Sam Graves didn’t bother to show up for the debate, so Kay Barnes had an entire evening (and the whole audience) to make her case to voters.

Advantage Barnes!

The DCCC is running ads in several battleground districts, including in Missouri’s Sixth Congressional District, where Kay Barnes is challenging Republican incumbent Sam Graves.

According to the KC Star, Kansas City Firefighters Local 42 is set to endorse Sam Graves, with a lifetime rating of 20% by the AFL-CIO (boosted by a whopping 42% rating in 2007), over Kay Barnes in this year’s election. Why would they do something like that, you might ask? Apparently, the national IAFF wants to reward Graves for a vote on collective bargaining rights this year.

Let me get this straight. Graves, with a terrible labor record, is set to get an endorsement over Barnes, who actually led a drive to raise sales taxes as mayor to directly benefit Kansas City firefighters, because he’s slightly improved on labor over the course of one year. Talk about shortsighted. I pray that the Star’s sources are just blowing smoke here.  

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.  

(I ordinarily don’t promote posts by campaigns or organizations, but this is definitely worth some attention. – promoted by Clark)

Democrats are most effective when we utilize all our resources. Therefore, 21st Century Democrats wants to harness the excitement of the Netroots to power our Grassroots field organizing. We’ve created a contest between 12 great congressional candidates, and now we need your vote to decide who should get field organizers to help them until Election Day. Round One will pare down the twelve to six and then Round Two will decide the three winners.

If you believe in Judy Baker or Kay Barnes, head on over to our website and vote. It will only take a few moments and your vote could put Judy Baker or Kay Barnes over the top on Election Day.

There is one vote per valid email and voting for Round One will end on September 20, 2008. You can start voting for Round Two on September 21st. We’ll declare our winner on October 1, 2008.  

Remember when Dick Cheney was caught in a lie about how China and Cuba were drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico? Republican Sam Graves, the first Republican to get a fundraising visit from both Bush and Cheney this cycle, is still repeating the lie.

The Missouri Democratic Party has him nailed on video.

Find out how you can get this clown out of office by going to Kay Barnes’ website right now.

UPDATE: TPM Election Central got Graves’ spokesman to confirm that Graves is sticking to the discredited story.

This is gonna get ugly. Strike that. The Kay Barnes, Sam Graves race in the Sixth already is. Up until this week, they’ve been merely trading ugly words in the press:

At a news conference Monday at her Northland headquarters, Barnes pointed to votes and campaign donations, and decried what she said was the 6th District Republican’s disdain for wind and other energy alternatives that have potential in northwest Missouri.

Graves shot back, saying through a spokesman that the former Kansas City mayor was cherry-picking votes that misrepresent his backing for alternative energy.

“What’s she’s doing is confusing you,” Jason Klindt said. “The energy bill has many parts. Sam is for common-sense energy solutions.”

Barnes said energy policy under President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Graves is a shambles. She sat in front of a sign depicting a federal tax-rebate check being sucked into the credit-card payment option at a gas pump. The headline: “Sam Graves’ Exxon Stimulus Package.”

Graves took offense and fired the first TV shot off Barnes’ bow, an underhanded little piece of work.

Both candidates are very well funded, so TV viewers in the Sixth are in for a long election season.

Graves is in a difficult position. He has to strike back when Barnes hits him over the head with his oil connections–and with wit like “Sam Graves’ Exxon Stimulus Package.” He has to, but with what? Scary San Francisco liberal? Oh, eek.

You can scare a good deal of the voters with that nonsense, but only before the economy tanks. Once it goes south, though, lotsa luck with that tactic. All Graves is doing is inviting Barnes to hit him over the head again, this time harder.

… Poor baby.

That’s the question Kay Barnes asked Sam Graves today.

From a press release:

WILL GRAVES STAND WITH BUSH OR WITH MISSOURIANS?

Last week, Kay Barnes asked Congressman Sam Graves if he agreed with President George W. Bush that the U. S. economy is not in a recession, or if he agreed with the 74% of Americans who at that time believed we are?

Now, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released today, now 80% of Americans believe we are in a recession. (see article)

Tomorrow, President Bush will be in Missouri to give a major speech on the economy. Will Congressman Sam Graves stand with President Bush tomorrow? Or will he instead stand with the people of Northwest Missouri and admit we are in a recession?

Technically speaking, we are in a period of really crappy, back to back quarters of 0.6% growth, not a recession. Still, I’d love to see Sam Graves explain that 0.6% growth is just dandy. I mean, when wages are stagnant, health care and energy costs are spiraling upward, and the value of your home is falling, the fact that the economy is growing meagerly is small comfort to the 80% of Americans who feel like we’re in a recession.

Being from the east side of the state, I’m no expert on Kay Barnes; I’m just glad to see a well known, popular Democrat challenge We-don’t-need-no-stinkin’-SCHIP Sam Graves.

I do know this: At the Climate Action Summit last Saturday, Dennis Murphey, the Chief Environmental Officer for Kansas City, wowed the audience by describing what K.C. has been doing for the last three years to fight global warming. (I’ll have more information on their activities in a later posting.)

Anyway, the backstory to all that K.C. environmental action is that the U.S. Conference of Mayors decided several years ago that if President Global-Warming-Doesn’t-Exist wouldn’t do anything, they’d urge mayors nationwide to take the bull by the horns. Mayor Barnes was among the first 200 mayors in the country to sign on. That was in 2005.

And now, an article in CQ Politics says that Barnes is one of a Baker’s Dozen of Democratic Congressional candidates who’s been selected by the DCCC for “enhanced fundraising and strategic assistance”:

Kay Barnes, Missouri’s 6th (Sam Graves). Barnes is among the best-funded Democratic challengers in the nation, in part because she is coming off an eight-year tenure as mayor of Kansas City, Mo., for which she received praise. Graves hasn’t been seriously challenged by the Democrats since he was first elected in 2000 to succeed Democrat Pat Danner. CQ Politics rates this race as Leans Republican.

As I said to begin with, what do I really know about Kay Barnes? Not much. Here’s what I know: Next time Congress is debating how much money to allocate to building alternative energy infrastructure, I want Barnes voting, not Graves.

The League of Conservation Voters just endorsed Kay Barnes, running against incumbent Sam Graves (R-MO-6th). Their press release says:

“During her eight years as mayor of Kansas City, Kay Barnes supported renewable energy projects that created jobs in Northwest Missouri, such as the Ford hybrid plant and wind farms. As a member of the U.S. House, she promises to do even more to create good-paying, ‘green-collar’ jobs by working to steer the nation toward the clean, renewable energy of the future rather than following the dirty energy policies of the past,” said LCV President Gene Karpinski. “We are happy to endorse her candidacy.”

Barnes has pledged to support legislation that would require that at least 20 percent of the nation’s electricity come from clean, renewable sources like wind and solar.  She will also support legislation that would eliminate billions of dollars in tax breaks to wealthy oil companies and instead put that money into developing clean, renewable energy for the future, which she considers “a great opportunity to create jobs” in Missouri and around the country.

In stark contrast, Graves, the incumbent, voted in favor of the environment only one time out of 20 House votes tracked by LCV in 2007, earning an abysmal 5 percent score on LCV’s National Environmental Scorecard. Graves’ lifetime average LCV score is 4 percent.  

Yesterday, Graves voted against a bill (H.R. 5351) to roll back billions of dollars in tax breaks to big oil companies, and to reinvest that money into tax credits for wind, biomass and other clean, renewable energy sources.  That investment will not only help reduce the carbon emissions that create global warming, it will create thousands of American jobs.  The three year extension on wind energy tax credits alone will create a stable market for wind power that will allow companies across the country to expand their operations in places like rural Missouri.

Graves’ record is no surprise, considering that he has accepted nearly $50 K from Big Oil.

As far as I’m concerned they and Graves are selling out my grandchildren, not to mention 40 percent of the world’s species that are likely to disappear if we don’t get global warming under control. Watching such short term greed doom our planet makes me want to beat my head against a wall. Or better yet, beat their heads against a wall.