It Makes New York Look Sweet

By Matt Cooper/St. Louis

A couple hundred ob-gyns sitting around" might sound like the first line of a dirty joke, but it was a meeting of St. Louis gynecologists that brought Missouri's U.S. Senate candidates to the city's elegant University Club last week. The two played to type: Governor Mel Carnahan, the two-term Democrat, gave an earnest but dust-dry talk about how he supported a genuine patient's bill of rights and his opponent, incumbent John Ashcroft, didn't. The better orator, Ashcroft joked easily and touted his work on cutting back Medicare regulations. Judging by applause, the crowd seemed equally divided.

That's the way it has been statewide in what is arguably the nation's most contentious Senate race. For nearly a year, Carnahan and Ashcroft have been within the margin of error in the polls. That's not surprising. The two popular pols have cast a shadow over Missouri politics for a generation. They've won nine statewide races between them. But the contest is more than a Show Me state battle. Missouri is a microcosm: it has picked the winner in every presidential election this century except one ('56), and is an important battleground in the tight presidential race.

Like George W. Bush, Ashcroft is running a race based largely on character. The son of an Assemblies of God minister, Ashcroft, who doesn't drink, has been known for his religiosity. His ads tout his "Missouri Values"--a line that Carnahan and most observers consider an implicit dig lampooning the 66-year-old Governor as an out-of-touch liberal who is close to Bill Clinton. "It really is a perversion," Carnahan told TIME. For his part, Ashcroft, 58, says the line isn't a jab at Carnahan; but when asked by TIME, he won't say whether Carnahan has Missouri values, whatever those are. Like Al Gore, Carnahan hopes the public will focus on his proposals for fiscal responsibility and a prescription-drug benefit under Medicare. He's also pushing his record as a self-styled New Democratic Governor who bolstered the state's student test scores. And just as Gore is eager to attack Bush for his support of a Texas law to allow concealed weapons, so too will Carnahan zing Ashcroft for his backing of a similar state referendum that failed. For Ashcroft's part, his ads, like Bush's, don't mention his pro-life views or the size of his tax cuts. Instead they present him as a champion of Social Security.

The race has been ugly. When Ashcroft opposed the nomination of Missouri's Ronnie White, an African American, to the federal bench last year, some Democrats suggested the opposition was racially motivated. Ashcroft, whose wife teaches at historically black Howard University, took justifiable umbrage. Shortly after the controversy erupted, a G.O.P. source leaked a 40-year-old photo of Carnahan in blackface at a minstrel show at a Kiwanis Club. (The Governor apologized.) This kind of sniping probably won't decide the race. If Carnahan can make Ashcroft seem too conservative, he'll win. Likewise, if Ashcroft can seem like a man of moderate policies and upright character, he'll take it. In that sense, Missouri's no different from the rest of the country.

--By Matt Cooper/St. Louis