Much as Peter Kinder would like to trust that Post-Dispatch late September poll that showed him leading Sam Page 51-35, even Kinder will admit that he doesn’t dare. For one thing, he knows how disastrously wrong the late July P-D poll showing Jeff Harris winning in the AG race was. (Were their pollsters filling their Dasani bottles with Absolut?) Kinder figures it’s unlikely that this P-D poll is any more reliable than the AG poll when he considers that his own internal poll shows him with a single digit lead.

“I have never believed that if as I expect McCain carries Missouri, it would necessarily mean anything down ballot,” he said. “So I am furiously paddling my own canoe.”

And McCain is looking less and less likely to do Kinder even that much good. The latest Fox News/Rasmussen poll has Obama up by three points (50-47) And the presidential matchup is the good news for Kinder. The bad news is the way that Sam Page is sandwiched in between Jay Nixon and Robin Carnahan on the ballot. The latest SUSA poll shows Jay walking away from Hulshof by 17 points. From Kinder’s point of view, that’s a big ouchie.

Whatever the Post-Dispatch may think, both these candidates believe it’s going to be a horse race with, who knows, maybe a photo finish.

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.

Today is John McCain’s birthday. That’s easy to remember, because on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans as a Category 3 hurricane, bringing ruin and devastation to an impoverished population unable to evacuate partially because of decades of neglect and partially because of an unresponsive government.

And part of the unresponsivity is directly tied in with John McCain. On August 29, 2005, John McCain was celebrating his 69th birthday with George Bush in Arizona, and apparently the festivities couldn’t be called off so that the president of the United States could coordinate some sort of effective response. Now we have indelible images like this:

juxtaposed with this:

This is yet another shameful legacy Bush, along with his enablers like John McCain, has given us. When you don’t believe government can be useful or effective, you don’t spend time trying to figure out how it can actually be useful or effective.

Speaking of responses, our very own Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor Sam Page volunteered his time and effort providing free medical services for Katrina in Jennings, LA. That’s especially touching to me, because not only was I born in Louisiana, I still have lots of extended family in Jennings. Thank, Sam, for showing that you cared when those higher up in government did not.

Photos courtesy of Flickr users John McGaffe and weBranding.

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]

Lately, voters around the state are being awoken around 3 AM to the sound of a ringing phone. Those that answer hear a recorded message purporting to be on behalf of Sam Page. Naturally, Page didn’t do this, because the candidate waking you up in the middle of the night is the last person you want to vote for.

This is what Republicans do. This was what Richard Nixon’s team excelled in, calling it “ratf*cking.” It’s no surprise that Kinder is dabbling in this dark art; his buddy Karl Rove has been playing dirty tricks since the beginning of his political career. In 1970, he distributed fliers promoting a rally for Democrat Alan Dixon. He wasn’t being nice – the flier offered free beer, food, girls and a good time, and he distributed them at homeless shelters and rock concerts, all to disrupt a big rally for Dixon.

This kind of crap just keeps on coming, and all you can do is just work harder to beat it. In this case, we have a really good chance at doing just that. Sam Page has been working hard reaching out to voters across the state, outraising the incumbent quarter after quarter, and the Democrats will have a strong ticket all the way up and down. In 1970, Dixon won despite Rove’s dirty tricks. You can help beat his ilk again in 2008 by helping Sam Page out, and it’s very likely that with our help, he can beat Peter Kinder. Go to www.sampage.com and get involved in whatever way you can.

I got this press release from Sam Page’s campaign today:

Missouri family featured on Today Show

Watch the Today Show story on the Shad Family.

The story of Molly and Steve Schad was featured today on NBC’s The Today Show. Molly and Steve are the parents of an autistic child. They have refinanced their house several times and borrowed money to pay for treatments. They are hoping Missouri will join other states in requiring insurance companies to cover autism spectrum disorder.

In Missouri, that legislation was sponsored by State Rep. Sam Page. Molly testified before a Missouri House of Representatives committee on April 15 in favor of the legislation. Six states have already passed such legislation and legislation awaits the governor’s signature in Louisiana.

“The state has a moral obligation to look out for its most vulnerable citizens,” Page said. “Because not all insurance companies share that obligation. My legislation would make certain that every health insurer was meeting the standard of basic human decency for patients and families with autism.”

Also, The Today Show’s home page is featuring an online poll asking if state’s should require coverage of autism spectrum disorder. Take a moment to vote to show your support of this legislation.

So why haven’t we passed this yet?

Antonio has a guy at Lincoln Days so that you didn’t have to go yourself. It turns out there was big news to be made, and not of the gaffe variety, either. Peter Kinder is out of the governor’s race.

It’s not too surprising, even though Kinder was the first to throw his hat in the ring after Blunt’s exit. After all, he’s the most tied to Blunt legacy, a powerful machine that managed to catapult Mitt Romney into third place in Missouri’s presidential primary. (Kinder himself endorsed Thompson as a Reaganesque figure. I’m guessing he was thinking of Reagan waking up from a long nap, or after a big turkey dinner and a little red wine.)

Still, from Kinder’s speech, it’s all too clear that he wants to keep the Blunt flame alive:

“This is a campaign I believe I would have won, but I also believe in my heart that this is the right decision. I hope it will help our Party unite so together we can tell Missourians a remarkable story of how together we turned our state around by turning a $1.1 billion deficit into three straight surpluses without raising taxes, ended the cuts to education while increasing funding for classrooms, transformed Missouri’s health care system and helped bring nearly 90,000 new jobs to our state by supporting job-creating initiatives and investing in tourism as we did by bringing the Tour of Missouri to our state. [My emphasis]

Yeah, Missouri Republicans transformed the health care system all right – by cutting out needy families. And the 90,000 jobs created figure sounds nice, until you compare it to historical averages.

Notice that in the first two years of Mel Carnahan’s first term, Missouri added over 150,000 jobs. In the last two years of his second term, Missouri added over 100,000 jobs. Blunt’s administration has added 90,000 in 3 years, and jobs have actually decreased lately. So yeah, I hope Republicans take Kinder’s advice to run on Blunt’s legacy: “No health care for you, but you get a bike race and maybe a job!”