Ladies and gentlemen, it’s now time for the main event.
Please welcome in the blue corner The Great Kraskini, aka, Steve Kraske, political columnist for The Kansas City Star. In the red corner, it’s little-known, but always game, Jimmy C (formerly The Fabulous Jimmy C).
The Great Kraskini
Jimmy C
The ref
Tonight’s bout will be five rounds, predicting the outcomes of five national and Missouri state political contests on tap for 2016.
Round 1: The Republican presidential nomination
T.G.K. throws a wild haymaker, picking Ted Cruz.
Jimmy C, having seen time and again that arrogance is a terrible burden to haul up a steep hill, counters with a crisp left jab and says Marco Rubio.
Round 2: The presidential election
:: T.G.K. and Jimmy C split this round, both picking The Lady With Her Own Email Server to win big.
Round 3: The Republican nomination for Missouri governor
T.G.K. unleashes a bolo punch (straight over the top, toward the crown of the head) and says Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, who has held the No. 2 job for 12 long years, will be the Republican nominee.
Jimmy C sees the overhead punch coming and slips it. He also sees Rex Sinquefield’s millions pushing Catherine Hanaway past Kinder, who once dated a stripper. (Not that there’s anything terribly wrong with that; it’s just hard to envision a former strip-club patron in the governor’s mansion.)
Round 4: Missouri governor
T.G.K. throws a right cross, pegging Democrat and current attorney general Chris Koster as the next governor.
Jimmy C leans away, Rope-A-Dope style, and plasters T.G.K. with a straight right to the nose…Catherine Hanaway.
(T.G.K. might be able to look a short distance into the future, but his knowledge of history is suspect. He must have forgotten the front-page, 2014 New York Times story that exposed Koster as a slave to special interests…The story recounted how a lawyer for 5-Hour-Energy buttonholed Koster at a convention of state attorneys general and prevailed on him to grab his cellphone and pull Missouri out of a multi-state investigation of 5-Hour-Energy…At a meeting of Republicans in Kansas City early last year, Hanaway passed out bottles of 5-Hour Energy drink bearing a caricature of Koster under the name “24-Hour Corruption.” )
Round 5: Missouri’s U.S. Senate race
T.G.K. goes with a conventional right hook and picks the incumbent, Republican Roy Blunt, but then he slips on the canvas, seeing Blunt “barely getting past a stronger-than-expected Jason Kander.”
Being a good sport, Jimmy C catches T.G.K. before he falls to the canvas and guides him back toward his corner, whispering in his ear, “Kander gets slaughtered.”
(Again, T.G.K.’s institutional memory fails him. In. 2010, long before the Red Sea flooded Missouri, Blunt beat Democrat Robin Carnahan by 264,000 votes out of about two million votes cast.)
**
Although the fight should be over, the referee signals a bonus round for the wildly cheering fans…
Bonus Round: Which presidential candidate wins Missouri — Mrs. Bill Clinton or Rubio/Cruz?
T.G.K. remains seated in his corner, exhausted and beaten down. Jimmy C walks to the center of the ring, grabs a fat Sharpie from the ring announcer and writes on the mat, “The Republican, of course.”
As one, the fans scream, “Why?”
Before donning his robe and exiting through the ropes, Jimmy C scratches this on the mat…
2008 — McCain, 1,445,814; Obama 1,441,911
2012 — Romney, 1,482,440; Obama, 1,223,796
2016 — Fill in the blanks
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Jim, make me a promise and revisit this column January 2017.
I was thinking early November 2016, Tom.
What’s in your crystal ball on these races?
I am giving it some thought and will be back in touch.
Jim, I don’t consider myself much of an authority on Republican politics. I am not sure the Republican base is ready to nominate a Latino for president of the United States. However, nominating someone who has won statewide in Florida – a swing state– would have a certain appeal. I too believe whoever the Republicans nominate will have a tough time defeating Hillary. If Hillary is the clear winner prior to the Missouri primary, I may vote for Sanders just to indicate that what he has to say strikes a chord with many people.
For Missouri Governor, I think Hanaway also has a problem with Schweich’s suicide and the role our “friend” Jeff Roe played in it. If I were running against Hanaway, I would be polling not on the name Roe, but on his description “high paid sleazy consultants.” As you and I know, Roe is beatable. He ran a horrible campaign on Amendment 7 and translational medical research. I too give Kinder the edge since he has run and won statewide. Interestingly both he and Koster spend a lot of time in my neighborhood. Both have apartments here. I give the edge to Koster. He’s better looking than either Hanaway or Kinder. My urban liberal Democratic friends will hold their nose and vote for him.
U.S. Senate race. I think Kander is in too much of a hurry to move up. Remember he announced for Secretary of State when the presumed nominee would have been Mike Sanders. Whether Kander’s Jewish faith plays a role or not, I don’t know. After all, Harriet Woods won statewide many years ago. I’ve met Blunt. He is an affable guy. I know Democrats who like him and say Blunt will occasionally toss a bone to the base, but he doesn’t mean it. I think Blunt wins big.
As for the presidential analysis, remember Obama didn’t contest Missouri in 2012. There was not GOTV support at the national level. Remember he is a black Muslim who wasn’t born in the U.S., running in Missouri, yet did remarkably well. I think the Democratic nominee will have a great chance of carrying Missouri. One Democrat insider told me that Hillary plans to run a campaign in Missouri and spend a lot of money, especially if Florida and Ohio (Kasich VP?) are in jeopardy. Turnout of African-Americans will be crucial to a Democrat winning in Missouri. That includes getting the churches involved, shortening the wait time to vote and striking a chord with the African American Community.
Those are my thoughts 10 months out.
Excellent content, Fitz. Snappy repartee in print.
Thanks, Tracy…I appreciate it.
Tom — Very interesting thoughts…You brought up some points I hadn’t considered, including Hanaway and the “Schweich problem.” Thinking about it now, though, I’m not sure it will “stick” on her. And I doubt if the “high paid sleazy consultant” arrow will fly very far, either. That means a lot to us “insiders” but not to the gen. pub.
…I worked as a deputy election commissioner in the 2008 election, and I was flabbergasted at the black turnout. Unbelievable. Long lines from early in the morning til the polls closed. And yet Obama still didn’t carry the state. The blacks will not turn out anything like that for Hillary. Just won’t happen.
…Finally, just in case some people don’t pick up your sarcasm, let me assure everyone you’re not a “birther” and not a believer that Obama is a Muslim!
This could be a test of the Danforth wing of the MO Republican Party. I first met the senator when he was attorney general and spoke at Girls’ State in Columbia about 1969. I was a student reporter for KOMU-TV, equipped with a 16mm Bell and Howell wind-up camera. He was engaging, thoughtful and compassionate. I like him. He and Kit Bond did good things for Missouri. I don’t see that in the future for current Republican candidates. Danforth was a mentor of Schweich. I have no idea if Danforth will be engaged in a primary.
The subtext of the current campaign is government is a business. It is not. Yes, it needs to be run in a businesslike manner, but government should provide services for all that we cannot provide individually. Also…is the Danforth/Bond wing of the MO Republican party still relevant?
I think you are right about my wishful thinking about Roe.
Your reflections on Danforth and Bond made me think about a contemporary of theirs — John Ashcroft — who was the most smug, boring politician I have ever been around…In 1974, when I was a young political reporter I was assigned to travel with Democrat George Lehr, from Kansas City, and Republican Ashcroft in their race for state auditor.
I first spent two days with Lehr, who was a whirlwind and compelling personality, not to mention a walking quote machine. His stump speech revolved around his assertion that he, being a CPA, was qualified to be auditor but Ashcroft, who had no such credential, was not. We must have gone to 20 different towns in two days. It was great fun.
Then, I met up with Ashcroft, who was stiff as a board and acted as if he was on the Bataan Death March. I remember asking him why he always wore white dress shirts and he said, “A white shirt is the mark of a gentleman.”
Another of his quotes was, “The press waits for you to pick your nose, then takes your picture.”
I was with him all of one day and was supposed to be with him all of a second day. But I was bored to death and looking desperately for an out, and mid-afternoon of the second day it presented itself. We were on the way to an appearance in Moberly, and as we were headed east on I-70, I saw that we were coming up on the hotel where I had spent the previous night in Columbia. My car was still there — the Ashcroft people having picked me up in the morning — and I blurted out, with little forethought, “Pull over, pull over, I’m going to get out here.” The driver did as I asked and a perplexed Ashcroft said, “I thought you were staying with us the rest of the day.”
“I’ve got everything I need for the story,” I said. “I’m heading back to Kansas City.”
And that was that…I was back in Westport drinking at the New Stanley Bar that night.
P.S. Lehr won the race, handing Ashcroft one of three losses he suffered in his political career.
Oh how I miss meeting up with you guys in the back room of the New Stanley. Casey, Haskins, Dauner, OJ, and all you reporters. I learned so much about news from y’all. What got in the paper, and why. It shaped my career when I was doing PR. Now that the paper is is a shell, with no reporting in JoCo, there’s no point to take money from small business owners for PR–there is no news hole. And the Star’s substitute, the Press Release Purgatory, that’s a joke.
Remember you guys from the Times, the morning edition of the Star, got off at 12:30am, beat a path to the Stanley. Last call in the FRONT room was 12:45, but Jim Kreamer cut you some slack, and made our back room’s last call at 12:55, as long as we put our glasses down on the table promptly at 1:00 am. And by God, we did.
http://bit.ly/1RY4P9C This is Bill McClellan’s take. Harry also did a tour with Ashcroft. The hymn singing in the car got to him and he bailed. Plus George was a Kirksville friend. If you think about it MO Dems have been devastated with the loss of Lehr, Carnahan and Litton over the last several years.
“I don’t consider myself much of an authority on Republican politics. I am not sure the Republican base is ready to nominate a Latino for president of the United States.”
Mr. Shrout, you certainly proved your lack of authority about Republican politics given that the top two traditional Republican candidates, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, are both Latinos, with Cruz the heavy favorite of the Tea Party base of the party. Add in the three non traditional candidates and you have Ben Carson, a black MD and Carly Fiorina, a woman and former CEO with impressive foreign policy credentials along with the only white male of the bunch, Donald Trump.
While Trump is in the lead, his support is also coming from folks who are non traditional Republican voters and so there is a question as to whether or not they will show up to vote for him in the primaries. Hence the predictions that the two Latinos, Cruz and Rubio, will dominate the primary contests.
Opposing them on the Democrat side is a surly 73 year old white man and a corrupt old white hag whose main accomplishment is trashing the reputations of her serial rapist husband’s victims.
He just said he wasn’t sure if the Republican Party was ready to nominate a Latino, John..It’s a valid question. Hasn’t happened so far.
I managed to give my perspective about Cruz and Rubio without getting personal.
Sorry, didn’t mean to be personal, my apologies to Mr. Shrout. Just pointing out that so far the Republican Party has a far more diverse group of candidates than the Democrats and that those leading the pack of traditional Republicans are both Latinos. And, most conservatives I know would be estatic to have Ted Cruz as their nominee.
Agreed: Cruz is my kind of Canadian Latino!
; ‘ )
I didn’t know until now that he was born in Canada — to a mother who was a U.S. citizen and a father born in Cuba. Cruz had dual citizenship until giving up his Canadian citizenship in 2014.
Now, you have added to my knowledge. Apology accepted. I want to learn from others with whom I don’t always agree.
Same here, sir, and my kudos to the linotype operator for correcting my typo.
I still think that Trump is going to win the Republican nomination. He’s been ahead in the polls now for months and is totally impervious to all the negative publicity. If Hillary gets the Democratic nomination, expect a very close race as Trump will attract a lot of angry white constituents who rarely vote _ but will for him.