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Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG
Mo. Digital News
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Mo. Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG
Mo. Digital News
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Mo. Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
JEFFERSON CITY - Election Day 2004 was a dream come true for Peter Kinder.
Not only did the Republican state Senator from Cape Girardeau narrowly win the race for lieutenant governor, he saw his party gain control of the governor's office for the first time in over a decade, win the state treasurer's race and increase its majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly.
Next year will be the first time in over 80 years that the Republicans will control the legislature and the state's top office. It may be the most powerful the party has ever been in Missouri.
"This is the realigning election I have been working for since I was a teenager in the 70s," Kinder said.
In 1989 Democrats held 22 seats in the Missouri Senate, including many rural districts. When the upper chamber opens its doors this January the Democratic numbers will have shrunk to half that, 11 seats drawn only from the Democratic enclaves of St. Louis, Kansas City and Columbia.
The only exception to the rightward trend had been the Democrats' ability to hold onto the governor's mansion. The late Gov. Mel Carnahan held the seat throughout the 1990s, drawing most of his votes from the urban areas that remain Democratic strongholds. His successor, Gov. Bob Holden, was able to squeak out a victory over Republican Jim Talent in the wake of Carnahan's death in an airplane crash.
However, with the election of Republican Matt Blunt as Missouri's next governor last week, even that seems to be have come to end.
"We have felt that Missouri is a Republican state in the making for more than 20 years and this finally confirms it," Kinder said. "There was no last-minute plane crash derailing the natural trend this year and no election of an accidental governor."
On the national scene, political analysts have been quick to point to the turnout of conservative Christians and the "moral-values vote" as the driving force behind the Republican windfall in Washington.
Rick Hardy, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia who serves as an elector for Republican President George W. Bush in this election, thinks the shift in Missouri has been more complicated than that, pointing to redistricting that favored Republicans and the GOP's superior organization.
However, Hardy said the Democrats' greatest failing has been their inability to connect with rural voters who are often conservative on social issues like gun control, gay marriage and abortion.
"They come under the radar screen. You can't see them," Hardy said. "They are out there. People are talking about them in the coffee shops every morning. They won't say it because they are afraid of being labeled but when they go into the privacy of their polling booth that's where it all comes out.
"The conservative out-state Democrats just no longer fit with the liberal Democrats at the top of the ticket, both in state government and more often in the national level."
Another national trend has been a bevy of pledges from representatives on both side of the aisle for more congenial relations between the two parties. After the high-profile losses of presidential candidate John Kerry and South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle, who were both very vocal in their criticisms of their opposition, politicians may be eager to show voters they can work together to solve problems.
Last Friday, Missouri House Democrats replaced their floor leader with Columbia Rep. Jeff Harris.
Harris and the new Senate Democratic leader -- Sen. Maida Coleman, D-St. Louis -- have hinted that the Democrats may be taking a less confrontational tack this year.
That would be a shift from their past leadership, which was very aggressive in challenging the Republican majority on both floor's the General Assembly.
Governor-elect Matt Blunt and other Republicans have also pledged more bipartisan cooperation.
While gaining control of Missouri's legislative and executive branches for the first time in eight decades, Senate Republicans sounded a note of moderation last week.
As their top leader, Senate Republicans nominated for Senate President Pro Tem the only Republican Senator to vote against legalizing concealed weapons.
And for their party floor leader, Senate Republicans elected one of only three Republicans to vote for a tax increase last year.
But the outgoing House Democratic floor leader, Rick Johnson, warns that the postelection pledges of bipartisanship might not be anything more than promises.
"When the majority says they're going to be bipartisan, bipartisan means the minority going along with whatever they want," Johnson said. "That's not bipartisanship."
Regardless of the approach Democrats bring to their minority status, the party's power in Jefferson City has been so reduced that there may be little Democrats can do to stand in the way of the Republicans.
"The onus is on us now to govern," Kinder said. "We have no-excuses majorities."