/2008 advertising $107.72

Walmart Nevada, MO 07/30/2008 travel expense $150.00

American Express Dallas, TX 08/08/2008 advertising $1,020.01

Walmart nevada, MO 08/08/2008 travel expense $150.00

metz bank nevada, mo 08/08/2008 travel expense $100.00

old settlers sheldon, mo 08/12/2008 donation $100.00

walmart nevada, mo 08/12/2008 travel expense $150.00

Parades! Advertising! American Express does advertising?

Let’s take a look at Carla Keough’s (D) 30 day after the primary election report filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission on September 4th:

Committe: CARLA KEOUGH FOR THE HOUSE COMMITTEE

1. TOTAL RECEIPTS FOR THIS ELECTION PREVIOUSLY REPORTED $8,115.00

2. ALL MONETARY CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED THIS PERIOD $3,270.00

9. TOTAL ALL RECEIPTS THIS ELECTION(SUM 1B + 7A – 8A) $11,385.00

10. TOTAL EXPENDITURES FOR THIS ELECTION PREVIOUSLY REPORTED $3,463.22

11. EXPENDITURES MADE BY CASH OR CHECK THIS PERIOD $4,451.96

15. TOTAL EXPENDITURES THIS ELECTION (SUM 10B + 14A) $7,915.18

28. MONEY ON HAND AT THE CLOSE OF THIS REPORTING PERIOD (SUM 25 + 26 – 27) $3,469.82

My, oh my. I do believe we have financial parity.

Let’s look where Carla Keough’s contributions came from:

Detailed Summary of Contributions And Loans Received

Committee: CARLA KEOUGH FOR THE HOUSE COMMITTEE

Report Date: 9/4/2008

Blanche Balk-Williams Nevada, MO 7/31/2008 $200.00

Florilla Tiona Butler, MO  8/15/2008 $325.00

Cristina Brown Butler, MO 64730 8/15/2008 $175.00

Teamsters Local Union 688 Political Action Committee St. Louis, MO 8/5/2008 $325.00

Local 124 Voluntary Political Fund Political Fund Kansas City, MO 7/10/2008 $225.00

Pipefitters Local Union 533 Volunteer Political Fund Kansas City, MO 8/5/2008 $325.00

Missouri State Council Machinist PAC Bridgeton, MO 8/18/2008 $325.00

Vernon County Democratic Central Committee Bronaugh, MO 8/28/2009 $500.00

13. TOTAL MONETARY CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED FROM PERSONS GIVING $100 OR LESS $870.00

[emphasis added]

Hmmm. Small contributions, individual contributions, labor unions (representing working families), and the local Democratic Party committee. That looks quite a bit more grass rootsie than Barney Fisher’s (r) campaign finances.

Let’s take a look at expenditures:

Detailed Summary of Expenditures And Contributions Made

Committe[e]: CARLA KEOUGH FOR THE HOUSE COMMITTEE

Report[ ]Date: 9/4/2008

Travel Expense $60.50

Travel Expense $52.50

Food $37.00

Advertising $56.25

Sponsor Fee $50.00

Parade $14.09

Rent Expense $100.00

Travel Expense $100.00

Donation $50.00

Lane Studios Freeman, MO 8/8/2008 Supplies $2,425.50

Embarq Huntington, WV 8/25/2008 Phone/Internet $201.36

Midland Printing Sedalia, MO 8/29/2008 Printing $1,304.76

A parade! Signs. Campaign literature. Someone’s going door to door, and it doesn’t appear to be Barney Fisher…

Rasmussen released a survey of 700 likely voters taken in Missouri on September 11th. The margin of error is 4%.

McCain – 51%

Obama – 46%

Other – 1%

Not sure – 2%

There are other interesting numbers:

1. How do you rate the way that George W. Bush is performing his role as President? Excellent, good, fair, or poor?

Excellent – 14%

Good – 19%

Fair – 17%

Poor – 49%

Not sure – 1%

Think about that for a moment. One third of the people you pass on the street think dubya is doing a good job. That’s a really frightening indictment of the state of critical thinking in our state. The good news is that almost have of the people in Missouri think he sucks. There’s hope.

10….How do you rate the U.S. health care system? Excellent,  good, fair, or poor?

Excellent – 7%

Good – 22%

Fair – 35%

Poor – 35%

Not sure – 1%

So, people aren’t too happy with the state of health care in this country, but…

13. If you had a choice between keeping your existing insurance or switching to an  insurance program administered by the government, which would you choose?

Keep existing insurance – 61%

Switch to government insurance – 17%

Not sure – 22%

…the anti-government rhetoric of the right has people a might skittish about trying something to make it better.