Campaign Diaries

It is not a surprise, but it is nonetheless a major development in one of the most important Senate races of the 2010 cycle: Republican Rep. Roy Blunt is set to announce his candidacy for the Missouri Senate seat left open by Kit Bond’s retirement.

Blunt is an important figure in American politics. First elected to the House in 1996, he served as the chamber’s GOP whip, making him one of the most prominent Republicans in the country. He is an even more towering figure in Missouri politics. For one, his son Matt served as the state’s (unpopular) Governor from 2005 to 2009. Roy himself has run for statewide office four times already: He lost the lieutenant general race in 1980, was elected Secretary of State in 1984 and 1988 and fell in the GOP’s gubernatorial primary in 1992. Interestingly, he lost that latter race to William Webster, who went on to lose to… Democrat Mel Carnahan, whose daughter Robin Blunt could face this year.

With these lengthy establishment credentials, there is no doubt that Blunt will be able to mount a credible and well-funded campaign. Missouri remains a red-leaning state (it was arguably the only swing state to remain in the Republican column last fall), and Blunt is a strong enough candidate to guarantee that the race starts as a toss-up.

On the other hand, Blunt jumps in the race with very obvious baggage, enough to give Carnahan the slightest of edges in the early going.

First, Blunt does not have a clear path to the nomination. Former Treasurer Sarah Steelman has signaled that she might jump in the race, and that would lead to a bruising insider/outsider primary that would only be resolved in mid-August 2010, three months before the general election. I wrote a more elaborate analysis of this potential primary earlier this month, so I will not go in more detail here.

Second, Blunt was part of the Republican leadership during the Bush years and he was led the congressional GOP when it was at the height of unpopularity. Sure, Democrats cannot rely on the anti-Bush reflex to win elections in 2010, but Blunt is far more tied in to the past eight years disgraced GOP rule than your average Republican candidate. If he makes it to the general election, Democrats will have an easy time blasting him as a Washington insider who represents the worst of the past eight years. Democrats will have an even easier time making this argument because Robin Carnahan (their probable nominee) has always served at the state level.

(Note that the GOP faces a similar problem in Ohio, where its presumptive nominee Rob Portman is as tied in to the Bush Administration as a Republican could be.)

Third, the Blunt name might handicap the Republican representative ever since his son Matt served as Missouri’s unpopular Governor. Blunt was expected to face a difficult re-election race in 2008, but he unexpectedly retired - denying Missouri voters a chance to say what they thought about him. How will they react to being proposed yet another Blunt within two years?

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Blunt’s move also gives us our eight open House seat of the 2010 cycle (view full list), but Republicans have no reason to worry. Situated in the state’s Southwest corner, MO-07 borders Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas; it is Missouri’s most Republican district, and no Democrat has held the House seat since 1961 - and, even then, only for four years. George W. Bush demolished John Kerry 67% to 32% in 2004, and John McCain triumphed 63% to 35%.

In other words: As of 2008, MO-07 is even more Republican than AL-02 and ID-01, which are among the reddest districts represented by a Democrat. The GOP is heavily favored to keep this seat, and most of the action should be in the Republican primary.

Five of these eight open seats are currently held by Republicans; fortunately for the NRCC, all five are in deeply red territory. In fact, MO-07 isn’t even the reddest of the GOP-held open seats. That honor belongs to Jerry Moran’s KS-01, which went for Bush with 72% and for McCain with 69%. For now, the most competitive House seat that has opened for now is Democrat Paul Hodes’s NH-02.