GOP counts on strength of Southern base

ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. -- Patricia Bollozos is the kind of person who haunts Democrats who yearn for a transformation in politics: She voted for John F. Kerry for president, throws up her hands and says, "I agree, the war is a mess," but is voting a straight Republican ticket this time around.

Bollozos also represents the Republicans' best hope for averting disaster on Tuesday -- the hope that somewhere behind poll numbers showing dissatisfaction with President Bush and the war are people who doubt the Democrats can do better and whose basic conservatism points them toward the GOP.

"I was for the war because I thought we should do something about Saddam. I'm kind of against the war now. But it's kind of like Vietnam -- the politicians won't let the guys on the ground do the job," said Bollozos, 53, standing outside Straub's, an upscale market in the far western suburbs of St. Louis. She said she read some of the liberal antiwar blogs and came away convinced that Democratic calls for a pullout are irresponsible.

Like Bollozos, most Missourians are passionately interested in politics this year, and their passions are pulling them in many different directions. There is no Democratic tidal wave frothing on the horizon here, but rather another typically close Senate race -- enlivened by some hotly debated ballot questions -- which will probably be decided by which way the centrist suburbanites go .

Without a Democratic breakthrough in Missouri or its fellow Southern border states of Tennessee and Virginia, Democrats won't win the Senate and won't have proved that they can win in Republican territory.

That's why places like Straub's market -- a redbrick structure with fall decorations and packages of carefully wrapped firewood outside, tucked into a suburban mini-mall anchored by Starbuck s -- are crucial bricks in what Republican leaders have deemed their "firewall strategy."

The strategy anticipates Democratic gains in the liberal Northeast and in pockets of the economically struggling Midwest. But it also assumes that with gushers of ad money and a blitz of campaign appearances by Bush and other prominent Republicans, the party can erect a "firewall" around its Southern base.

"I like the people from this part of the world," declared Bush at a rally on Friday in Springfield, Mo. "Good, down-to-earth, common-sense people live in southwest Missouri."

Meanwhile, Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman crisscrossed the state this week to inspect his party's vaunted get-out-the-vote organization, culminating in a rally at the St. Louis headquarters of Senator Jim Talent , the Republican incumbent running for reelection.

The two big cities that bracket Missouri -- St. Louis on the eastern edge and Kansas City on the western edge -- are Democratic strongholds. But smaller cities and rural areas -- including Rush Limbaugh's hometown of Cape Girardeau -- are conservative. Thus, as in many states, much of the battle is fought in the suburbs.

The St. Louis County "exurbs" -- the fast-growing, distant suburbs of western St. Louis County and Chesterfield -- have trended conservative in recent years, but Democrats are hoping the Iraq war will tip the scales this year.

Democratic senatorial nominee Claire McCaskill proclaims "change is coming" in her commercials, and interviews with voters in the area revealed that at least some former Republicans are heeding her call.

"I'm less Republican this year," said Marcia Alexander , a McCaskill supporter who declined to give her age. "I'm usually a supporter of Bush. I still am. But I wish he had a plan to end the war."

Mike Tilton , 57, is another longtime Republican who is leaning toward McCaskill because of frustration with the Bush administration. But he has words of caution for hopeful Democrats. While he thinks more casual voters will come out this year, he hasn't seen any mass migration away from the GOP among his friends and neighbors.

"I think the core Bush vote is going to hold," he said.

McCaskill, the state auditor, has hedged her bets by emphasizing other issues, including ballot questions to raise the state's minimum wage and encourage scientists to engage in stem cell research.

The stem cell initiative at times has driven the race, first when former Republican senator John Danforth endorsed it, then two weeks ago when actor Michael J. Fox , who suffers from Parkinson's disease, cut a commercial for McCaskill and was criticized by Limbaugh as exaggerating his symptoms.

But in a heavily Catholic state, the Catholic Church has weighed in strongly against embryonic stem cell research. Billboards now cover the state with pictures of smiling newborn babies, proclaiming "embryos are babies."

Talent, who opposes the stem cell initiative, has said it could lead to the cloning of human beings, and many opponents now call it the "cloning measure." (Supporters say it does not support cloning, and that research would involve only leftover embryos from fertility clinics that would otherwise be destroyed.)

Nonetheless, the ballot question, which has been favored in some polls, now seems at best a mixed blessing for McCaskill; it may have won her some votes, but it also gave conservatives a fresh reason to go to the polls.

"I'm going to be voting against [the stem cell measure] because it exploits women," said Molly McCann , 18, who will cast her first senatorial vote for Talent. "They need eggs and the only place they can get it is from young women. And when American women say, 'No more of this,' they'll go to Third World countries."

Even Patrick Reilly , 54, who normally votes Democratic, is unsure about stem cell research. "It's mainly the embryonic aspect," he said. "There's been a lot of misinformation about cloning. I don't really buy those arguments, but I'm not sure there aren't other ways to develop stem cell lines."

Indeed, many voters said they have been both confused and repelled by a barrage of negative ads, some centering on the stem cell initiative and others on the Senate race.

The Republican National Senatorial Committee has attacked McCaskill over many aspects of her personal life, from allegedly inadequate conditions at a nursing home owned by her husband to allegations that she didn't pay taxes for three years to her decision to live in a "McMansion."

McCaskill has run ads rebutting the attacks, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has weighed in with a negative ad claiming Talent voted to give tax breaks to companies moving jobs out of Missouri.

Almost every voter interviewed in the area mentioned the ads with distaste, and none seemed moved by the arguments against McCaskill or Talent. But on the stem cell issue, the ads genuinely muddied the water; voters on both sides had trouble saying what it would or wouldn't accomplish.

Without good information, most voters seemed to fall back on their own values or experiences.

Over the past six years, Missouri has had two Senate races and a governor's race settled by three points or less. This year's Senate race is even closer in polls. If anger over Bush and Iraq plays a role -- and most agree that it will -- it would be on the margins. And there are others supporting Talent precisely because they don't want Democrats to push for a pullout.

"I'm glad our boys are over there," said Paula Derrick , 68, a retired nurse. "I'm sorry we're losing so many of our Marines. But I feel if we don't stop them there, they'll come over here, and I don't think people understand that."

Derrick recalled sitting in her father's 1940 maroon coupe as a small child and watching the panic on her parents' faces. The Japanese had just attacked Pearl Harbor. "We have to get out of New York," her father said.

She said after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, she and her husband saw a restored 1940 maroon coupe.

"I wanted to get into that car and just sort of relive that fear," she said, believing that the current days call for just the kind of resolve that Americans had in 1941. "I don't think this generation has any guts."