Blunt Fights to Survive as Kander Seeks Missouri Upset

JOPLIN, Mo. -- Jason Kander, the Democratic challenger in Missouri’s unexpectedly tight Senate race, invoked his military service at a crowded bar here Tuesday afternoon, rallying his troops for a final two-week push in one of the closest and most critical Senate races in the country.

“I don’t know if you know this -- there’s only 14 days to go in this deal,” Kander said. “We have a saying in the Army: ‘You can stand on your head for 14 days.’ You can keep working for 14 days, right?”

His opponent, Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, offered his own version of that argument during a stop at a flooring company in Branson Monday afternoon. There will be no time on Election Day to make up for what doesn’t happen in the final two weeks, Blunt told a quiet group of about a dozen supporters.

“I think we’re ahead, but I’ve been telling our team every day for two months, we should start every day acting like we’re two points behind,” the freshman senator said.

It’s a race that strategists in both parties, as well as nonpartisan elections analysts, view as a tossup, and the outcome will not just determine who holds this seat but could also decide which party controls the Senate. (The RealClearPolitics polling average shows the incumbent ahead by a single percentage point.)

Republicans have a four-seat majority but are defending more than a half-dozen competitive seats in purple or red-leaning states, including Missouri. In most of them, Democrats are hopeful that Donald Trump’s flagging presidential campaign will drag down GOP incumbents aiming to outpace their controversial nominee. About $17 million in outside spending has been in support of Blunt, with just under $10 million spent on behalf of Kander, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

But Hillary Clinton has not competed in Missouri – although her campaign announced she would spend $500,000 here -- and Trump is expected to win the Show Me State by a safe margin. Kander isn’t relying on Trump sinking Blunt, but rather is trying to woo crossover Trump voters by framing his campaign in similar terms: an outsider trying to change Washington against a longtime D.C. insider. Blunt, on the other hand, is trying to rally the GOP faithful and putting his party’s hopes of a Republican majority squarely on his shoulders. In two campaign stops in southwest Missouri Monday, he made that point explicitly in regard to the makeup of the Supreme Court.

“The odds are pretty high that if I get elected, I’ll be the 51st Republican vote in the Senate,” Blunt said at the stop in Branson. Later that afternoon, at a small event at a signal construction facility in Nixa, he added: “The Senate election — which is one of the reasons we’re seeing so much outside money in this election — the Senate election is so much about the Supreme Court. … A Republican Senate will have a different standard than a Senate held by the other side, no matter who the president is.”

In an interview after that speech, Blunt said that despite Trump’s recent calls to “drain the swamp” by imposing term limits to change Washington, he’s been able to “get things done” during his two-decade career in Congress. (He served six terms in the House before his election to the upper chamber.) He cited health care research, manufacturing legislation and extending the Victims of Child Abuse Act as examples of his effectiveness, and he dismissed the idea that Kander’s outsider message would appeal to Trump voters.

“I don’t think there are going to be very many Donald Trump-Jason Kander voters,” Blunt told RealClearPolitics in a brief interview.

Kander, however, insists that his message will sway some Trump backers who support the GOP nominee because he’s not a typical politician.

“Those same voters are not then going to the next line on the ballot and voting for somebody who’s been in Washington for 20 years and has made Washington work for them and not for Missourians,” Kander, the Missouri secretary of state, said in an interview. “That’s just not how they’re going to vote. It’s very clear.”

An Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, Kander has made this the fundamental building block of his campaign, and he stays relentlessly on message. In both campaign stops Tuesday, as well as in almost every television ad and in different press reports on the race, Kander repeats a phrase similar to one from his announcement video 18 months ago: “In order to change Washington, we’re going to have to change the people that we send there."

To that end, Kander has aimed to shape himself as someone willing to break with his own party -- he highlights opposition to the Iran Nuclear Agreement and closing Guantanamo Bay as two major areas where he disagrees with Democratic leaders in Washington. He insisted in the interview that he would remain an independent voice even if the Senate were tied or Democrats held a narrow one-seat majority.

But more critical to Kander’s strategy has been attacking Blunt incessantly for his long career in Washington, raising the issue of his wife and sons’ professions as lobbyists, and questioning Blunt’s commitment to Missouri. And Kander’s campaign ad showing him putting together a semi-automatic rifle while blindfolded went viral and is considered one of the best spots of this campaign cycle.

Several Washington Republicans think Kander’s message has been effective -- some GOP internal polling shows the candidates in a dead heat -- and have also privately complained that Blunt didn’t prepare early enough for the challenge. Among Blunt’s supporters, however, there were mixed reactions to Kander’s attacks.

Two of his supporters at the Branson event dismissed the criticisms; one labeled them “hogwash,” the other called them “horsefeathers.”

“It’s not so, and it’s crap and this man’s been one of the real people we’ve had in the Senate for a long time,” said Terry Roeder, an independent contractor from Branson.

But there is unease among some of the incumbent’s supporters. Barbara Walker, a retired computer saleswoman from Branson, said she still supports the GOP lawmaker but is “concerned” by some of the ads she’s seen about his family’s lobbying and accusations of conflicts of interest.

“There’s so much conflict of interest within our politicians and of course if you’re in private industry, you go to jail, but it seems our politicians don’t,” Walker said. “So yes, I think that is a conflict of interest. Especially if they lobby him.”

She also said she was frustrated by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who she thinks haven’t done enough to stand up for Republican issues. When a reporter pointed out that Blunt is part of McConnell’s leadership team, she frowned, but said she didn’t know his voting record compared to McConnell’s. Still, she’s behind Blunt, and doesn’t buy Kander’s message of changing Washington.

“I don’t because he’s a Democrat,” Walker said.

But Kander may have struck a chord with some of the voters he’ll have to swing in order to pull out a win. Joseph Tracy, a union carpenter from the small town of Jasper, sported stickers for Kander and Chris Koster, the Democrat running for governor, at their combined rally in Joplin, which was packed with union workers.

Tracy said he’s torn about his presidential vote, but was emphatic that he doesn’t like Hillary Clinton and said that some of Trump’s economic message appeals to him, although he was critical of Trump’s approval for right-to-work legislation. Tracy has five kids and described himself as “poor as can be,” but said he is worried about losing his job with decent wages if right-to-work passed in Missouri. Tracy said he grew up Republican but didn’t agree with some of the party’s big business, corporate interests in recent years -- and has been swayed by parts of Trump’s economic argument. Despite that, he was solidly behind Kander.

“I believe he’s for Missouri families and American families, protecting the middle class, protecting our jobs,” Tracy said.

On the other side, Barbara Whisler, a retired educator from Springfield, said at Blunt’s event in Nixa that she would support Trump, albeit reluctantly. She said she wished there were a better candidate -- she likes Ryan, with whom Trump has publicly feuded -- but said because Trump is pro-life and Clinton isn’t, she’ll back the GOP standard-bearer. Kander’s message about changing Washington didn’t appeal to her.

“I want somebody with experience in office and who has been there, particularly in his case,” Whisler said of Blunt. “He’s been a congressman and a senator so he’s seen both sides. I think that’s a plus.”

Both campaigns are focused intently on getting out the vote on Nov. 8. Blunt stressed to his supporters to make sure friends and family vote in the presidential and Senate races, even if local races don’t seem competitive -- high turnout among straight-ticket Republican voters could give Blunt the edge he needs. Kander, meanwhile, sought early this week to turn out his small liberal base in southwest Missouri, and is rallying supporters with Vice President Joe Biden in St. Louis on Friday.

“We have all the momentum in this race,” Kander said after his event with several dozen supporters in Springfield Tuesday morning, before once again repeating his campaign’s motto. “The reason we have that momentum is that Missourians recognize that we need a new generation of leadership, and you're not going to change Washington until we change the people you send there.”