Down Ticket #17: The sleeper race that could decide who controls the Senate (and more!

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Down Ticket #17: The sleeper

race that could decide who
controls the Senate (and
more!)
Andrew Romano

125 Comments

West Coast Correspondent

October 04, 2016
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Democratic candidate Jason Kander, left, spars with Republican incumbent

Sen. Roy Blunt during the first general election debate in Missouris race for
U.S. Senate. (Photo: Jeff Roberson/AP)
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Down Ticket is Yahoo News complete guide to the most

fascinating House, Senate and governors races of 2016.
Coming to you every Tuesday and Thursday until Nov. 8.
What you need to know today.
_____

Missouris Jason Kander can assemble a

rifle blindfolded. Can he hit the bulls-eye
for Senate Democrats?
Democrats know that they can regain control of the U.S. Senate
only if they pick up at least four seats in November and
whenever they daydream about that possibility, they tend to
obsess over a few seats in particular.
Theres Wisconsin and Illinois, where everyone pretty much
agrees the party is on track to sink a pair of Republican senators.
Theres New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, where GOP
incumbents Kelly Ayotte and Pat Toomey seem shaky.
Then theres the open, formerly Republican seat in Indiana, which
has been tilting toward former Democratic Sen. and Gov. Evan
Bayh ever since he entered the race at the eleventh hour.

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Down Ticket #17: The sleeper race that could decide who controls the Senate (and more!)

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Win those five, and the Dems dont have to worry about losing
Nevada (where Sen. Harry Reid is retiring after 30 years and GOP
nominee Joe Heck is slightly ahead) or any of the other former
tossups that have drifted in a Republican direction during the past
couple of months, including Florida (where Sen. Marco Rubio,
another late entrant, holds a solid lead) and Ohio (where Sen. Rob
Portman is clobbering Democrat Ted Strickland).
Lose any one of them, however, and those Democratic dreams will
almost certainly fall flat. Theres no margin for error.
Except what if, suddenly, there is? In recent weeks, its started to
look like the Democratic Party might have another path to Senate
dominance a path that runs through the increasingly red state of
Missouri, to the surprise of many Beltway observers.

Donald Trump greets supporters at the Peabody Opera House in St. Louis last
March. (Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)

Very few people predicted that the battle between GOP incumbent
Roy Blunt and Democratic challenger Jason Kander would prove
pivotal this fall. Barack Obama nearly carried the Show Me State
in 2008, but since then, its politics have drifted rightward; Mitt
Romney trounced the president by 10 percentage points in 2012.
Today, six of Missouris eight U.S. House members are
Republicans, and the GOP enjoys comfortable majorities in both
chambers of the state legislature.
Making matters worse for Missouri Democrats is the name at the
top of the ticket: 64 percent of the states voters have an
unfavorable opinion of Hillary Clinton, according to the latest poll,
compared with only 51 percent for Donald Trump the opposite
of their national numbers. As a result, Trump is currently
positioned to win Missouris 10 electoral votes by an even larger
margin than Romney and by all rights, Blunt, the Republican
incumbent, should be positioned to return to the Senate. (Sitting
senators almost never lose re-election when their partys
presidential nominee wins statewide.)
And yet, on Friday, Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Political Report
the best in the business when it comes to analyzing congressional
elections and Down Tickets partner for the rest of the cycle
changed the status of the Blunt vs. Kander contest from Lean
Republican to Tossup.
Heres whats happening on the ground.

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Down Ticket #17: The sleeper race that could decide who controls the Senate (and more!)

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First and foremost: Kander, 35, is a strong, telegenic challenger. A

graduate of Georgetown Law, he enlisted in the Army National
Guard after 9/11. He went on to serve a tour of duty in Afghanistan
and rise to the rank of captain. In 2008, Kander was elected to the
Missouri House of Representatives, where he worked with a
Republican colleague to pass the states first major ethics reform
bill since 1991. Kander won re-election two years later with 70
percent of the vote; in 2012, he narrowly defeated a leader of the
Missouri GOP to become secretary of state. Hes never lost a
race.

Jason Kander, Democratic Senate candidate from Missouri. (Photo: Tom

Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images)

Kanders been running a clever campaign against Blunt. The

Democrats approach has been two-pronged: (1) weaken his
Republican rival a 66-year-old who spent seven terms in the
House before winning an open Senate seat in 2010 by
portraying him as a self-serving creature of the Washington
establishment; and (2) bolster his own red-state brand by
emphasizing his more centrist and culturally conservative
credentials.
And so Missouri voters have been treated to a torrent of
Democratic television ads pointing out that Blunts wife and three
children all work as lobbyists (the family business); that Blunt has
voted to raise his own pay 12 times; and that the senator has
repeatedly backed legislation that would slash taxes for big
corporations such as Kraft Foods, his wifes employer.
Kander & Co. needle Blunt for never serving in the military the
Republican received three deferments during Vietnam and
attack his record on veterans issues. On the stump, the Democrat
repeatedly asks voters to raise their hands if they approve of the
job Congress has done; few hands go up. Its an antiestablishment year, so the goal is to make Blunt look like part of
the problem: an old, business-as-usual politician.
Kander, in contrast, is touting himself as a different kind of
Democrat one who has bucked his party by supporting a
balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, opposing the Iran
deal and rejecting the presidents executive actions on
immigration. Oh, and in case you havent caught one of the most
viewed and talked-about political spots of the cycle, Kander is also

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Down Ticket #17: The sleeper race that could decide who controls the Senate (and more!)

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the kind of Democrat who can assemble an AR-15 rifle with a

blindfold on.
Its a very clear choice between somebody like myself, a veteran
of the war in Afghanistan who is focused on a new generation of
leadership, Kander said at a rally last month, and someone like
Sen. Blunt, who has been in Washington for 20 years doing what
special interests want to him to do.
Blunt and his GOP allies have begun to fight back. Their main line
of attack is that Kander is too liberal for Missouri: a national cochair of Clintons campaign who backed the (locally unpopular)
Affordable Care Act, voted for sales and income tax hikes as a
state legislator, and once backed an energy tax. They also note
that Blunt is a skilled dealmaker who has crossed the aisle to craft
legislation with Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Debbie
Stabenow of Michigan, Chris Coons of Delaware and Patty Murray
of Washington on various issues, from manufacturing to mental
health.

Sen. Roy Blunt greets supporters at the Missouri State Fair in August. (Photo:
Orlin Wagner/AP)

Still, as Kander recently boasted, the momentum is really clearly

with us. Early on, Blunt, a well-known quantity in Missouri politics,
led in every single poll often by as many as 7 percentage
points. But his support never topped the magic 50 percent mark.
Now, the only survey released in the past month shows Kander
ahead for the first time, with 42 percent of the vote to Blunts 40
percent and private polling from both parties indicates a
similarly close race. Meanwhile, Kanders AR-15 ad has been
viewed 998,000 times on YouTube. Blunts response, an ad
reminding voters that Kander received an F rating from the
National Rifle Association, has been viewed 15,500 times.
As a result, big money has started to pour into Missouri. From
Aug. 3 the day after Kander won the Democratic primary until
the end of September, Blunt and his allies (the NRA, the National
Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Leadership
Fund) spent about $2.7 million more on advertising than Kander
and his friends (the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and
the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees). But that could change over the next 34 days. The
DSCC, sensing an opportunity, just reserved an additional $2

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million, and other groups (End Citizens United, Vote Vets) are
beginning to chip in as well.
I think Jason Kander is a marvelous candidateone of the best
Ive ever seen, Montana Sen. Jon Tester, the chairman of the
DSCC, told reporters last month. I think that hes going to do very
well in November.
Whether Kander delivers on that promise remains to be seen. One
poll doesnt constitute a trend line; we need to see more data
before we can assess how close the race really is. Right now, the
statisticians at Nate Silvers FiveThirtyEight expect Blunt to beat
Kander by 2.4 percentage points; their counterparts at the New
York Times Upshot give Blunt a 72 percent chance of winning.
Still, as other Democratic Senate candidates fade, Kanders
chances of playing a tiebreaking role on Election Day are rising.
Stay tuned for more.
_____

Kelly Ayotte says Trump is a good role

model then says she misspoke. Oops.

...

I think that certainly there are many role models that we have, and
I believe he can serve as president, so I absolutely I would do
that.
Embattled New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican,
answering a question about whether she would tell children to
be like Donald Trump and point to him as a role model
during Monday nights debate against her challenger,
Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. Ayottes awkward position
on Trump she says she will vote for him while refusing to
endorse him has been a major theme of the close N.H.
Senate contest.
I misspoke tonight. While I would hope all of our children would
aspire to be president, neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton
have set a good example and I wouldnt hold up either of them as
role models for my kids.
A statement released by Ayottes press office at 10:42 P.M.
the same night.

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Predictably, the Internet went wild at least according to the

Hassan campaign.
_____

Charlie Crist: Still a fan of fans

As you may have heard, Florida Democrat Charlie Crist former
Republican, former independent, former governor, former Senate
candidate is challenging GOP incumbent David Jolly this year in
the Sunshine States 13th Congressional District. But while Crist
has changed parties several times and sought every major
office in the state one thing about him, at least, has remained
constant: his well-documented love of fans. (And by that we mean
the electric kind that blow air on you.)
Dont believe us? Check out his latest ad:

May Not Know

_____

The best of the rest

https://www.yahoo.com/news/down-ticket-17-the-sleeper-race-that-could-deci... Thursday 06-Oct-2016

Down Ticket #17: The sleeper race that could decide who controls the Senate (and more!)

Reid Wilson
@PoliticsReid

Page 7 of 9

Follow

NRSC cutting independent expenditures in WI SEN race,

still planning to spend coordinated funds w/ Ron Johnson
- thehill.com/homenews/speci
10:38 PM - 3 Oct 2016
Republicans cutting ad spending in
Republicans are canceling more than $1.1
million in ads for Johnson.
thehill.com

Dan Tuohy
@tuohy

Follow

~ @KellyAyotte giving out free Trojan rubbers at UNH

really ticks off her rivals. #NHpolitics story: bit.ly/2drnRWi
2:03 AM - 4 Oct 2016
1

National Journal
@nationaljournal

Follow

Will Charlottes riots hurt North Carolina Democrats?:

njour.nl/s/642751?oref=
12:10 AM - 4 Oct 2016
1

Burgess Everett
@burgessev

Follow

Portman has no plans to back off massive ad buys even

though he's handily beating Strickland. Wants to run up
score politico.com/story/2016/10/
6:17 PM - 4 Oct 2016

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Down Ticket #17: The sleeper race that could decide who controls the Senate (and more!)

Wall Street Journal

Page 8 of 9

Follow

@WSJ

Republicans' Senate hopes may rest on a dying breed:

ticket-splitters on.wsj.com/2dGHd9a
6:59 PM - 4 Oct 2016

GOP Looks to Revive a Dying Breed: Ticket-Splitters

Senate Republicans running for re-election this year are
counting on a revival of a dying political breed: Ticketblogs.wsj.com
12

16

Seung Min Kim

Follow

@seungminkim

Ryan will be crisscrossing the country this month to save

not just a GOP House, but the Senate too. W
@rachaelmbade politico.com/story/2016/10/
4:25 PM - 3 Oct 2016

Ryan stumps hard for GOP Senate

The House speaker finds time to try and keep the other
chamber in GOP hands.
politico.com
12

16

_____

Countdown

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Down Ticket #17: The sleeper race that could decide who controls the Senate (and more!)

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