(Part of UPI's Special Report on Election 2002)
ST. LOUIS (UPI) -- Democrats are circling the wagons around Missouri Sen. Jean Carnahan like their political lives depended on her re-election.
No wonder.
Carnahan, a freshman, was appointed to serve the term to which her late husband, Gov. Mel Carnahan, was posthumously elected after he died in plane crash three weeks before the 2000 election. If she loses the special election, national Democrats fear Republican James Talent could replace her in the lame-duck 107th Congress.
A Talent victory could give the GOP control of the U.S. Senate for the second time in two years, with a 50-50 split and Vice President Dick Cheney the tiebreaker. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., would be majority leader.
Democrats took control of the Senate when Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords declared himself an independent but pledged to vote with the Democrats.
Democrats say that lame-duck scenario won't happen but polls show Talent has leaped frogged over Carnahan in the latest poll. The Zogby International poll of 800 voters published Oct. 13 showed Carnahan trailing Talent 40.8 percent to 47.3 percent, with an error margin of 3.5 percent. In a late September poll Carnahan was ahead of Talent 47.6 percent to 40.3 percent. But a USA Today poll Oct. 9 showed each with 48 percent.
President Bush twice visited the state for Talent fundraisers and has scheduled a third visit. Former Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole has appeared for him. But Carnahan still has raised more money.
Carnahan has seen much of her support in the Kansas City area dropping, although she picked up backing at Talent's expense in the central part of the state.
Some top state Democrats say an inexperienced Carnahan campaign team allowed Talent, a lawyer and former four-term St. Louis congressman who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for governor in 2000, to hijack traditional Democratic issues like prescription drug benefits. But pollster John Zogby said Carnahan could be getting hit by an anti-incumbency mood among voters.
Talent also has called for cutting Medicare and privatizing Social Security bringing sharp attacks from the Missouri Democratic Party, which wants Carnahan's campaign to get back to old-fashioned, grassroots stumping to get out the vote at union halls and in traditionally Democratic strongholds across the state.
A few ballots either way could be the difference in areas like Jackson County and Kansas City, which have 12 percent of the state's registered voters.
"Everybody's waking up to the fact that we need to get a big vote out of Jackson County," former Democratic country chairman Tom Wyrsch told the Kansas City Star.
(Reported by Al Swanson, UPI political writer, Chicago)
