Sarah Steelman

From the GOP's Washington Times: "A handful of Republicans are running against first-term Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. in Pennsylvania, but there are no real standouts, Mr. Stuart Rothenberg said. The same can be said of Missouri, where a number of GOP candidates are vying for a chance to take out a weakened freshman Sen. Claire McCaskill."

via @PoliticMo 

[UPDATE: We've received an explanation from Brunner himself on his "debate switcheroo." Click here to view.]

Is John Brunner trying to compete with Mittens on how many times one man can flip-flop on a single topic? This certainly seems to be the case when it comes to whether or not John Brunner will participate in a debate on the issues with his fellow candidates for the GOP nomination for Senate here in Missouri.  Unfortunately, just like pretty much everything else, Brunner can't commit.

Back in October, Sarah Steelman and Todd Akin were both in negotiations to participate in a debate pulled together by KCUR, but Brunner, clearly not ready for primetime, refused to engage.

Who knew the "Most Unpopular Freshman" Senator Roy Blunt could finagle his way into being elected to a leadership position in the Republican Conference, 25-22?

As we wrote earlier, Missouri's highest ranking republican got there with absolutely no help from Senate hopefuls Todd Akin, John Brunner and Sarah Steelman - all of whom took a pass on endorsing consumate Washington insider, Blunt.

Still no word on whether or not Akin, Brunner or Steelman have congratulated Blunt. 

Update: The consumate Washington insider won the Conference Vice Chairman job without tea party support. 

Must-listen stuff from KTRS' McGraw Millhaven show this morning from Sen. Claire McCaskill on the lack of support for Roy Blunt's GOP Senate leadership bid from John Brunner, Sarah Steelman and Todd Akin. 

Last week, GOP Senate hopeful John Brunner finally joined his primary rivals, Todd Akin and Sarah Steelman, in calling for frequent debates in their race for the Republican nomination.

And yet, a week later, there's nary a peep out of the rivals about when these concensus debates will begin.

Maybe it's time for the moderators-in-waiting in the press corps to push them for a date certain.

Meanwhile, the GOP candidiates for President just completed their 17th debate....

Via @RoyTemple

Senator Roy Blunt would really like to be the next Senate Republican Conference Vice Chair, but the guy can't even get support at home.  Later today, during the weekly Republican Conference Lunch, Blunt will face off with ultra-conservative Ron Johnson of Wisconsin who has support from other Tea Party darlings such as Marco Rubio of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Jim DeMint of South Carolina, as well as the two republicans running to join Johnson in the senate primary race in Wisconsin.

One would think, given that they would all like to be Missouri's next senator and be able to serve with Blunt, that Todd Akin, John Brunner and Sarah Steelman would announce their support of the hometown guy Blunt, but each one of them have taken a pass on any endorsement.

From PoliticMo:

• Akin: A spokesman for Akin said he had “no comment” on Blunt’s election.
• Brunner: “Not one person has mentioned they are concerned about a leadership election in Washington where nobody running for U.S. Senate in Missouri has a vote.”
• Steelman: A spokesman for Steelman said her campaign “hasn’t even paid attention to it.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the man they'd all like to join in the Senate.

Perhaps this lack of support from fellow republican senators and the folks back home is further indicative of Blunt's current title of "Most Unpopular Freshman."  From the sounds of it, his standing hasn't improved much.

Does John Brunner have substantive answers about any substantive issues yet?  Check out this glorious non-answer in the News-Leader to a direct question about the House GOP plan to eliminate Medicare as we know it: 

Q: Would you support transforming Medicare into a voucher program in which seniors purchase insurance in the private market, instead of the current government program, as proposed by House GOP Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis.?

Akin: Yes, he is on record supporting and voting for the Ryan plan.

Brunner: "What I am looking at is, can you give people a choice -- the Ryan plan or keep their current program? Or even a third option? ... Or combinations of those plans to bring some choice, so you can have that incentive to lower costs?"

Steelman: "The cost of living (increase) that's factored into the (voucher proposal) each year is different, and I'm afraid it wouldn't cover the cost of increasing health costs from year to year... And then I also worry about how, if you have that age population, if you can actually get reasonably priced insurance. It's difficult to insure the senior population" in the private market.

More bad news for Rex Sinquefield's effort to raise the taxes on almost everything you buy everyday: Sarah Steelman is actively campaigning against sales tax increases. From an interview earlier today on KCMO:

HOST GREG KNAPP: If you are Senator Sarah Steelman, and Herman Cain is president and comes in with his '9-9-9' tax plan, would you be for that?

SARAH STEELMAN: You know what, Greg, I support a flat tax versus a national sales tax. But I’ll give him credit, I mean I think he got the discussion going, I’m glad he put that out there. I worry about having a national sales tax on top of local and state sales tax ‘cause it's very regressive, and then you know, you may be creating more bureaucracy than less bureaucracy...

At the same time, Steelman says she has no idea what the national 'flat tax' rate should be, even though she wants credit for supporting the right-wing idea to help the very wealthy. 

So, Sarah Steelman and Todd Akin are ready to debate, but John Brunner isn't up for it yet. Not exactly a huge surprise given that his campaign launch revealed his knowledge of the issues is about as deep as a rain puddle. 

PoliticMo has more: 

The Steelman and Akin campaigns had been in contact with the producer of KCUR’s “Up to Date,” hosted weekly by Kansas City Star veteran political reporter Steve Kraske. But St. Louis businessman John Brunner, who launched his Republican Senate campaign just weeks ago, was not as enthusiastic and had not contacted the show.

“We’re open to proceeding with a debate if we can find a date when all three contenders can participate,” Kraske said in an email Tuesday.

How bad was the fundraising quarter for Republicans vying for Governor and United States senate? This bad:  

Missouri Republican Party: Republicans in the state’s Senate and governor’s races continue to struggle big time, despite running in very winnable races. Gov. Jay Nixon (D) outraised Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder (R) $1.5 million to $410,000, while GOP Senate candidates Rep. Todd Akin and former state treasurer Sarah Steelman raised $285,000 and $95,000, respectively – well off the pace set by Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D) $1.2 million. Steelman needed to donate $400,00 to her own race in order to stay viable.

How unimpressive is the field of John Brunner, Todd Akin and Sarah Steelman? Here's a clue...

Ann Wagner, former candidate for U.S. Senate, retweeted a message the weekend from Politico scribe Dave Catanese asking if Wagner "should switch to #MOSEN after all?"  

Catanese teases a second Senate bid for Wagner in his story on her solid third quarter fundraising haul.  "[T]his eye-raising [fundraising] performance is almost certain to stoke speculation on whether Wagner should reconsider switching to the bigger price: the Senate race....John Brunner is willing to put his own money down, but he's unimpressed insiders and flopped his media rollout. Of course, Wagner's entry into the Senate race now would be a tremendous slight against Akin, who was nudged into the race by some insiders, in part to grant Wagner an opportunity at Congress in the first place."

Sarah Steelman has company in the bad quarter category. Todd Akin's craziness may have finally caught up to him.

I thought her fundraising couldn't get worse. I was wrong. 

According to Steelman's third quarter report, shared with POLITICO, the former state treasurer raised just $96,162 over the last three months. That's about $100,000 less than she took in during the second quarter.

On KCMO this morning, Sarah Steelman indicated that Todd Akin might be in for the debate she has been pining for over the past few weeks. 

Steelman said: "I think his office reached out to Steve Kraske late yesterday. So maybe I put enough pressure on 'em that at least one of 'em decided to join me."

She talks about Akin at around the :50 mark:

Third quarter fundraising and expense reports are due October 15. 

As .Sean noted earlier this morning, John Brunner received the normal policy questions from MissouriNet's Bob Priddy, but he was extremely vague with his answers. 

Specifically, he avoided giving in-depth details about his thoughts on reforming Medicare: 

He says he would not favor cutting Medicare but he is vague about how he would solve the program’s problems. “You bring all the people around the table and you say ‘we gotta treat this now serious and we gotta find a way to maintain our promises to our seniors and take care of the problem.’”

One of the Republican Party's most notable policy initiatives that has come about in the past year is Paul Ryan's plan to change Medicare as we know it. As Sarah Steelman can attest, giving vague answers on specific policy proposals like the Ryan Plan can be problematic. On the other hand, Todd Akin went all in on the Ryan Plan.

Most likely, if he is asked about it, Brunner will give some Hancock-drafted talking points that stop short of an endorsement but "praise" Paul Ryan for putting together an ambitious plan. Then it becomes a matter of whether or not reporters and, more importantly, Missourians think that is good enough. 

Earlier this year, it was revealed that the records available from Sarah Steelman's time as State Treasurer were lacking to say the least. 

Steelman, now a Republican candidate for U.S.  Senate, has often touted the virtues of transparency and open government.  In a 2004 editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, she wrote that "every elected official at every level of government should strive to ensure that our laws, our records and our meetings are open to the public's scrutiny."

During her time in office, her staff even pointed to "special information technology" that was used to preserve e-mails for years.

[Jon Galloway, the treasurer's office director of communications and policy,] said the current office has e-mails that were received by Steelman to her state account, "but there are no sents."  He also said there were no "executive boxes" turned over to the Secretary of State's office at the end of her term for preservation.

Many of these state records are supposed to be retained for 5 to 10 years or longer. What's even more troubling is Steelman never offered a clear explanation for why she didn't turn over executive records to be archived. Who knows if the Steelman campaign will ever provide a clear answer, but the people of Missouri certainly deserve one. 

According to Public Policy Polling:

McCaskill leads all of her potential Republican opponents for reelection, albeit by extremely narrow margins. She's up a point on Sarah Steelman at 43-42, two on Todd Akin at 45-43, and her lead widens to 9 over John Brunner at 46-37.

Sarah Steelman broke from Todd Akin's comments questioning the constitutionality of Medicare, and also took the opportunity to get in a shot or two. However, we still don't know how she would have voted on the Ryan Plan to end Medicare as we know it. 

Former State Treasurer Sarah Steelman, a Rolla Republican, in one of her first direct attacks on Akin, said she disagrees that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional, and blasted Akin’s vote in support of expansion of Medicare before he voted against it.

“My question to Congressman Akin is if he thinks Medicare is unconstitutional why hasn’t he done anything in his 12 years in Congress to fight it or challenge it? And why has he voted for Medicare if it’s unconstitutional? When he had the chance to vote against Medicare Part D — the prescription drug program — first he voted for it then he voted against it,” Steelman said. “That’s the trouble with Washington politicians — they want to have it all ways and cover their tracks. That’s why our country is in such a mess today.”