Roy Blunt is `fighting for his political life’
Source: Kansas City Star
This year, polls suggest Trump holds a comfortable lead, but state Attorney General Chris Koster (D) has at least a coin flips chance of winning the governorship, and Secretary of State Jason Kander (D) now appears to have roughly even odds of beating Blunt. The New York Times reported last week that Kander is running slightly ahead of Blunt in internal polling, something we have also heard.
Kander, a veteran, ran perhaps the best ad of the entire cycle, and Blunt is struggling with being an insider candidate in an outsider kind of year. Blunts son, a lobbyist, is running his campaign, a connection that is causing his campaign headaches. Like Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), who we also recently downgraded to Toss-up, Blunt has frustrated national Republicans, who believe both incumbents have not run strong enough campaigns in a difficult environment.
Ultimately, this race might be something of a re-run of Arizonas highly competitive Senate race in 2012. In that open-seat content, ex-Surgeon General Richard Carmona (D) was locked in a very tight race with Rep. Jeff Flake (R) and ran ahead of Obama statewide, but the states Republican tinge allowed Flake to get over the finish line. However, its an incomplete comparison: for one, Blunt is an incumbent, and Missouri has more of a history of electing Democratic senators than Arizona (Missouri currently has a Democratic senator, while Arizona hasnt elected one since 1988). In any event, Trump coattails could be helpful to Blunt, but there will be at least some Trump-Kander voters.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article107220642.html
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)who happens to be a wingnut.
Blunt is a weeping ass sore.
BumRushDaShow
(129,373 posts)and he seemed to mostly be a single-issue representative (at least in terms of his appearances and statements on the floor) - i.e., "pork barrel spending". I would watch him at the debates for many of the appropriations bills over the years where he would stand up and read a list of riders that had been added to those bills that funneled money to various congressional districts for particular projects. He usually highlighted what he thought were "wasteful" items.
He fascinated me regarding his unrelenting consistency in doing this (and I expect he never added any of his own riders himself as the GOP is wont to do when attacking someone else's "projects" as "pork" . But then I found out later that he was a Mormon too, which immediately explains why he has firmly, publicly, and unequivocally trashed Trump very early on (like most of the rest of the LDS community) without the type of ambivalence shown by folks like Cruz...
QED
(2,749 posts)When Gabby Gifford was shot, he raced to Tucson to be with her as they are friends. That impressed me.
OTOH, his son was one of those responsible for the death of 23 dogs in their care at a boarding facility. He and his ex-wife dodged charges but the owners of the doggie death camp each received jail time and other sanctions. His other son was found tweeting racist crap.
Coolest Ranger
(2,034 posts)28 days from now
DarthDem
(5,256 posts)Maybe I'm wrong, and it is Missouri after all. But the state elects Democrats to the Senate and governorship all the time. Kander is dynamic, seems immune to the usual wedge issues, and Blunt, like Burr, is the absolute epitome of the zero-personality, do-nothing Republican senator. Come on, Mr. Kander!!!!!
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,032 posts)pstokely
(10,530 posts)they'll belive anything the NRA says, though Dumpf bailey won against Cruz in the Repuke primary, state also lags in the Hispanic population, still large number of urban voters in KC and STL
Lochloosa
(16,067 posts)DinahMoeHum
(21,806 posts)Gubernatorial race.
pstokely
(10,530 posts)nt