MDN.ORG:
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 - Experience in elective office has become one of the issues of contention in the race for Missouri's secretary of state.
The race features the Republican House Speaker Catherine Hanaway and first-time politician Democrat Robin Carnahan -- daughter of the late governor Mel Carnahan and former U.S. Senator Jean Carnahan.
"I do see this race as sort of David and Goliath," Hanaway said. "Nobody in my family has held office in Missouri before, but there is nothing unfair about it at all."
Carnahan has had to defend herself against those who say her only qualification for secretary of state is her name throughout the campaign.
Carnahan said: "The people who say that I am not qualified seem to think that the only qualification to be secretary of state is to have been a political candidate their whole lives and a legislator.
"I'm someone who brings a business prospective to this office, and that is the important thing," Carnahan said.
Because the candidates agree on most of the issues facing the next secretary of state, each has been busy this campaign season promoting her experience with the others'.
Hanaway is quick to point out her six years as a state legislator, five years working for U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, her time on the Federal Election Assistance Commission Board of Advisers and her managing of 300 employees as speaker for the past two years as valuable experience, necessary to be the secretary of state.
There are 37 advisers to the commission, which is responsible for implementing changes being made as a result of the Help America Vote Act of 2002.
Carnahan has had no experience in elective office. Instead, she cites her experience as a lawyer and a small business owner.
Carnahan has also spent time in Eastern Europe working for the National Democratic Institute, helping to write election laws for the re-emerging and emergency democracies. Pres. Ronald Reagan formed the institute to help former communist countries transition to democracy.
Throughout the campaign, Hanaway has questioned her opponent's lack of holding public office.
"What Carnahan can point to is that she went to Eastern Europe and observed elections," Hanaway said. "Well, I've observed a doctor practicing medicine, but you don't want me operating on you. That's the big difference.
"Anyone can write anything on a piece of paper, but it's who can get the job done," Hanaway said.
Carnahan said that is Hanaway's leadership that should be in question.
"It has been a very heavy-handed, partisan approach to governing," Carnahan said. "And, in an office like secretary of state, that is not appropriate. We need a secretary of state that is above partisanship."
The secretary of state is in charge of protecting investors, preventing corporate fraud and is the state's top election official guarding against voter fraud and irregularities on voter registration lists.
On the trail...
Hanaway fielded questions from about 30 residents at the Boone County Republican headquarters in Columbia on Oct. 10.
With no set rules, the audience was allowed to ask anything at anytime, even while the candidate was still answering another question. Despite making five to seven campaign stops per day, Hanaway was able to keep up as she addressed restructuring the Electoral College in Missouri and whether to allow soldiers overseas to vote via e-mail.
She is against restructuring the Electoral College and supports allowing soldiers to vote via e-mail.
"Honestly, I work more hours per day when we are in legislative session," Hanaway said. "When I was speaker, it was not unusual for the day to start with me in the Capitol by 7:30 and not to leave till 2 a.m."
Hanaway said being away from home is what makes campaigning difficult. She left her Warson Woods home in St. Louis County the morning of the tenth, a Sunday, and said she would not return until the following Saturday. Hanaway is married with two children, a son 2, and a daughter, 6.
"Every night you miss tucking your kids in bed, you can't get that back," she said. "There is never going to be another day they will be two years old and 95 days."
Carnahan was in Maplewood, Mo., in a neighborhood with houses labeled "unfit for human occupancy" on the southern border of St. Louis on the morning of Oct. 9.
She was taking part in a statewide door-to-door canvass the Democratic Party sponsored to reach more than one million infrequent Democratic voters in Missouri.
Before the canvass, Carnahan addressed a crowd of about 200 volunteers ready to recruit voters. In her speech, she repeated that the importance of the secretary of state is to make sure mishaps, such as the one that happened in Florida in 2000, don't happen in Missouri.
Peggy Kerry, presidential nominee John Kerry's sister, and U.S. Senate hopeful Nancy Farmer also spoke to the crowd, which included a bus load of volunteers from Illinois who crossed the border to support their party.
After 30 minutes of speeches it was time to begin the canvass. Carnahan, along with three members of her full-time staff, was given a list of addresses to stop at, and it was time to go.
The few Maplewood residents who did answer the door were often reluctant, only opening the door a crack, until Carnahan explained who she was and the purpose of her visit.
Once the residents opened the door a little more she would ask them whom they had chosen to support for president, governor and secretary of state.
Before Carnahan could even say who she was, one resident brought up Florida. After learning who she was, another resident mentioned she liked Carnahan's parents when they were in office.
At each apartment, Carnahan would talk to the residents for about five minutes and tell them new, nonpartisan leadership is what was going to separate her from her opponent.
"I have a very focused, practical, common sense business approach to bring to this office," she said.
After canvassing, Carnahan compared her leadership to Hanaway's.
"This is an executive management office, not a legislative office," Carnahan said, "so you want someone who has that kind of ability to actually manage this team of people in the office and give them guidance and get them to do what you want to do."
Hanaway said she has to manage over 300 people as speaker. In recent years, the secretary of state's office has had between 200 and 250 staff members.