Dude Where's the Party

As his 2004 re-election bid nears, Bond's efforts to woo Democrats will only have to intensify.

Redistricting has taken the competitiveness out of most House races, but senatorial elections continue to be very close affairs. This is especially true in Missouri. To win, Bond will have to navigate a very diverse political landscape. "Missouri is a pretty evenly divided state," Van Eaton says. "Really, it comes down to an urban-rural thing."

One of the keys to victory lies in a politician's ability to maintain a public courtship with the African-American community.

But winning black votes isn't necessarily the chief benefit of attracting the black vote. These efforts also pay off in the suburbs, where elections are really won and lost, according to Bositis.

"To win over suburban whites, particularly suburban white women, you have to appear more moderate," he explains. "And one way to do that is to reach out to the black community.

In the burbs, moderates are more open to Republicans' fiscally conservative positions. But, being for the most part college educated and enlightened, they're leery of the party's image of insensitivity regarding matters of race, Bositis says.

"Republicans don't know race," Bositis says. "Generally speaking, they can't connect with African-Americans. But they do know race in terms of how it looks to whites."

Bositis offers an example of how this works in Missouri: Jim Talent's successful run against Jean Carnahan for the Senate in 2002, a race that finished in a near dead heat. Although Talent was not popular with black voters -- less than 10 percent of African-American ballots went his way -- his highly visible courting of black votes with campaign stops in inner-city churches did pay off somewhere else -- in the suburbs, Bositis says.

"I followed that campaign very closely," Bositis says. "You'd think he was a Democratic candidate, going to all these black places."

The campaign stops drew publicity, and images of Talent glad-handing blacks were broadcast across the St. Louis and Kansas City metro areas. When suburban moderates saw these images, Bositis says, they thought, He must not be a bad guy.

St. Louis leaders expect to see Bond doing the same thing when the 2004 campaign heats up.

"He'll have his hounds out probably," St. Louis American columnist Bernie Hayes says. "He thinks the key is the black preachers. He'll go to them and say we're a forgiving people."

Told of the skepticism of their St. Louis counterparts, some local leaders admit that their support for Bond is somewhat thin.

"The issues Lacy Clay has identified are good illustrations," says Mark Bryant, president of Freedom Inc. "We recognize the Republican Party gave us the tax breaks ... [but] a $200 check from the federal government [is] no substitute for state budget deficits, higher property taxes, higher sales taxes and an increasing federal budget deficit that will laden young people of color with the responsibility of pain."

State Rep. Yvonne Wilson, meanwhile, admits that she's wondered if the local appropriations Bond lavishes on Kansas City might come with strings attached. The contradiction between Republicans' recent spending on urban issues and the party's usually unfriendly stance on social programs "gives the impression that they really don't care about you, that they're not sincere."

Bryant points out that Freedom Inc. itself has not endorsed Bond. "We recognize he is a leader of the Republican Party, which, as a whole, has not been sensitive to the needs of the African-American community," he says. "I'm not sure any of us can afford not to look at the big picture."

However, Bryant still showed up at the Peach Tree Restaurant a week before Christmas. There, a slew of Kansas City Democrats were celebrating Bond, who is working toward another return to Washington -- where he would go on pushing policies that only trouble leaders like Bryant. "Sometimes small."