Almanac Home Browse By State Browse By Name State of Missouri Gov. Carnahan (D) Sen. Bond (R) Sen. Ashcroft (R) Rep. Clay (D-01) Rep. Talent (R-02) Rep. Gephardt (D-03) Rep. Skelton (D-04) Rep. McCarthy (D-05) Rep. Danner (D-06) Rep. Blunt (R-07) Rep. Emerson (R-08) Rep. Hulshof (R-09)

When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out on their expedition to the Pacific, they embarked from St. Louis in 1804. On high ground just below the point where the Missouri River swirls into the Mississippi, St. Louis was at the time the one well-established city in America's interior, with an aristocracy of French merchants, a brawling bourgeoisie of Yankee and southern frontiersmen and fur traders and a proletariat of black slaves. Part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, St. Louis by 1821 was part of the new state of Missouri and for the rest of the century St. Louis and Missouri were the gateway to the frontier. In Missouri, Daniel Boone finally found elbow room. Here were the eastern termini of the Pony Express, in St. Joseph, and the Santa Fe Trail, in Kansas City; here were railroads reaching across the continent, connecting the farmers of vast prairies with their markets. Here also were the Mississippi River steamboats, and here grew up their great chronicler, Mark Twain, and his creations Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and Jim.

For Missouri was not just the gateway to the frontier; it was also the focus of the furious battle over slavery. Missouri was the northernmost slave state at mid-century; it was Missouri ruffians crossing the border and killing antislavery settlers in the Kansas Territory that led proximately to the Civil War. In the 1860s, Missouri had its own mini-civil war in the hilly counties along the Missouri River. Throughout the 19th Century, both before and after the Civil War, Americans turned away from their oceans and headed inward to settle the great interior of the continent. They found Missouri at its heart, with farmland and mines, rivers and railroads, a major manufacturing state -- and in the days before tractors, the nation's leading breeder and trader of mules. In 1874 the Eads Bridge opened, one of very few across the Mississippi, and St. Louis's Cupples Station was the largest rail hub in the world. At the turn of the 20th Century, Missouri was the fifth largest state. St. Louis was the fourth largest city, site of the 1904 World's Fair, and one of the few cities with two major league baseball teams, the Cardinals and the Browns; Missouri, after the 1900 Census, had 16 congressional districts.

Today Missouri does not loom as large in the national consciousness, yet it is in some sense still central. In the 20th Century, Americans -- like the Browns who moved to Baltimore in the '50s and the football Cardinals who moved to Phoenix in the '80s -- increasingly headed to the coasts, to the big cities of the East and to California, and eventually to Florida and Texas. Missouri has had below-average population growth since 1900, and today it is the 16th largest state, with just nine congressional districts. But Missouri, at once southern and northern, eastern and western, is the geographic center of the nation's population. Its airport is TWA's hub; next door is the former headquarters of McDonnell Douglas, which was bought by Boeing December 1996. Its Anheuser-Busch is the world's largest beer producer. And Missouri has again captured Americans' imaginations: if Americans in 1904 flocked to St. Louis on the banks of the Mississippi, in the 1990s their vans and buses were jamming the two-lane road through the Ozarks to Branson, population 3,400, now America's number two tourist destination (with more than six million visitors annually), with country music stars and soft rock veterans, country violinist Shoji Tabuchi, more theater seats than Broadway, and more seats for regularly scheduled music than anywhere else in America.

Politically, Missouri has remained the nation's best bellwether states, having voted for every presidential winner but one (Eisenhower in 1956) in the 20th Century. From the 1960s to the 1980s it mirrored national trends by moving in its congressional politics from pretty solidly Democratic to leaning Republican. It votes for governor in presidential years and, since 1972, has voted for the same party for governor as the nation has for president. Missouri's ancient Civil War political divisions still hold in most rural areas: Little Dixie in the northeast, first settled by Virginians, and the northwest, settled by southerners, vote Democratic; the Ozarks in the southwest, which was pro-Union, is Republican; the southeast is split, like next-door Downstate Illinois. About one-third of the state's votes are cast in metro St. Louis, which is typically more Democratic than the state as a whole. About one-sixth are cast in metro Kansas City, which has been volatile in the 1980s and 1990s; it voted 25% for Ross Perot in 1992, giving him nearly as many votes as George Bush, and tilted Democratic in 1996, voting 66% for Democratic Governor Mel Carnahan. The rest of the state, which casts almost half the votes, went 41%-38% for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 45%-43% for Bob Dole in 1996 -- similar to trends in Downstate Illinois and rural Iowa.

Culturally, Missouri remains more conservative than most bigger states; it was Missouri's restrictions on abortion that were upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1989 Webster case. Even on economic issues it does not have an easy liberalism: voters in 1996 rejected a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage to $6.25. And while its Republican Party has a strong Christian right presence, its Democrats tend to portray themselves as political moderates.

Presidential politics. Missouri's peculiar balance of northern and southern, urban and rural, has helped to make it a presidential bellwether and explains its one deviation in the 20th Century: it voted for Adlai Stevenson in 1956, who capitalized on farmer discontent and whose patent lukewarmness about civil rights helped him carry traditional southern Democrats. In 1992, the economically hard-pressed northern part of the state has trended to the Democrats, and Bill Clinton won 44%-34%. In 1996, although the Dole campaign never targeted the state, rural Missouri moved toward Republicans while the Kansas City area moved toward Democrats, and Clinton's margin was a bit smaller, 48%-41%.

Missouri joined the Super Tuesday primary for 1988, then went back to multi-tiered caucuses to elect delegates. In 1992 the winners were Bill Clinton and George Bush. In 1996 Pat Buchanan won the March 9 Republican caucuses, thanks to support from many religious conservatives, including Phyllis Schlafly, longtime conservative networker, who had moved from Alton, Illinois, across the river to Missouri. After district caucuses and state conventions, the final delegation had 19 Dole, 11 Buchanan and 6 Alan Keyes delegates, the strongest anti-Dole and pro-Buchanan delegation beyond New Hampshire.

Congressional districting. Missouri did not lose any seats in the 1990 Census, but the loss of population in heavily Democratic areas forced new lines which have turned out to help Republicans, who are now down only 5-4 in the delegation.

The People: Est. Pop. 1996: 5,359,000; Pop. 1990: 5,117,073, up 4.7% 1990-1996. 2.0% of U.S. total, 16th largest; 31% rural. Median age: 35.2 years. 14% 65 years and over. 86.9% White, 10.7% Black, 1% Asian; 1.2% Hispanic origin. Households: 56.3% married couple families; 26% married couple fams. w. children; 41% college educ.; median household income: $26,362; per capita income: $12,989; 68.8% owner occupied housing; median house value: $59,800; median monthly rent: $282. 4.6% Unemployment. 1996 Voting age pop.: 3,995,000. 1996 Turnout: 2,158,065; 54% of VAP. Registered voters (1996): 3,339,852; no party registration.

Political Lineup: Governor, Mel Carnahan (D); Lt. Gov., Roger B. Wilson (D); Secy. of State, Rebecca Cook (D); Atty. Gen., Jay Nixon (D); Treasurer, Bob Holden (D); Auditor, Margaret Kelly (R). State Senate, 34 (19 D and 15 R); Senate President, Bill McKenna (D); State House, 163 (87 D, 75 R and 1 vacancy); House Speaker, Steve Gaw (D). Senators, Christopher S. (Kit) Bond (R) and John Ashcroft (R). Representatives, 9 (5 D and 4 R).

Elections Division: 573-751-2301.

Filing Deadline for U.S. Congress: March 31, 1998.

1996 Presidential Vote Clinton (D) 1,025,935 (48%) Dole (R) 890,014 (41%) Perot (I) 217,219 (10%)

1992 Presidential Vote Clinton (D) 1,053,873 (44%) Bush (R) 811,159 (34%) Perot (I) 518,741 (22%)

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