October 18, 2000, Wednesday
NATIONAL DESK
Mr. Carnahan, a Democrat and two-term governor, died when a small
two-engine plane that was carrying him to a campaign event in southern
Missouri crashed in a heavily wooded area near St. Louis Monday evening.
Mr. Carnahan's eldest son, Roger, who was piloting the plane, and a
campaign aide, Chris Sifford, also died.
The governor, who was 66, was locked in one of the tightest and most
closely watched Senate races in the country, challenging Senator John
Ashcroft, a first-term Republican who had been governor just before Mr.
Carnahan. The two men were widely considered the pre-eminent leaders of
their state parties and the most popular politicians in the state.
[Obituary, Page A20.]
Mr. Carnahan's death could have reverberations beyond his own race and
even his own state, political analysts said. Missouri has achieved an
unusual trifecta in national politics this year: a fiercely contested
Senate race, a too-close-to-call contest for governor and a heated battle
for its 11 electoral votes, which are considered up for grabs between the
two major presidential candidates.
As a result, both parties and their allies have been pouring money and
resources into the state to energize voters in all three contests, as
evidenced by the wall-to-wall political commercials running on television
stations across the state.
With the exception of the third presidential debate in St. Louis
tonight, Mr. Carnahan's death brought a halt today to much of the state's
frenetic and often negative political campaigning. Mr. Ashcroft ordered
his aides to pull his television advertisements indefinitely and canceled
a busy day of campaigning. The Democratic National Committee also stopped
running its television commercials in the state, while Vice President Al
Gore canceled a Thursday rally in Kansas City that Mr. Carnahan had been
scheduled to attend on Thursday. And both the Democratic and Republican
candidates for governor suspended their campaigning and television
commercials today.
Even a number of independent organizations, like Handgun Control Inc.,
have postponed political events in St. Louis until after Mr. Carnahan's
funeral.
''Obviously, this is not a time for politics, this is a time for the
state to come together,'' Mr. Ashcroft said in a statement.
Mr. Carnahan's death not only makes it highly likely that Mr. Ashcroft
will be re-elected, analysts said, but it could also hurt the Democrats'
chances of regaining control of the Senate, where the Republicans have a
54-to-46 edge. ''Just having one of their most competitive races taken off
the table hurts,'' said Jennifer Duffy, an editor with the Cook Report, a
political newsletter that tracks Congressional races.
But beyond that, analysts said, the loss of the Missouri's most
powerful and popular Democrat could also dampen Democratic turnout at the
polls, hurting Mr. Gore and the party's gubernatorial candidate, State
Treasurer Bob Holden.
''Without Carnahan, the Senate race now becomes an asterisk,'' said
Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, a
nonpartisan newsletter. ''You have to wonder whether that affects the
Democrats' mood. There's a potential that it will hurt Gore.''
A senior Gore adviser also said the party might have to spend more
money in Missouri to turn out Democratic voters who might be dispirited by
Mr. Carnahan's death.
But Mark Fabiani, Mr. Gore's deputy campaign manager, said it was too
early to determine the effect of Mr. Carnahan's death on the broader
landscape of the national races. ''I don't know how you know the impact of
something like this,'' Mr. Fabiani said. ''People here are in a state of
shock. They don't know which end is up.''
Under Missouri law, Mr. Carnahan's name must remain on the ballot as
the Democratic candidate for the Senate because his death came within a
month of the election, said Rebecca Cook, the Missouri secretary of state.
The Democrats could mount a write-in campaign, but many party officials
said that such a candidacy would be a long shot.
Still, some Missouri Democrats also said that under the right
circumstances, they could still gain control of the Senate seat. According
to their reasoning, if the majority of people voted for Mr. Carnahan, Lt.
Gov. Roger B. Wilson, a Democrat who has become acting governor, would be
authorized to appoint his replacement for a two-year term.
''It raises a dilemma for the State Democratic Party,'' said one
Democratic official in Missouri. ''Do they encourage people to vote for
Mel Carnahan, on the grounds that they could be electing another Democrat?
And if you are John Ashcroft, how do you run against a dead man?''
But national Democratic officials said they thought it highly
improbable that voters could be encouraged to vote for a deceased
candidate. Indeed, the party would not only decline to invest more money
in the Missouri Senate race, one official said, but also might request
that several hundred thousand dollars it had given to the state party to
assist Mr. Carnahan be used to help Senate candidates in other states.
There are also questions about what Mr. Carnahan's campaign should do
with the money it still has in the bank, which campaign officials said was
probably less than $1 million. Some Democrats contended that that money
should go into continuing the campaign in his name, but others said that
money would be well spent helping either Mr. Holden or Mr. Gore.
Mr. Carnahan had been a vital part of the Democrats' plan to pick up at
least two and as many as five Senate seats. In addition to Mr. Ashcroft,
Republican senators in Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana and
Washington are considered vulnerable. Only one Democrat, Senator Charles
S. Robb of Virginia, is fighting a strong challenge.
The death of Mr. Carnahan now means that the Democrats must win all the
races in which Republicans face tough challenges, as well as hold Mr.
Robb's seat, to recapture the Senate -- a situation considered unlikely
even by many Democrats.
''In purely political terms, this is indisputably a setback,'' said one
Democratic strategist, noting that Mr. Carnahan had taken a slim lead in
recent internal Democratic polls. ''Still, there are enough seats in play,
enough highly vulnerable Republican incumbents and enough races trending
our way that a Democratic majority is still plausible.''
Mr. Carnahan's death could even affect the fate of Senator Joseph I.
Lieberman, the Democratic nominee for vice president who is simultaneously
running for re-election in Connecticut. Some Democrats have called on Mr.
Lieberman to drop out of the Senate race before Oct. 27 so that the
state's popular Democratic attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, can get
on the ballot. Those Democrats are concerned that if Mr. Gore wins, Mr.
Lieberman will resign from the Senate, allowing Gov. John G. Rowland, a
Republican, to name his replacement.
One Democratic strategist said that the pressure on Mr. Lieberman to
quit the Senate race was likely to diminish if Democrats conclude that Mr.
Carnahan's death has made it virtually impossible for them to reclaim the
Senate. But other Senate Democrats said they would continue to urge Mr.
Lieberman to drop out of the Connecticut race.
airplane
crash conspiracy page
THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE OUTLOOK; Senate Candidate's Death Hurts
Democrats' Chances
By JAMES DAO (NYT) 1283 words
ST. LOUIS, Oct. 17 -- The death of Gov. Mel Carnahan of Missouri in a
plane crash on Monday night has thrown the already tumultuous politics
of this important swing state into disarray and probably diminished the
Democrats' chances of recapturing the Senate this year, Democrats and
political analysts said today.