Democrats hope stem cell stance crosses party lines
CAMPAIGN '06
Democrats hope stem cell stance crosses party lines
By Jill Zuckman
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Published October 24, 2006
ST. LOUIS -- As baseball fans across Missouri watched the first game of the World Series, they saw Michael J. Fox, the actor-turned-activist for embryonic stem cell research, endorse Democrat Claire McCaskill for Senate and sharply criticize Sen. Jim Talent, the Republican incumbent who backed President Bush's veto of legislation to expand that research.
"They say all politics is local, but it's not always the case," said Fox in the television ad as his body swayed uncontrollably because of Parkinson's disease. "What you do in Missouri matters to millions of Americans, Americans like me."
At the heart of McCaskill's campaign--and the campaigns of more than a dozen Democratic candidates running for the House, Senate and governor--is support for the controversial research and the possibility that it may unlock cures for a range of diseases and conditions affecting 100 million people nationwide.
Candidates from Maryland to Wisconsin and New Jersey to Illinois plan to spend the closing days of the election season emphasizing their support for the research.
Fox is scheduled to appear at a campaign rally Tuesday in Wheaton to support Tammy Duckworth, the Democrat running to replace retiring Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.).
Candidates supporting embryonic stem cell research hope the issue will boost their prospects with a broad swath of voters more than it will hurt them with religious conservatives who believe scientists are immorally destroying life in the pursuit of their goals.
"Yes, it has an impact on you when your priest talks about this issue, but I think it has a much bigger impact on you if your grandmother has Alzheimer's," said McCaskill, the Missouri state auditor.
Her eyes brimmed with tears as she talked about Fox's struggle with Parkinson's and about her high school boyfriend who died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, a fatal neurological disease that attacks the nerve cells that control the muscles.
Along with the television commercial for McCaskill, Fox has done ads for Rep. Benjamin Cardin, running for the Senate from Maryland, and Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, who is seeking re-election. Fox's efforts already have inspired a conservative backlash, with Rush Limbaugh suggesting Monday that the actor was "either off his medication or acting" when he showed symptoms of Parkinson's during the McCaskill commercial.
Issue on ballot in Missouri
Here in Missouri, a longtime bellwether for the national mood, the stem cell issue is particularly prominent because of a proposed constitutional amendment on the Nov. 7 ballot to prevent the research from being criminalized, as some legislators have tried to do.
The fight over the initiative has resulted in millions of dollars spent on commercials, billboards and lawn signs, as well as a huge grass-roots effort involving churches throughout the state. Both sides complain that the other has lied to advance its cause.
Nobody knows what impact it will have on the Senate race, considered to be the closest in the nation. Will moderate Republicans who support stem cell research vote for McCaskill because they are unhappy with Talent's position? Will Roman Catholic and evangelical voters turn out in large numbers to oppose the initiative and also vote for Talent?
What does seem clear is that Republicans are deeply divided.
"There are a lot of Republicans who feel strongly that these cells in a petri dish are the equivalent of a person, and there are other Republicans who feel that these cells in a dish not implanted in a mother are not the equivalent of a person," said former Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.), the influential senior statesman of Missouri politics and a leader in the fight for stem cell research.
Danforth's brother, Donald, died of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in 2001.
"When you see somebody you love suffer and die from one of these diseases, and medical researchers say this could be the key to finding the cure, then you want the researchers to go forward so other people won't go through the same experience," Danforth said.
Danforth said he has met many Republicans who refuse to vote for Talent because of his opposition to the research as well as his opposition to the ballot initiative.
Danforth would not say how he will vote in the Senate race.
"On the one hand, this is an exceptionally important issue for me. I cannot overemphasize how important this issue is," he said after a long pause. "On the other hand, I try to be loyal to my party to maintain my credentials within the party to hopefully change it from within."
`Minor factor' for voters?
Terry Jones, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said Talent's loss of some moderate Republicans is likely to be outweighed by the religious conservatives who are stirred by the issue to go to the polls.
"It's a very minor factor in the voters' decision about the Senate race," Jones said.
John Hancock, a former executive director of the Missouri Republican Party, said the issue is unlikely to determine who wins the Senate race because voters will be focused on the ballot question when thinking about stem cell research.
"The reality is that the voters are going to decide the policy at the polls," he said. "If the policy was dependent on the outcome of the Senate race, it would potentially have more impact on people's votes."
To Fox, however, the outcome of the Missouri race, and other congressional contests, does matter.
Congress voted to give scientists broader access to embryonic stem cell lines for federally funded research. But Bush vetoed the legislation in July, and the House fell 51 votes short of the number necessary to override it.
Fox would like to elect enough lawmakers who favor the research to pass another expansion and override a presidential veto.
"The veto was not a surprise, but it still stung," Fox said in an interview. "In the entire community of people with disease and chronic illness and spinal cord injury that deal with stem cell research, we want our voices heard and we want to be in a position next year to have a veto-proof margin so we can move ahead with this."
Still, many Republicans point out that most voters are more concerned about the war in Iraq and other issues than they are about stem cell research as they evaluate the two Missouri Senate candidates.
In Columbia the other day, Talent addressed the party faithful at Boone County Republican headquarters during a long day of campaigning with the state's senior senator, Kit Bond (R-Mo.). He touted his efforts to work with Democrats to tackle the problem of methamphetamine addiction, to pursue energy independence with increased ethanol production and drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic, as well as the need to secure the nation against terrorism.
"If there's an international phone call and Al Qaeda is on the line, we ought to find out what they're talking about," Talent told the supportive audience.
Talent doesn't spotlight stance
One thing Talent did not address was his opposition to embryonic stem cell research or the ballot initiative. In an interview, he said most people don't vote based on just one issue, but rather consider the candidate as a whole.
"There's a range of issues people are concerned about--the war, energy prices--health care comes up quite a lot, believe it or not, because that's something people are struggling with on a day-to-day basis," he said.
Still, for those who are interested, Talent's aides carry a copy of a nine-page speech he delivered on the Senate floor in February 2005 in which he expressed his concerns about cloning and noted that the rewards from creating a pluripotent stem cell are purely speculative.
Meanwhile, he's sticking to what he wants to talk about, while McCaskill sticks to her issues.
"Ballot issues are something you really can't do anything about," Talent said. "So I try to focus my campaign on what I can do something about. It just makes sense to me."
McCaskill said she believes that in a low-turnout, non-presidential election year, the people who feel most strongly about an issue will go to the polls. And she argues that the intensity belongs to the people who want to protect and expand embryonic stem cell research.
"If you feel really intensely in favor of this, that means you are informed, you're knowledgeable and you know that there are two Senate candidates--one who is really good on this issue and one who is really bad on this issue," she said.
Democrats hope stem cell stance crosses party lines
By Jill Zuckman
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Published October 24, 2006
ST. LOUIS -- As baseball fans across Missouri watched the first game of the World Series, they saw Michael J. Fox, the actor-turned-activist for embryonic stem cell research, endorse Democrat Claire McCaskill for Senate and sharply criticize Sen. Jim Talent, the Republican incumbent who backed President Bush's veto of legislation to expand that research.
"They say all politics is local, but it's not always the case," said Fox in the television ad as his body swayed uncontrollably because of Parkinson's disease. "What you do in Missouri matters to millions of Americans, Americans like me."
At the heart of McCaskill's campaign--and the campaigns of more than a dozen Democratic candidates running for the House, Senate and governor--is support for the controversial research and the possibility that it may unlock cures for a range of diseases and conditions affecting 100 million people nationwide.
Candidates from Maryland to Wisconsin and New Jersey to Illinois plan to spend the closing days of the election season emphasizing their support for the research.
Fox is scheduled to appear at a campaign rally Tuesday in Wheaton to support Tammy Duckworth, the Democrat running to replace retiring Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.).
Candidates supporting embryonic stem cell research hope the issue will boost their prospects with a broad swath of voters more than it will hurt them with religious conservatives who believe scientists are immorally destroying life in the pursuit of their goals.
"Yes, it has an impact on you when your priest talks about this issue, but I think it has a much bigger impact on you if your grandmother has Alzheimer's," said McCaskill, the Missouri state auditor.
Her eyes brimmed with tears as she talked about Fox's struggle with Parkinson's and about her high school boyfriend who died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, a fatal neurological disease that attacks the nerve cells that control the muscles.
Along with the television commercial for McCaskill, Fox has done ads for Rep. Benjamin Cardin, running for the Senate from Maryland, and Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, who is seeking re-election. Fox's efforts already have inspired a conservative backlash, with Rush Limbaugh suggesting Monday that the actor was "either off his medication or acting" when he showed symptoms of Parkinson's during the McCaskill commercial.
Issue on ballot in Missouri
Here in Missouri, a longtime bellwether for the national mood, the stem cell issue is particularly prominent because of a proposed constitutional amendment on the Nov. 7 ballot to prevent the research from being criminalized, as some legislators have tried to do.
The fight over the initiative has resulted in millions of dollars spent on commercials, billboards and lawn signs, as well as a huge grass-roots effort involving churches throughout the state. Both sides complain that the other has lied to advance its cause.
Nobody knows what impact it will have on the Senate race, considered to be the closest in the nation. Will moderate Republicans who support stem cell research vote for McCaskill because they are unhappy with Talent's position? Will Roman Catholic and evangelical voters turn out in large numbers to oppose the initiative and also vote for Talent?
What does seem clear is that Republicans are deeply divided.
"There are a lot of Republicans who feel strongly that these cells in a petri dish are the equivalent of a person, and there are other Republicans who feel that these cells in a dish not implanted in a mother are not the equivalent of a person," said former Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.), the influential senior statesman of Missouri politics and a leader in the fight for stem cell research.
Danforth's brother, Donald, died of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in 2001.
"When you see somebody you love suffer and die from one of these diseases, and medical researchers say this could be the key to finding the cure, then you want the researchers to go forward so other people won't go through the same experience," Danforth said.
Danforth said he has met many Republicans who refuse to vote for Talent because of his opposition to the research as well as his opposition to the ballot initiative.
Danforth would not say how he will vote in the Senate race.
"On the one hand, this is an exceptionally important issue for me. I cannot overemphasize how important this issue is," he said after a long pause. "On the other hand, I try to be loyal to my party to maintain my credentials within the party to hopefully change it from within."
`Minor factor' for voters?
Terry Jones, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said Talent's loss of some moderate Republicans is likely to be outweighed by the religious conservatives who are stirred by the issue to go to the polls.
"It's a very minor factor in the voters' decision about the Senate race," Jones said.
John Hancock, a former executive director of the Missouri Republican Party, said the issue is unlikely to determine who wins the Senate race because voters will be focused on the ballot question when thinking about stem cell research.
"The reality is that the voters are going to decide the policy at the polls," he said. "If the policy was dependent on the outcome of the Senate race, it would potentially have more impact on people's votes."
To Fox, however, the outcome of the Missouri race, and other congressional contests, does matter.
Congress voted to give scientists broader access to embryonic stem cell lines for federally funded research. But Bush vetoed the legislation in July, and the House fell 51 votes short of the number necessary to override it.
Fox would like to elect enough lawmakers who favor the research to pass another expansion and override a presidential veto.
"The veto was not a surprise, but it still stung," Fox said in an interview. "In the entire community of people with disease and chronic illness and spinal cord injury that deal with stem cell research, we want our voices heard and we want to be in a position next year to have a veto-proof margin so we can move ahead with this."
Still, many Republicans point out that most voters are more concerned about the war in Iraq and other issues than they are about stem cell research as they evaluate the two Missouri Senate candidates.
In Columbia the other day, Talent addressed the party faithful at Boone County Republican headquarters during a long day of campaigning with the state's senior senator, Kit Bond (R-Mo.). He touted his efforts to work with Democrats to tackle the problem of methamphetamine addiction, to pursue energy independence with increased ethanol production and drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic, as well as the need to secure the nation against terrorism.
"If there's an international phone call and Al Qaeda is on the line, we ought to find out what they're talking about," Talent told the supportive audience.
Talent doesn't spotlight stance
One thing Talent did not address was his opposition to embryonic stem cell research or the ballot initiative. In an interview, he said most people don't vote based on just one issue, but rather consider the candidate as a whole.
"There's a range of issues people are concerned about--the war, energy prices--health care comes up quite a lot, believe it or not, because that's something people are struggling with on a day-to-day basis," he said.
Still, for those who are interested, Talent's aides carry a copy of a nine-page speech he delivered on the Senate floor in February 2005 in which he expressed his concerns about cloning and noted that the rewards from creating a pluripotent stem cell are purely speculative.
Meanwhile, he's sticking to what he wants to talk about, while McCaskill sticks to her issues.
"Ballot issues are something you really can't do anything about," Talent said. "So I try to focus my campaign on what I can do something about. It just makes sense to me."
McCaskill said she believes that in a low-turnout, non-presidential election year, the people who feel most strongly about an issue will go to the polls. And she argues that the intensity belongs to the people who want to protect and expand embryonic stem cell research.
"If you feel really intensely in favor of this, that means you are informed, you're knowledgeable and you know that there are two Senate candidates--one who is really good on this issue and one who is really bad on this issue," she said.
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