In mid-Missouri, Democrats hope to flip a state house seat in Tuesday election – STLtoday.com
KLIEVER, Mo. Harold Hohenfeldt lives on a slice of land overlooking a rolling field in the middle of Missouri. He has a National Rifle Association sticker on his front door and watches his fair share of Fox News.
On Tuesday, Hohenfeldt, 85, intends to head to the polls and cast his ballot for Sara Walsh, the Republican running against Democrat Michela Skelton in a special election for Missouris 50th House District.
The other one, from what I understand, is pretty liberal, he said of Skelton. And Im not a liberal.
Conventional wisdom says there are enough voters who think like Hohenfeldt here to send Walsh to Jefferson City. But this is 2017, and this year has been anything but conventional.
Skelton, 31, has outraised her opponent and has used a network of mid-Missouri Bernie Sanders supporters and other win-thirsty Democrats to beat up and down the district. She is homing in on bread-and-butter issues like jobs and education. At the same time, the GOP has tried to brand her as too liberal for the district.
Those labels are nonsense, Skelton told the Post-Dispatch. Theyre ways to divide people that otherwise have so much in common.
Robert Knodell, the executive director of the Missouri House Republican Campaign Committee, called the district a hybrid, taking in suburban parts of Columbia as well as rural parts of four counties Boone, Cole, Cooper and Moniteau.
He said the GOP is cautiously optimistic about a win here, but added turnout is key. He said Walsh, who has worked in the upper echelons of the Missouri GOP, holds views that align with the majority of the district and would wield more influence than Skelton in the GOP-dominated Legislature. Walsh did not respond to two interview requests.
I think she (Walsh) is a better fit than her opponent, Knodell said.
On her campaign website, Walsh hits familiar Republican notes, emphasizing her anti-abortion and pro-Second Amendment positions. She also says she will work to ensure the University of Missouri receives its fair share of state funding.
The 50th House District was drawn after the 2010 U.S. Census to give Republicans a 55-to-45 percent edge over Democrats.
Whether Democrats can compete is a mystery. Republican Caleb Jones did not face Democratic competition here in four elections to the Missouri House. In January, he took a job in Gov. Eric Greitens administration, setting up the special election to fill out the remaining year of his term.
Skelton has netted just over $98,000 in the race while Walsh has raised $60,000, according to Missouri Ethics Commission reports filed in the week before the election. Skelton said the numbers even out when considering the aid Walsh has received from state GOP committees.
The fact that theyre pouring in money and desperately trying to smear our candidate shows theyre worried, said Stephen Webber, the chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party.
And Democrats are itching for a win after losing every statewide race in 2016 and seeing their ranks diminished in the Legislature.
On Tuesday, they will get a shot in both the 50th House District and the 28th Senate District, a sprawling district in southwest Missouri vacated by now-Lt. Gov. Mike Parson. There, Republican state Rep. Sandy Crawford faces Democrat and former educator Al Skalicky.
Skelton is an attorney by trade and former apolitical state Senate staffer. If her name sounds familiar, that is because she is a distant cousin of former Democratic U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton. The elder Skelton, who died in 2013, held a rural Missouri seat for decades as the Democrats transformed into a more urban party.
Michela Skelton, raised in a conservative military family in Alabama, said she speaks the language of rural voters.
But in campaign advertisements, Republicans cast Skelton as Too Liberal. Too Extreme. The House Republican Campaign Committee mined her campaign donation filings, saying University of Missouri professors aligned with controversial former professor Melissa Click chipped in to Skeltons campaign.
Dave Robertson, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said a safe bet would be on the Republican in Tuesdays contest.
Right now, the money would be on the Republican in that race, he said, based on the fact that Missouri looks like a red state now.
Then again: Maybe (Skeltons) got a base more capable of mobilization than we think.
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In mid-Missouri, Democrats hope to flip a state house seat in Tuesday election - STLtoday.com