He’s going into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame with people like Jim Edmonds, the former center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, Mel Gray, the former wide receiver for the Missouri Tigers and the St. Louis football Cardinals, Emmitt Thomas, the great cornerback for the Chiefs and now a longtime NFL assistant coach, and Jon Sunvold and Jamie Quirk, and Al Onofrio, and—well, we won’t go on because we want to tell you about this guy Clyde Lear.

Clyde used to work for me.  He was fresh out of the University of Missouri where his master’s degree project had been a study of how to form a state news network.  He became the assistant news director of KLIK  radio in Jefferson City and worked in a newsroom on the top floor of a crumbling antebellum building four blocks from the state capitol.  Just down the hall was the office of farm director Derry Brownfield. Sometimes Clyde did one-minute sports breaks on the air that clearly demonstrated his talent lay entirely in reporting local and state news.

Clyde and Derry formed the Missouri Network, Inc., a few years later and started doing farm news.  Two years after that, they put the Missourinet on the air and Clyde hired his former news director at KLIK.  Satellite delivery of broadcasts made it possible to beam Derry’s farm programs outside the state so the farm network shifted from being the Missouri Network to being the Brownfield Network.  And later as the company continued to diversity, the corporation adopted a new name.

Back in those days, Missouri football games were broadcast by stations in St. Louis and Kansas City with their own broadcast crews and on a Missouri Sports Network put together by Mahlon Aldridge, the general manager of KFRU in Columbia, the station that was a cradle for many well-known news and sports broadcasters for a couple of decades or more—although Clyde wasn’t one of them. Mahlon’s network also did Tiger basketball games–in those days from a position halfway up the east bleachers in Brewer Fieldhouse.

Clyde has told the story on his own blog about how he decided the company, now called Learfield (for Lear and Brownfield) should get into sports and how the company set a new standard that attracted headlines in the Wall Street Journal in paying for exclusive rights to collegiate sports when it bought the broadcast rights to Tiger football and basketball.

And that began a career that has put Clyde in the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.  Learfield is now one of the power national companies in intercollegiate sports broadcasting and marketing.  It works with athletic departments at 54 universities from coast to coast.  You’ve probably heard of Alabama, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Stanford, North Carolina, Miami—and you’ve probably heard of the other schools on the Learfield roster.

Clyde has never pretended to be much of an athlete himself.   He does like to ski.  He does harbor delusions of adequacy on the golf course.  And he does still jog. He wears running shoes now.

He’s been more than The Boss around here.  He’s been the spiritual (small “s”) presence who has guided this company from a student’s graduate project dream to a nationally-respected coast-to-coast corporation that includes five news networks (including the Missourinet), the nation’s largest farm broadcasting system (The Brownfield Network), and a huge sports division.  At heart, he’s still a journalist and those of us at the Missourinet have been lucky to have a journalist in charge of the company.

Now he’s described as “the retired Chairman and CEO” of our company. But he still has an office in our building although he’s been moved to the basement and he isn’t there a lot of the time because he’s in various parts of the world doing good works for other people. He’s even been to Montreal and knows it’s different from Montana.

And now he’s a Hall of Famer. We’re not sure why it took so long for this recognition to come to him.  But we’re excited that he’s getting it.

Not bad for a guy who didn’t know how to pronounce “Jesus Alou” all those years ago.

Went to Joplin last Thursday. Some folks wanted me to talk to them about Missouri politics and the campaign year to come.  There wasn’t anything I could tell them that would be worse than what they’ve been through since May 22nd.

Life goes on in Joplin these seven months later. There’s no choice, really, for anything else.  Kids are in school someplace. Traffic seems pretty normal, although there isn’t much traffic in the long scar where the tornado pulverized one-third of the city.  No reason to go someplace where there isn’t a place.

This holiday season will be tough for family members and friends of the 160-plus people who died in the storm.  First holidays after the untimely death of a loved one are always rugged. But life goes on.

But the Christmas lights are up.  Radio stations are playing Christmas carols.  A TV station I watched the morning after the speech had its morning news anchors perched in front of a wall of toys, apparently an annual toy drive the station has.  The folks at our affiliate, KZRG are well into their Christmas of Hope campaign, raising money in conjunction with Ignite Church for gifts for children who are part of the Division of Family Services programs.  Some are tornado victims. They have about 50% more children than last year being helped this year.  Life goes on for them, too.

“Hope” was a word we heard a lot in the weeks after the tornado as people like morning news anchor Darrin Wright (on the left) and morning talk show host Josh Marsh (on the right) covered the disaster and the resurrection of hope as the shock of the tornado and the mourning for its victims eased.

Joe Lancello, the third member of the news staff, works the afternoon shift and wasn’t in yet when we stopped by at mid-morning.

The tornado missed KZRG by just a few blocks.  Josh, who has covered tornadoes before, told us about sitting at the control board in the studio and looking through the window, seeing huge things flying past the station.  He was convinced the building sooner or later would be hit by a flying car.

The pictures all of us saw of rubble after the tornado were stunning. But it is only when the land has been cleared of that rubble that the devastation is so terribly obvious.

Not a tree.  Hardly any buildings.  St. John’s hospital is in the far background, hauntingly empty, a derelict huge building on the horizon. Up close it’s even more eerie.

And across the street from that area, only foundations and shattered remnants are left of other blocks.

Demolition has started on the first of a half dozen schools.  Joplin High will come down after anything valuable in it has been salvaged. Students are in temporary quarters in a former big box store.  A friend of mine in the construction industry told me he was amazed at the conversion of that building into school space.

It is the absence of things that is the most striking thing about the tornado’s path.  It is only when you see nothing where there was everything in the morning of May 22 that the enormity of that event becomes so obvious.

A few weeks ago we were talking to a state representative from Caruthersville, a bootheel town hit by a twister in 2007.  He was describing the slow rebuilding process in his town and noted the new high school had just opened this fall.

It will be a long time before the students in the renovated big box store move into their new high school and where students from the other schools move into their new buildings.  It will be a long time before these scoured areas will again be homes and businesses—and trees.

But they will be there.  Because life goes on.  A couple of poets captured that spirit many years ago:

“In the darkness with a great bundle of grief the people march. In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people march: ‘Where to? what next?’” – Carl Sandburg. The People Yes (1936)

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” – William Faulkner, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (12/10/50)

He was named for the great Missouri Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman. Throughout his life he could proudly recite his military serial number,  RA41021629.

He commanded the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) unit in South Korea through most of the Korean conflict after its original commander was killed in a helicopter crash.

When the armistice was signed and the hospital unit was disbanded, Potter retired from the Army and returned to his wife, Mildred, in Missouri, planning to become “a semi-retired country doctor.” However, he found retirement in Hannibal boring and when Mildred suggested he go back to work, Potter contacted the Veterans Administration which hired him as chief of staff and chief of surgery at the General Pershing VA Hospital in River Bend, Missouri.  He was joined there by a three of the of members of his unit in Korea, Walter O’Reilly, who had rescued a horse in Korea and presented it to Potter as a gift (Potter named her Sophie),  Max Klinger, and Father Francis Mulcahy.  Mulcahy had been a chaplain for Potter’s unit in Korea.

Potter retired after a short stint at the hospital he and the staff referred to as “General General” and he lived quietly in California until his death.  He is survived by his son, Cory, and his daughter, Evy.

Potter is remembered in Hannibal fondly, in a similar vein as other Hannibal natives Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Becky Thatcher.  The Friends of Historic Hannibal and the Marion County Historical Society recognize a home at 1922 Prairie Street as the “Col. Sherman T. Potter House,” and notes on their website, “Research shows that if he were real, this is the house he would have lived in.”

Actually Sherman T. Potter was only the best-remembered name that actor Harry Morgan used in a long career of radio, movies, television, and the stage.  Morgan’s early movies identified him as Henry Morgan but he changed his name to avoid confusion with then-popular comedian Henry Morgan.  He was born in Michigan as Harry Bratsberg and became an actor while studying law at the University of Chicago. In one twist in his career, he portrayed U.S. Grant in the movie “How the West was Won,” in a scene with John Wayne, who played William Tecumseh Sherman.

He appeared briefly in one of Glenn Miller’s Movies, “Orchestra Wives” as a young man with a date pushing their way to the stage during a Miller band performance.  Years later, he played Chummy McGregor, Miller’s pianist, in the biopic, “The Glenn Miller Story.”

He did die yesterday at the age of 96, one of our most memorable non-Missouri Missourians.

This Pearl Harbor Day is a good time to recall the story of Samuel Glenn Fuqua, the Laddonia, MO., native who was the last commander of the USS Arizona.   He won the Medal of Honor for his actions 70 years ago today.

Fuqua went to the Naval Academy after serving in the Army during WWI.  The Arizona was his first duty station after his graduation from Annapolis.  He served on several other ships and pulled some shore duty before getting his first command, a minesweeper.  He served at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station before returning to the Arizona as the damage control officer.

Early in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Fuqua was knocked out by a bomb that hit the Arizona’s stern.  He quickly recovered and directed the rescue and firefighting efforts until the forward magazine blew up and vaporized the ship’s command.   Lt. Commander Fuqua was the senior surviving officer and saw it was hopeless to try to save the Arizona.  He ordered the crew to abandon ship and later used a rescue boat from the Arizona to save the lives of several crew members who were in the oily waters — even as Japanese planes continued to bomb and strafe the area.

His Medal of Honor citation reads:

For distinguished conduct in action, outstanding heroism, and utter disregard of his own safety, above and beyond the call of duty during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor, by Japanese forces on 7 December 1941. Upon the commencement of the attack, Lieutenant Commander Fuqua rushed to the quarterdeck of the U.S.S. Arizona to which he was attached where he was stunned and knocked down by the explosion of a large bomb which hit the quarterdeck, penetrated several decks, and started a severe fire. Upon regaining consciousness, he began to direct the fighting of the fire and the rescue of wounded and injured personnel. Almost immediately there was a tremendous explosion forward, which made the ship appear to rise out of the water, shudder and settle down by the bow rapidly. The whole forward part of the ship was enveloped in flames which were spreading rapidly, and wounded and burned men were pouring out of the ship to the quarterdeck. Despite these conditions, his harrowing experience, and severe enemy bombing and strafing, at the time, Lieutenant Commander Fuqua continued to direct the fighting of fires in order to check them while the wounded and burned could be taken from the ship, and supervised the rescue of these men in such an amazingly calm and cool manner and with such excellent judgement, that it inspired everyone who saw him and undoubtedly resulted in the saving of many lives. After realizing that the ship could not be saved and that he was the senior surviving officer aboard, he directed that it be abandoned, but continued to remain on the quarterdeck and directed abandoning ship and rescue of personnel until satisfied that all personnel that could be had been saved, after which he left the ship with the (last) boatload. The conduct of Lieutenant Commander Fuqua was not only in keeping with the highest traditions of the Naval Service but characterizes him as an outstanding leader of men.

Fuqua commanded a cruiser in 1942 and later was the Ops Officer for the Seventh Fleet, helping plan several amphibious operations.  He was a Rear Admiral y the time he retired in 1953. He died in 1987 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Missourinet’s Mike Lear has an interesting story today about the recovery and restoration of records from the Arizona.  It’s on our regular Missourinet.com page.

The National Archives “Prologue” magazine also has an interesting article about the records it has from the ships at Pearl Harbor that Day.  The day logs of the ships provide a lot of eyewitness detail amazingly written during the attack.

The remains of the Arizona are now a monument.   Not far from the Arizona monument is the USS Missouri, the battleship where the war in the Pacific that began seventy years ago today came to an end three and a half years later.

Very little government business transacted behind closed doors needs to be or should be kept secret from the public. That is presumably one of the hallmarks of our democratic system. The apportionment commission’s attitude that the public be damned during the process of deciding who might represent us in the legislature is just one more example of a worsening trend in state government.

A three-letter word in state law allows groups transacting the public business to hide. The operative language says that “executive meetings may be scheduled and held as often as the commission deems advisable.” May. Not “shall.” May.

The state open meetings and open records law leaves hiding behind closed doors to the discretion of the public body but closing the meeting has to be done under specific guidelines. To the detriment of the general public in too many instances, the bodies we elect or the appointed bodies that carry out the functions of government too often take the easy way and turn the three-letter “may” into the phrase, “It’s okay to keep the public ignorant from  what we talk about, what we do, or what the vote was when we did it.”

Jean Maneke, a Kansas City lawyer who often is relied upon by journalists, looked at the constitution, the statutes, and the state supreme court rules and concluded the judicial Apportionment Commission violated state law and the state supreme court operating rules.

Well, the commission has finished its secret work, has rejected any public involvement, and has throw its maps of new legislative districts on the table. It’s hard to say their product would have been different if the commission had been unafraid to do public work in the public eye.

Drawing the lines for districts that determine how we will pick people to represent us in shaping state laws is serious work. Too bad the commission refused to let the public know what considerations it used in drawing those lines, what compromises had to be made to get a majority vote on the map, and who pressures it was under to draw lines benefitting certain areas, factions, or individuals. The commission apparently feels  that how decisions were made about how we might be represented in the legislature are too important for the public to know.

Some folks might be somewhat upset by these secret decisions.  More than fifty of them, in fact.

We have turned to our friend Marc Powers, the ruler of the capitol kingdom of Arcania, a small territory near the west end first floor stairwell to the basement, to analyze what the commission hath wrought.  He has passed along this compilation which, though thorough, he does not guarantee is 100% accurate:  But Marc is pretty reliable.

Fifty-five incumbents are grouped with at least one other incumbent in a total of 26 districts. Twenty-three of those districts have two incumbents each, while three districts have three incumbents. Of the grouped incumbents, 23 are Democrats and 32 are Republicans. Of the 26 districts that have grouped incumbents, nine have only Democrats, 13 have only Republicans and four have a Democrat paired with a Republican. With 25 current members termed, that leaves 138 incumbents eligible to run in 2012. As a result 40 percent of eligible returning incumbents are grouped with other incumbents.

Grouped eligible returning incumbents (the numbers represent legislative districts):

• 2          Guernsey, Klippenstein
• 5          Shively, Shumake
• 21        McDonald, Anders
• 24        Talboy, Morgan
• 36        Holsman, McManus
• 43        Houghton, Cauthorn
• 50        Caleb Jones, Kelly
• 57        Largent, Wanda Brown
• 67        Taylor, Webb
• 76        Nasheed, May, Carter
• 85        Smith, Pace
• 87        Newman, Carlson
• 88        Schupp, McCreery
• 89        Stream, Diehl, McNary
• 92        Montecillo, Sifton
• 97        Fuhr, McCaherty
• 100      Gosen, Allen, Koenig
• 103      Funderburk, Bahr
• 110      Curtman, Tim Jones
• 118      Harris, Fitzwater
• 119      Schatz, Hinson
• 121      Day, Frederick
• 133      Long, Burlison
• 148      Brandom, Hodges
• 152      Hampton, Richardson
• 160      Lant, Reiboldt
• 163      Davis, Flanigan

We thank Marc for his work. (Actually he is not the Emperor of Arcania; he’s the press agent for the House minority Democrats but he has a habit of reading things that are usually to dry and boring for anybody else to read.)  We’ll be watching to see if any of these folks on his list become upset enough about what has been done to them and their districts by the commission to seek a court remedy.  If they do, they might point to the state’s open meetings law and challenge the secrecy of the proceedings along with any other challenges they might make to the legitimacy of the lines that have been drawn.  The open meetings law says a court SHALL void any action taken by the public governmental body if that body is found to have violated the open meetings law.

Any court challenges probably need to be filed quickly because candidate filing begins February 28.

Reporters love it when something just falls into their laps. A little while ago we got an email from Christy Bertelson, the former Information Minister for Governor Nixon who has been promoted to the position of Senior Policy Adviser and Chief Speech Writer for the governor. We can’t comment about her ability as a policy adviser because we don’t know what she’s advising the governor to do and whether he adheres to her advice. But, based on some of the speeches we’ve heard the governor read, she’s pretty good as a speech writer. We are not the only ones, for instance, who doubt that the eloquent speech he gave in Joplin last spring that many people felt out-eloquenced President Obama’s remarks was something he wrote on the back of an envelope on the way there.

Ms. Bertelson sent out this message this afternoon:

All — One of the perennial themes in the state of the state address is smarter, more efficient and effective state government. Are there any new efficiency initiatives, or updates, that jump to mind for 2011 that would be important to include in this speech? In last year’s State of the State, we highlighted:
* Highway Patrol/Water Patrol merger – saved $3M
* Selling off fleet, reducing travel by using technology – savings of almost $7M over 2 years
* Getting rid of unused office space, consolidating labs, renegotiating leases – saved $5M
* Cut state energy bills by 2% on top of 5.6% in 2009 – saved $3M
* Reform of state pension system
* Broadband – We tout this every year. It’s probably too soon, but wondering if there might be actual savings to state or local government we can point to.
Thank you.
Christy

We alertly figured out that she had not intended to send this begging for bragging points message to us. Being cunning and sly in addition to being alert we decided not to respond and to wait instead for those she intended to receive the message to hit the “reply all” button. But, alas, there also was an alert person somewhere in the administration who discovered what had happened. So a few minutes later an email arrived from her labeled ERROR.

All – I sent an email in error to the folks on this distribution list, asking for ideas about government efficiency. Please ignore it. I apologize for the error and any inconvenience it may have caused you.

DRAT! There went all the fun not to mention the hoped-for chance that we might write a story about the State of the State speech almost two months before it is given. We didn’t want her to feel too badly about her faux pas, so we replied to the second message:

Oh no, that’s not a problem for us, Christy. No apology is necessary. It wasn’t inconvenient at all. In fact, we’d welcome the opportunity to participate. – bp

…as in waiting to see what bragging points were offered so that we could pass them along to you. If you’ve got some self-backpatting to do there’s no reason to wait until your guy stands in front of a room full of legislators, more than two-thirds of whom hope he loses his re-election bid, and talks about what a great job he and his administration have done. Our offer was gently rejected.

LOL. Good ideas can come from anywhere – even my former colleagues!

We are not sure if she means us when she speaks of “former colleagues.” We suppose she’s referring to the 23 years she spent as a reporter and editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch although we don’t know that we knew her then. Perhaps “colleagues” is a general phrase with a permanence to it. So we replied:

Be watching for them.

And she graciously said she would.

We’re going right to work on that and we’re going to compile several things Governor Nixon can take credit for in his State of the State message. We’re pretty sure they’ll be crowded out by the things that come from within the administration, though.

Keep in touch, Christy. It’s always good to accidentally hear from you.

Annie Lisle is her name.  We know nothing about her except that she died sometime in the 1850s back east, perhaps of “consumption” as it was called then, tuberculosis as it it known today.  She was never a student at the University of Missouri or at the University of Kansas as far as we know and perhaps never crossed the Mississippi River before the disease ended her young life.  But Annie Lisle sprang from my television set and into my mind Saturday afternoon during the MU-KU football game.  And Annie Lisle is one of many reasons this sporting rivalry between two proud universities should continue.  MU and KU share Annie Lisle.

Maybe you noticed what I’m talking about if you also watched the game. We confess being so engrossed in the game’s drama that we were almost winning a fight against drowsiness when Annie Lisle brought us back to full alertness. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing during one of the television cutaways from the action that showed some of the few KU fans that had driven half an hour from Lawrence to watch their 2-9 team battle Missouri’s 6-5 team to the death—–at least that’s what those who thumped the tub were trying to convince us it would be.

Our sports director, Bill Pollock, went to the much-ballyhooed “Border Showdown” game in Kansas City. To hear him talk, it was a whelming experience. Certainly not an overwhelming one.  Close to an underwhelming one maybe, but generally just whelming.

The Tigers won as they were expected to do but did their level best to keep some suspense in the game by letting the Jayhawks lead at the half.  But mediocrity can be so tiring. In the second half Missouri decided to show enough spirit to run off three touchdowns and win.

KU says it doesn’t want to play MU anymore after Missouri joins the Confederacy. MU would like to continue the tradition.

But when you think of all the experiences these two schools and the states they represent have had together on field and court and elsewhere for more than 150 years, it’s easy to think the two universities should keep meeting.  If nothing else, they should do it for Annie.

You see, after Annie died, a Boston songwriter named H. S. Thompson wrote a song about her in 1857.  The last verse of the mournful song goes:

“Raise me in your arms, O Mother;
Let me once more look
On the green and waving willows
And the flowing brook.
Hark! the sound of angel music
From the choirs above!
Dearest mother, I am going;
Surely God is love.”

[CHORUS]

Wave willows, murmur waters,
Golden sunbeams, smile!
Earthly music cannot waken
Lovely Annie Lisle.

What does this sad song about the death of a young woman have to do with big guys in shoulder pads and cleats trying to run over, through, and around each other for the glory of Old Mizzou or for the Rock Chalk Jayhawk?   It’s not the words of Annie Lisle’s song.  It’s the music.

That’s what stirred me back to full consciousness. The camera was showing Kansas fans and in the background the KU band was playing the MISSOURI Alma Mater!

But not really.

The words are different but the music is the same.  If you know the tune, sing it with these words from the KU Alma Mater (we’re not talking fight songs here; we’re talking the sentimental songs about our love and loyalty to our university).  If you don’t know the music, check out Youtube. It has several examples.   Here’s the first verse of the KU Alma Mater:

Far above the golden valley
Glorious to view,
Stands our noble Alma Mater,
Towering toward the blue.

Now here’s the first verse of the University of Missouri Alma Mater:

Old Missouri, fair Missouri
Dear old Varsity.
Ours are hearts that fondly love thee
Here’s a health to thee.

Here’s the chorus to the KU Alma Mater:

Lift the chorus ever onward,
Crimson and the blue
Hail to thee, our Alma Mater
Hail to old KU.

And the chorus for the University of Missouri song:

Proud art thou in classic beauty
Of thy noble past
With thy watch words: honor, duty,
Thy high fame shall last!

Neither school song is about a dying maiden.  Both are about undying loyalty.  MU and KU are not the only schools that have found Thompson’s song the perfect vehicle for their Alma Mater.  The internet lists about 110 high schools, colleges, and universities using this tune, including schools in the Philippines, China, Malaysia, India, Turkey, and Taipei.  (The first school to use the music appears to have been Cornell, in 1870.  You might know the first line, “Far above Cayuga’s waters…”)

A lot of people are voicing reasons Mizzou and KU should continue to play their annual football games.  But we think there’s one reason that hasn’t been mentioned yet.

They should do it for Annie.

We have one of those people this year in the Republican race for Lieutenant Governor.  We’ll talk about him in a little bit but we first want to recall some others that easily float to the top of our memory.

Remember Allen Hanson, the 72-year old Concordia resident who had done nine months in a Minnesota prison for felony fraud and larceny in 1978?  In 2002, he crushed the Republican party’s favored candidate, Jay Kanzler, in the primary and the GOP had to deal with having a convicted felon running for state auditor. .

Watching a political party squirm adds entertainment value to a campaign.

He lost the auditor’s race to Claire McCaskill by about 400,000 votes but 665,000 voters cast ballots for him although he had no party support and seldom made any kind of a public appearance.  His candidate was the beginning of an effort to pass the current law saying convicted felons cannot serve in public office.

Or James J. Askew of Oakville.  He lost Democratic primary elections for Secretary of State in 1972, ’76′ 80, and ’84.  He lost in a primary for the U. S. Senate in 1986.  Then, Holy Cow!!!  He won the Democratic primary for Secretary of state in 1988.  That time it was the Democrats who squirmed.

What do you do with a general election candidate that you can’t really take seriously?

Askew was crushed by Roy Blunt in the general election.  But he wouldn’t go away.  He lost the Secretary of State primary in 1992 and again four years later and in 2000.  In ’98 he finished a distant second to Jay Nixon in the Democratic primary for the U. S. Senate nomination.

James J. Askew died in 2008 but during his three months of fame he added some different interest to a campaign.

One guy who was never as much a diplomatic issue for either of our major parties was Jim Noland, Jr., an Osage Beach farmer who was elected to the Missouri House  four times, starting in 1956, then returning in 1962, being re-elected in 1964 and in ’66.  He then was elected to the state senate twice (1968, 1972) and then lost a primary for Congress in ’74, lost a primary for state senate in ’76, lost a race for Lt. Gov in ’68, lost a race for the Missouri House in ’90, won a primary race for Congress in 1994 but lost in the general election.  He tried again in ’96 but lost the primary, won the Congressional primary in 2000 but lost the general election.  Won the Congressional primary in 2002 but lost the general election. He ran for Congress again in 2004 and lost the general election, and won the primary again in 2006 but lost the general election.  He was a Republican who challenged Ike Skelton in those congressional district races.  He apparently loved to campaign. For years we waited to see what office he’s file for this year.

This year we have Mike Carter, a St. Louis real estate attorney, a Republican who ran for Lieutenant Governor in 2008 and got 16 percent of the primary vote.  He told us that in our first interview but he neglected to mention that he got 16 percent of the DEMOCRATIC vote four years ago.

In our second interview, after Peter Kinder decided to try to keep the job Carter and Brad Lager want, he readily admitted he had switched parties.

He’s been billing himself as “an independent-minded Republican who has cast votes for Ross Perot and Ron Paul.”  He says he likes the Republican fiscal conservatism but also understands the need for compassion and supports the safety net positions held by many Democrats.

He told us, “There’s a conundrum for people who really are independents–which moniker they’re going to wear and I don’t think it’s fair that they’re forced to choose..Unfortunately politics is not a smorgasbord where you pick and choose and do what you want out of three or four or five parties. (We have) two of them.  I like a lot out of both parties…The human condition is to stereotype, to put people in bloc groups and act in ethnocentric ways.  It’s more responsible… to be on both parties in two or three different races for different things..I think you should be able to switch all day long because the choices should be as steadfast as they are.” [Excerpts from interview]

Those of us who have seen a lot of campaigns and have lost hours of our lives listening to programmed rhetoric and unfunny humor and innuendo enjoy mavericks like Hanson and Askew and Carter because they color outside the lines.  That’s not to say we take their sides.  Far from it. They’re just parts of a bigger picture. But the ones we’ve talked about here took their candidacies seriously.  They prove anybody can run for public office.  And it’s possible to sometimes succeed.

Sometimes they win.  Then it’s always fun to watch one political party or another wonder what to do about them when they do.

Only one man in Missouri history has held that job for 12 years.  How it happened is a story that I heard years ago from a man who tried to beat him in the primary election for a third term.  Here is part of the story of how Frank G. Harris served three terms as  Lieutenant Governor of Missouri, the only man so far in our history to win the job three times.   The story comes from John G. Christy, the first man to serve more than two terms as Speaker of the House. Christy was a dentist from Festus who had the unusual distinction of serving as Speaker of the House for three of the four terms he was in office.

Kansas City politics–and much of Missouri politics—was in the grasp of Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast in those days.  Candidates for high state office made pilgrimages to “Boss Tom’s” office at 1908 Main Street in Kansas City, seeking Pendergast’s blessings for their candidacies.  Christy was one of those who went to see Pendergast in 1936.  Christy recalled that Pendergast thought Christy wanted to run for governor but Christy told him he was actually interested in the number two job.  “I’ve already endorsed Frank Harris for another term,” Pendergast told him, “but come back in four years.”

Four years later, Pendergast had run afoul of federal tax laws and was in prison, leaving the power-brokering to brother Jim.  And when Christy went to see him, Jim Pendergast told him to go ahead and file. But the Pendergasts, or what was left of the Pendergast machine, never endorsed Christy.

Frank Harris, who had Pendergast support twice before, also filed, seeking to become the first three-term Lieutenant Governor.  Christy recalled with a touch of irony in the telling, that he carried the Kansas City area but he lost central Missouri and southeast Missouri and lost the primary election by about 25,000 votes to Harris..

John G. Christy was a high state officer with the Selective Service system in Missouri during World War II.  In the 1960s and early 70s he became a three-term mayor of Jefferson City.

Frank Harris chose not to run for a fourth term as Lt. Governor and died December 30, 1944, a few weeks before the end of his third term.

Frank Harris remains our only three-peat Lt. Governor in Missouri history.

A year from now we’ll know whether we have a three-Pete.

But some people appear to have missed that point. You will recognize most of their names. Here’s the deal:

The Republican National Committee had some kind of a hissy fit about Missouri’s primary date. It demanded the election be moved back to March so it didn’t conflict with all of the other states having their primaries in February. The party threatened to withhold voting privileges from Missouri’s delegates to the Republican National Convention if the Missouri party didn’t acquiesce.

The Republican-controlled legislature made it clear it didn’t much like the national party telling Missouri it had to push its primary back to a date that many lawmakers felt made it irrelevant. By March, enough other states have held primaries blessed by the national party that the nominee is pretty clear.

The state GOP, under the gun from the national folks to make the change, needed legislative action because the date is in state law.. As you recall, the special session considering the bill to move the primary to March was suffering a bad case of the dithers and didn’t get the law changed by the deadline. So the state party decided our Republican convention delegates would be picked and committed through the caucus system, thus rendering the primary valueless for 2012.

A late effort by the legislature to cancel the presidential primary for 2012 failed on a tie vote in the senate.

So we’re having a presidential primary that some legislators pronounced during the special session as worthless because the caucuses will make the decisions.

Filing for candidates in Missouri’s February 7th primary election opened October 25th. It closes next Tuesday.

Eight Republican candidates have filed to be on the ballot for this election of no significance. You have perhaps heard of some of them:

Gary Johnson
Herman Cain
Mitt Romney
Michael J. Meehan
Rick Perry
Keith Drummond
John Huntsman
Michele Bachmann

They sent representatives to file for them. We didn’t actually see Mitt and Rick and Herman or the others walk into the Secretary of State’s elections office and plop down the filing fee.

One name not on the list will disappoint a small but intense band of true believers: Ron Paul. Newt Gingrich isn’t on the list yet either. But they have until next Tuesday to enter the no-contest contest.

If the 2012 primary does not determine Missouri’s candidate at the national convention, why are all of these people putting their names on the ballot? Well, the probably can’t afford not to be on this ballot of dubious value because there IS value to it. The results will give a candidate or some candidates who run well arguing and negotiating points when caucuses start working. If Michael J. Meehan–a Missourian–gets 60% of the votes, it might be a little uncomfortable for caucus attendees to argue that Missouri should support Keith Drummond at the convention.

Worthless election? Maybe not. We’ll pay attention to it and then we’ll see how the caucuses are affected by the results.

Oh…

There is one candidate in the Democrat primary. A guy from Chicago who lives in government-subsidized housing in Washington, D. C., and hopes voters will renew his lease next November.