JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) --—
Missouri voters have a delivered a sharp rebuke to President Barack Obama's health care law and set the stage for a closely contested U.S. Senate race between Congressman Roy Blunt and Secretary of State Robin Carnahan. The leading Senate candidates and a health care ballot measure each scored resounding victories Tuesday in Missouri's primary elections, capturing more than 70 percent of the vote.The approval of Proposition C will create a Missouri law barring the government from requiring people to have health insurance or from penalizing those who do not. It conflicts with a key element of a new federal law requiring most Americans to have health insurance or face penalties starting in 2014.
The Missouri measure may be largely symbolic, because federal law generally trumps state law. But its passage sent a clear message of discontent to the White House and Democratic-led Congress heading into the midterm elections.
"I don't like government telling us to do anything -- period," said retired shoe store worker Ralph Higgins, 58, of Jefferson City, who voted for Missouri's defiant health care law.
It passed everywhere except in Kansas City and St. Louis, Democratic strongholds. Far more voters cast Republican ballots than Democratic ones, likely boosting the margin of victory for the health care referendum, which was roundly embraced by Republican candidates.
Blunt took more than 71 percent of the vote in a nine-way Republican primary that also featured state Sen. Chuck Purgason, a quail farmer who was a favorite of many tea party activists. Carnahan won easily, receiving 84 percent of the vote, against two lesser-known Democratic opponents.
The general election matchup between Blunt and Carnahan will pit two of Missouri's most prominent political families against each other for the first time. They will be competing to replace Republican Kit Bond, who is retiring after 24 years in the Senate.
Voters also decided several competitive Republican primaries for Congress. They chose former state Rep. Vicky Hartzler, of Harrisonville -- a spokeswoman for a successful 2004 Missouri ballot measure banning gay marriage -- to challenge longtime Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
Springfield auctioneer Billy Long, who promoted himself as a political outsider, won an eight-way Republican primary for Blunt's southwest Missouri congressional seat -- instantly becoming the favorite to win in November in the predominantly Republican district.
Carnahan and Blunt already had been campaigning against each other long before Tuesday's primary victories.
On Wednesday, Blunt said he planned to fly around the state as the official Republican Senate nominee -- visiting Cape Girardeau, Jefferson City, Springfield and Joplin, with more cities to come in the following days.
Carnahan said her supporters would hold house parties all over the state Wednesday.
In interviews, Carnahan and Blunt each asserted that voters would see a stark contrast between them in the general election campaign -- though they described that choice differently. Carnahan claimed Blunt "drove the country into the ditch economically" while he was part of the House Republican leadership during much of the past decade.
"This is setting up a very clear choice in the election between my record of standing up and fighting every single day for Missouri families against Congressman Blunt and his 14-year record in Washington of putting corporate special interests first," Carnahan said.
Blunt said he believes the election will turn not on Carnahan's characterizations of him, but on the issues of jobs, health care, government spending and energy policies that he said threaten to increase utility costs for Missouri consumers.
"I think the absolute reluctance that Robin Carnahan has to talk about the issues will be her undoing in this campaign," Blunt said, "because I'm going to continue to talk about them. I think I'm on the same side that Missouri voters are on."
Many Republican primary voters gave Blunt high marks for his experience.
"He's demonstrated great leadership in the House," said Janet Wheeler, 48, a flight attendant from Columbia. "This is Roy's race to win."
Some Democratic primary voters said they liked Carnahan both for her policies and her political pedigree.
"I'm sticking with the Democratic program and I'm sticking with what she stands for and what the Carnahan family has stood for over the years," said Michiko Smith, 36, of St. Louis, who is an administrator for Nike.
Carnahan, who turns 49 on Wednesday, lives in St. Louis but emphasizes that she still helps run her family's cattle farm near Rolla. She is the daughter of the late-Gov. Mel Carnahan, who died in a plane crash while campaigning for the Senate in October 2000. Her mother, Jean Carnahan, was appointed to the Senate seat posthumously won by her father. Her brother is U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, and her grandfather also was a congressman.
Blunt, 60, frequently recalls how he was raised on a dairy farm in southwest Missouri in a home that lacked running water and insulation. Before winning election to Congress in 1996, he served eight years as secretary of state and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1992. He is the son of a state lawmaker and the father of former Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt.
