Chuck Purgason left out of national Tea Party surge

Jul 29, 2010 — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Tony Messenger

Jul. 29, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- JEFFERSON CITY -- Will the real Tea Party candidate please stand up?

The front-runner for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, Roy Blunt, is bringing in national Tea Party favorite Michelle Bachmann -- a Minnesota congresswoman -- to help him raise money and rally the troops this weekend.

That has caused 28 of the state's loose collection of Tea Party groups to cry foul.

While those groups haven't endorsed anyone in Tuesday's primary, many of their members say underdog Chuck Purgason, a state senator, is the real Tea Party candidate.

"Most Tea Party supporters I know will be baffled by Michele Bachmann helping someone with a record like Roy Blunt before the primary vote," said Jedidiah Smith, a Tea party leader in Franklin County.

Smith was one of the organizers of a Tea Party forum in the capital city early in the campaign in which Purgason won a straw poll. Blunt didn't attend.

The Bachmann incident highlights Purgason's challenge: Unlike some other Tea Party candidates across the country, he has been unable to attract support -- or money -- from the Bachmanns of the world.

Why? In part, because Blunt has spent the last decade crisscrossing the country raising money for them.

The result is that Blunt has a massive war chest and a commanding lead in the polls, and he is expected to face Democrat Robin Carnahan, Missouri's secretary of state, in the November general election. Carnahan faces only token opposition on Tuesday.

An easy Blunt win would put Missouri at odds with other states in what some are calling the political year of the Tea Party movement.

Blunt, 60, is a seven-term congressman from Springfield at a time when having experience in Washington is seen as a liability. Tea Party upstarts knocked out party regulars in Utah and Kentucky. And in Florida, Republican Gov. Charlie Crist chose to run for Senate as an independent rather than face a Tea Party-supported candidate.

So what happened in Missouri?

Blunt happened.

The numbers tell a lopsided story:

-- Blunt, the clear front-runner, has raised more than $8 million. Purgason, the 50-year-old underdog from rural Howell County, hasn't even cracked the six-figure mark.

-- In the state Senate, where Purgason serves, Blunt has the support of 20 of the 23 Republican members. Purgason has one.

-- According to a recent Post-Dispatch/KMOV (Channel 4) TV poll, 99 percent of the voters surveyed knew the Blunt name. More than 70 percent were unaware of Purgason.

In politics, those are damning numbers. But Purgason's volunteer base hasn't given up.

"We're hopeful, and we're doing everything we can," said Jim Schmidt of St. Charles, a Purgason volunteer who got involved in politics last year through the Tea Party movement. "The rest of it is out of our hands."

Schmidt was one of several Tea Party and Patriot group upstarts who filed to run for the open Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, the dean of Missouri Republican politics. Schmidt dropped out to support Purgason. Blunt still faces seven opponents on the Aug. 3 ballot. Of them, only Purgason has any resonance with voters, said pollster Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling and Research.

Purgason lives in Caulfield, where he runs a game bird hatchery and hunting preserve. He was first elected to the state House in 1996, and he has served two terms in the Senate. He was the sponsor of the controversial bill in 2005 that cut Medicaid services in Missouri. Republicans have touted that vote as necessary to save the state's budget from out-of-control spending.

In the poll Coker did for the Post-Dispatch this month, Blunt won the support of 62 percent of the Republican voters surveyed. Purgason won the backing of 13 percent of poll respondents.

"I like Purgason," said poll participant William Hindle, 73, of Florissant. "Basically, it's the fact that he's not an insider. I look at Blunt and I look at Carnahan as both being insiders."

When Bond shocked the political world by announcing in early 2008 that he wouldn't seek re-election, the Blunt political machine in southwest Missouri moved quickly to keep big names out of the race. Through surrogates, Blunt successfully urged other contenders to reconsider running a divisive primary against such a prodigious fundraiser.

But Purgason didn't get the memo.

The conservative state senator decided that somebody had to remind voters of what he saw as Republican excesses in Congress while Blunt was a part of the leadership.

From the beginning, Purgason knew his campaign was a long shot.

He said as much in the Senate lounge to a group of editors and publishers listening to the two candidates kick off their campaigns. As Blunt stood in the back of the room absorbing the volleys, Purgason blasted him for his support for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, which has become widely criticized among conservatives as a $700 billion bank bailout.

Purgason also blamed Blunt for historic deficits while Republicans controlled Congress.

When it was Blunt's turn to speak, he didn't even say Purgason's name.

Blunt has focused on convincing Republicans that he is their best chance to keep the seat in the GOP column; Purgason has been focused on telling Republicans that they need to get back to their roots.

For Blunt, the message is: Keeping Bond's seat in GOP hands is essential, and to defeat a big name like Carnahan, it's going to take an equally big name.

On the campaign trail, both candidates echo reliably Republican themes. They're opposed to President Barack Obama's health care policies. They decry the nation's increasing deficit. They want to cut spending.

Purgason garnered some statewide headlines during the legislative special session this month, when he tried to block a bill offering taxpayer incentives to lure Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F) to expand its manufacturing plant near Kansas City.

The state senator parlayed the publicity into an endorsement from Tea Party favorite "Joe the Plumber," aka Joe Wurzelbacher, who put up television ads this week supporting Purgason's candidacy.

Blunt has already run two television ads statewide, one that doesn't mention his experience in Washington, and another that denounces Carnahan as a potential "rubber stamp" for Obama.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0187-47421840