Two weeks ago, Missouri's freshman senator, John Ashcroft, running neck-and-neck against the state's Democratic governor, Mel Carnahan, appeared to have been handed the race when Carnahan was killed in an air crash. Ashcroft said and did all the right things in the face of the tragedy, suspending his campaign and paying tribute to his opponent.
And now he faces the distinct prospect of losing.
Ashcroft is finding out the hard way that no amount of money or legions of high-paid political advisers can counter the emotion engendered by fresh memories of a fallen favorite son.
In the days following the accident, which also killed Carnahan's son Randy and a longtime adviser, national Democratic strategists floundered as they tried to find a way to salvage one of the party's best chances at a U.S. Senate seat. By law, it was too late to replace Carnahan on the November 7 ballot — and it was going to be tough to convince voters to pull a lever for a man who could never take office.
Then a few days after the crash, the new governor, Democrat Roger Wilson, suggested a somewhat touchy plan: Why not ask Jean Carnahan, widow of the late governor, to take her husband's place if he should win the election? Mrs. Carnahan initially demurred, and withdrew from public sight to mourn with her family and friends.
And that seemed to be the way it would stay. Though Jean Carnahan, 66, is extremely well liked in Missouri, she has never publicly expressed any interest in entering the political sphere herself. She's written a few books, but they haven't provided much fodder for the talk-show circuit: One was a guide to holiday entertaining and another delved into the history of the governor's mansion.
But on Monday, Mrs. Carnahan announced she would accept Wilson's appointment to the Senate if her husband were to win the seat. "It's what Mel would have wanted me to do," she told a crowd gathered in Rolla, Mo. Is it what she wants to do? Perhaps. Mrs. Carnahan was apparently moved by Cokie Roberts' encouragement, who recounted her own mother's ascent to politics after her father, Louisiana representative Hale Boggs, disappeared in a plane over Alaska. The campaign, Roberts told Carnahan, helped her mother overcome her grief. And it's quite possible that simple self-preservation has been the impetus for many of the 41 widows who've taken over their husbands' seats in Congress since 1900, whose ranks include current Representatives Mary Bono, widow of Sonny Bono, and Missouri's Jo Ann Emerson. Once they've made it into office, however, many of these women have gone on to win regular elections, and to establish themselves in their own right as skilled politicians.
Over at the Ashcroft camp, Monday's announcement put the staff into an almost untenable position. Do they ignore Jean Carnahan, and run a purely pro-Ashcroft campaign? Or do they risk potential backlash and attempt to engage Mrs. Carnahan as a fellow candidate?
Carnahan herself may not leave them much of a choice, of course. She has made it clear she will not run a "traditional" campaign, implying that she will depend more on the momentum of her husband's campaign than on new strategies. And with only days remaining before Missourians make their decision, all that remains for Ashcroft to do is to pound out his message in the face of a much more powerful force.