For Congress: Round up the usual suspects

By the Editorial Board
Monday, October 18, 2010 9:15 pm

If national polls and data-crunchers are to be believed, none of the incumbents in seven Congressional districts in the St. Louis area is likely to lose his job in the Nov. 2 election.

This has less to do with how well the incumbents have performed than the built-in advantages of incumbency: name recognition, fundraising and safe districts.

Five of the incumbents either have no opponent or only token, underfunded opposition. On the Missouri side they are Democrat William "Lacy" Clay of St. Louis and Republicans Todd Akin of Town and Country and Blaine Luetkemeyer of St. Elizabeth.

On the Illinois side, Democrat Jerry F. Costello of Belleville and Republican John Shimkus of Collinsville have only token opposition.

Only Missouri Reps. Russ Carnahan, a St. Louis Democrat, and Jo Ann Emerson, a Cape Girardeau Republican, drew aggressive, well-funded opponents.

Missouri's Third Congressional District runs from south St. Louis through much of south St. Louis County and takes in all of Jefferson and Ste. Genevieve counties. It was drawn in 2001 to benefit the longtime Democratic incumbent, Richard A. Gephardt of St. Louis.

Mr. Gephardt retired from Congress after an early knockout from the 2004 presidential race. Mr. Carnahan emerged from a bitter primary in 2004 and won a relatively close election that fall, but he was easily re-elected in 2006 and 2008. In Congress he has been a reliable back-bench vote for the Democratic agenda.

Mr. Carnahan, 52, told us his focus is to "bring people together for St. Louis." To that end, he sought membership on the Transportation and Infrastructure and Science and Technology Committees, where funding for such priorities originates.

Mr. Carnahan's Republican opponent is St. Louis lawyer Ed Martin, 40, the former chief of staff for former Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt. After being forced out of that job in 2007 for embroiling the office in a scandal over missing e-mails - a controversy that eventually cost taxpayers more than $2 million in legal fees and settlements - Mr. Martin reinvented himself as an all-purpose conservative gadfly.

He is a shrewd and gregarious man with a knack for telling people what they want to hear, no matter how absurd (Barack Obama and Russ Carnahan want to deny you eternal salvation). But character counts, and Ed Martin flunks. For character and his stance on the issues, vote for Russ Carnahan.

Missouri's Eighth Congressional District touches only the southernmost part of the St. Louis metro region. It sprawls across the eastern and central portions of southern Missouri, from the Bootheel to Rolla. Since 1996, it has been represented by Republican Jo Ann Emerson, 61.

Ms. Emerson usually wins re-election with 70 percent-plus majorities. But this year, her Democratic opponent is Tommy Sowers of Rolla, 34, a former Army officer who has raised more than $1.4 million for an energetic campaign.

Mr. Sowers argues that Ms. Emerson, who is not a native of the district and has never lived there full time, is out of touch with its problems, particularly rural poverty and lack of access to health care. Nearly 20 percent of its population lacked health insurance in 2008. More than 13.3 percent of its population was 65 or older.

Ms. Emerson said she voted against the health care reform bill because it "was a sell-out to the pharmaceutical industry." She said she is proud of highway and bridge projects she has brought home - even the earmarked ones - and is proudest of her "regional approach to economic development."

Mr. Sowers is hard to pigeonhole: He's a boots-wearing, pickup-driving graduate of the London School of Economics, a scholar-warrior who had the courage to lead a Green Beret A-team in Iraq but is wishy-washy on health care reform. He is targeting veterans in his campaign but is opposed to the war in Afghanistan. But Tommy Sowers would bring new energy to a district that badly needs it.

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