A lifelong resident of the St. Louis area, I collaborated with Justin Gardner on research and interviews for the following article. Justin lives and works in the Kansas City area and occasionally contributes here. He is also the founder and publisher of Donklephant.
ST. LOUIS — Other than his years at law school in Washington, D.C., plus a couple more in an apartment near the St. Louis city limits, Ned Lips has lived in the predominantly conservative western suburbs of St. Louis County, Mo. Lips, 48, claims he has been a Republican since birth. This November, he plans to vote for Barack Obama.
Kathleen Verzani, 60, hails from Warrenville, Ill., about 30 miles west of downtown Chicago. She says she has been a Democrat for 40 years and party election judge for 28. In November, she also plans to defy geography and party — to vote for John McCain. In fact, she has moved in temporarily with her daughter in St. Charles, Mo., to work on McCain’s campaign here.
Unlike Illinois, Verzani believes “Missouri is really going to be a competitive state.” Missouri is also a contender for the title: “Bellwether of Bellwethers.”
Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report, has suggested states such Colorado, Virginia, and Ohio, will be the bellwethers of 2008. But history makes Missouri difficult to ignore. A majority of Missouri voters have sided with the prevailing candidate in every presidential election since 1960. The election four years prior represents their only miss in a century, since St. Louis, the state’s largest city, hosted the 1904 World’s Fair.
That track record has earned the state a place of respect in the 2008 presidential campaigns.
On July 9, Real Clear Politics’ Tom Bevan spotlighted a Kansas City Star report that Obama’s campaign was the in process of “tripling its paid staff (in the state) — to an unprecedented 150 workers.” The same Star article reported that McCain’s crew viewed the rival camp’s expansion as “desperate” — although the Arizona Senator has certainly not turned a blind eye to Missouri.
“We have about a dozen victory offices open [in the state],” wrote Wendy Riemann in response to our query. “The offices reach folks in rural areas as well as the larger cities. We’re pushing hard here with events, releases and grassroots efforts. McCain has visited several times and will visit several times more. We also have serious ad buys in the state.” (TPM Election Central’s Greg Sargent reported estimates August 12 that put the McCain ad-spend in Missouri at “roughly half a million more [dollars] than Obama.”)
As the respective campaigns devote time and resources to Missouri, they are at once boosted and frustrated by party-line-crossers like Ned Lips, Kathleen Verzani, and the national populations they reflect — populations that have garnered their fair share of attention this campaign season.
Among other reports this summer, former Rudy Giuliani adviser John P. Avlon took a look “Inside the Obamacans and McCainocrats.” Conservative columnist and Bush critic Bruce Bartlett profiled Republicans supporting Obama. And Michael Saul of the New York Daily News wrote about disenchanted pro-Hillary Democrats backing McCain — a phenomenon that has stubbornly refused to die, even on the opening day of the Democratic convention, even after Sen. Clinton’s so-called “unity speech” on the convention’s second night.
Despite the attention paid to them, questions remain about just how significant these cross-over populations might be. Findings from a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released August 21 suggested that, of the almost 18 million voters supporting Hillary Clinton during the primaries, one in five could turn to John McCain in November. At first blush, those numbers sound daunting — but they may not be enough to cancel out the votes of Republicans backing Obama.
Earlier in August, Newsweek Associate Editor Andrew Romano cited polls estimating Obama’s take of Republicans at six to 11 percent, comparable to McCain’s claim on Democrats, at seven to 10 percent. Romano also noted that these results are similar to the nine percent President Bush and seven percent Senator John Kerry counted among opposite-party voters around the same time four years ago.
While the quantitative significance of 2008 cross-over voters can be disputed, it’s difficult to dismiss these voters’ passion. The handful interviewed for this article were generally resolute in their decision to cross party lines and eager to explain why, matching the fervor of people like Lynn Forester (a.k.a., Lady de Rothschild, a well-healed Hillary backer and potential McCain supporter), as well as the Obama Republicans who challenged Andrew Romano, after he dared question their importance.
Motivations
Ned Lips’ party-defiance runs much deeper than his support for Obama. He is dissatisfied with today’s Republican leadership across the board: from the Bush administration to Todd Akin, the long-time representative for Missouri’s second congressional district, where Lips resides.
Lips chastises Republican leaders for what he considers their lack of fiscal responsibility, their mishandling of foreign affairs, and their willingness to push government into citizens’ private lives. That list of perceived failures convinced Lips to not only support Obama but also to serve, earlier this year, as campaign chair for David Pentland, one of several Democrats vying for the chance to face-off against Rep. Akin in November. (Pentland and three others lost in the Aug. 5 primary to Bill Haas, a former member of the St. Louis school board.)
Asked if there was any chance he might change his mind about McCain v. Obama in November, Lips responded: “No chance, unless Sen. Obama blows himself up somehow. We need a change. We need to show the world we are not the Bush/Cheney/Akin derisive and negative America. Senator Obama is the dramatic change we need to get back on top in the world economy and politics.”
For Kathleen Verzani, the disappointment cuts the other way. She believes Democrats have “just gone too far to the left” — a concern that was sparked initially by the abortion debate.
“I was pro choice and the hardest time I had as a [Democrat] was when they pushed for partial birth abortions,” Verzani wrote. “I think that started the change for me.”
Today, her list of differences with Obama and many of her Democratic colleagues has grown. She now prefers McCain on curtailing government spending, dealing with trade pacts in an increasingly globalized marketplace, and Iraq. Regarding the latter, she wrote: “The surge is working [and] Senator McCain was for that. We need to stay until Iraq is stable and help them rebuild.”
Unlike some of the McCain Democrats, Verzani is not one of the bitter Hillary supporters. Asked if she’d feel differently about her choice in November if one of the other Democratic primary candidates had secured the party’s nomination for president, she responded: “I liked Edwards, but was already frustrated with the Democrats and hadn’t made a decision [during the primary season].”
In contrast to Verzani and Lips, Republican Erik Olmer, who lives in south St. Louis County, seems less disillusioned with his party than he is impressed with his preferred candidate. Granted, Olmer supported Ron Paul for the Republican nomination — a choice that, if nothing else, signals his disagreement with Republican leaders on issues like the war in Iraq, a war that Paul has roundly-criticized and that Olmer cited specifically as a reason why he could favor Paul one moment and be drawn to Obama the next.
Asked to explain in more detail his support for Obama, the 30-year-old Olmer responded with the type of glowing language common among other pro-Obama voters of his generation.
“After volunteering for Senator Obama’s campaign, I am incredibly inspired by him and the efficiency and energy of his campaign,” Olmer wrote. “I firmly believe that Senator Obama is a ‘once in a lifetime’ type of leader… I see Senator Obama as the type of leader to get Americans to ask ‘what can I do?’ rather than ‘where is FEMA?’ Senator Obama has the communication skills of Reagan, the leadership and vision of Kennedy, the moral compass of Dr. King … but with a rags-to-riches story that should be [an] inspiration to all Americans.”
The VP Variable
Lips, Verzani, and Olmer continued to stand by their candidates after the vice-presidential picks were announced in late August. The same could not be said for Jim Gamache of Rosebud, Mo., a small, rural town of a few hundred people, located about an hour southeast of Jefferson City, the state capital.
Gamache was touted by the McCain campaign in a June 14 news release as one of the Senator’s “prominent” Democratic supporters.
Describing himself as active in Democratic politics in Missouri for five decades, Gamache, 70, said he had planned to cross party lines because he believes McCain has the qualifications and experience necessary to be President and Commander-in-Chief — and Obama does not. Now, with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s addition to the Republican ticket, Gamache said he is left with “no choice” in November. He said he will not vote for Obama-Biden because of his concerns about Obama’s qualifications, and he will not vote for McCain-Palin due to similar concerns about the latter.
Gamache added that he was at a meeting with former “Reagan Democrats” in Jefferson City on the morning of August 29, when Palin was confirmed as McCain’s vice presidential choice.
“Our group included influential labor leaders of the past from the St. Louis area,” he said. “We were prepared to sign a joint statement supporting McCain, when we heard the news [about Palin]. I was not thrilled, and it quickly became clear I could not hold our group together. As one of my friends put it, ‘They have just given Obama the election.’”
Uncertainty and Opportunity
Shortly before the Democratic convention opened in Denver, the race for the White House was effectively tied. Even with McCain now pulling ahead, the September 15 reminder of economic crisis leaves over-sized question marks at the end of every November prediction.
Will Ned Lips, Erik Olmer, and other Republicans for Obama tip the scales for the Senator from Illinois? Is Gamache’s reaction to Palin reflective of the attitudes of other disillusioned Democrats — or will they be outnumbered by the likes of Kathleen Verzani, who is not only still devoted to McCain, but still willing to continue her temporary sacrifice of home and party to promote him in a neighboring, battleground state?
The answers will be evident soon enough. In the meantime, against the backdrop of an Obama-McCain contest that few would have predicted a year ago, expectations for the unpredictable might be enough to keep hope alive in both camps and fuel ongoing speculation that cross-over voters in an enduring bellwether state like Missouri could — after all — be the decisive factors in the contest.