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Last Updated June 22, 2005
Jim Talent, a Republican, was elected Missouri's junior senator in 2002. He grew up in Des Peres and lives in Chesterfield, in western St. Louis County. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Chicago law school and clerked for Judge Richard Posner, the federal bench's most prolific writer of opinions and books. He returned to St. Louis and practiced business law. In 1984, at 28, he was elected to the state House. He served as House Minority Leader from 1989 to 1992. In 1992 he ran for the 2d District House seat in the St. Louis suburbs and in the primary beat George W. Bush's cousin George Herbert Walker 58%-32%. In the general Talent faced Democratic incumbent Joan Kelly Horn, who in 1990 defeated Republican Jack Buechner by a grand total of 54 votes. Redistricting had made the district more Republican, and Talent won 50%-48%. In the House he had a solidly conservative record and became a leader on some conservative causes. On the Armed Services Committee he decried the Clinton defense budget cuts and managed to save the F-18, assembled by Boeing (formerly McDonnell Douglas) in St. Louis. In November 1998, when Speaker Newt Gingrich announced he would resign, Talent started running for speaker. But when Majority Whip Tom DeLay endorsed Bob Livingston, Talent withdrew from the race. Talent was reelected by wide margins and could probably have held the House seat for many years. But in February 1999 he announced he was running for governor. He won the primary without serious competition and was locked in a close race with state Treasurer Bob Holden. The central figure in that contest was incumbent Governor Mel Carnahan, the Democratic nominee against Senator John Ashcroft. On October 16, 22 days before the election, Carnahan was killed in a plane crash. The campaigns were suspended; it was too late to change the ballots. A week later Governor Roger Wilson offered to appoint Jean Carnahan to the seat if her husband got more votes than Ashcroft; on October 30 she agreed and in effect became the candidate. On election night Democrats persuaded a judge to hold the polls in St. Louis open an extra 45 minutes. George W. Bush carried the state 50%-47%, but Mel Carnahan led Ashcroft 51%-48% and Bob Holden edged Talent 49%-48%, a margin of 21,000 votes. Ashcroft conceded, although some Republicans urged him to contest the result, and Wilson appointed Jean Carnahan to the vacancy in December. Under Missouri law, she would serve two years and an election for what would be the remaining four years of the term was held in November 2002. In the Senate Carnahan was one of 42 Democrats to vote against the confirmation of Ashcroft to be attorney general. Talent, whose family has always remained in St. Louis County, got a fellowship at Washington University and worked part-time for a law firm in Washington. He seemed, with his nearly successful showing and his congressional experience, a likely candidate for the Senate. Carnahan declined to say whether she was running but in the first half of 2001 her campaign committee raised $2.3 million. Hovering over the race, as in November 2000, were the tragic circumstances in which Carnahan had come to office. Talent's approach was to stress his experience in office and in-depth knowledge of issues; after all, he had served in elective office for 16 years while Carnahan had never been elected to anything. Carnahan did have some political experience: for 40 years she kept a card catalogue of her husband's political acquaintances and wrote many of his speeches; she had an appealing personality and could speak articulately about issues. But in July 2002 National Journal's Charlie Cook wrote of "considerable anecdotal evidence from … both parties that Carnahan sometimes seems lost in the Senate." Carnahan stressed that she had voted with George W. Bush 71% of the time, but also made standard Democratic arguments on issues like Social Security and prescription drugs. One Republican ad accused her of "undermining national unity" by opposing the administration stimulus package and she was attacked for opposing Bush's position on homeland security. Talent quoted the Bible readily; raised in a Jewish family, he became a Christian and as an adult had a profound religious experience while listening to evangelist Luis Palau on Focus on the Family. Carnahan led in polls up through the summer, as national Democratic groups and her campaign dominated the airwaves. But Talent seemed to pull ahead in September. In late October the race tightened again; the death of Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone in a plane crash October 25 may have reminded many voters of Mel Carnahan's death in October 2000. George W. Bush came to Missouri to campaign for Talent no less than five times, including an appearance in St. Charles the day before the election. This may have made the difference. This was another close race: Talent won 50%-49%, with a 21,000-vote margin. He lost the St. Louis area 53%-46% and the Kansas City area 57%-41%, but carried rural Missouri 57%-42%. Talent became a senator when the results were certified November 23. He said he would concentrate on reauthorization of the 1996 welfare act and on his bill to enable small businesses to buy health care plans through trade associations. He was not able to pass the latter, but with Democratic co-sponsors did pass two health bills: with Hillary Rodham Clinton, a bill for a tracking system to make sure active duty military and Reservists get health screenings; with Charles Schumer, a bill funding treatment of sickle cell disease, which mostly affects blacks. Talent and Schumer also joined to call for an investigation of the murder of black teenager Emmet Till in Mississippi in 1956, a crime for which no one has yet been punished. He sponsored the Bush administration's bill to reauthorize the 1996 welfare act. He sponsored a law that provided that small businesses certified at the federal level don't need to be recertified at the state and local levels. On the Armed Services Committee Talent pressed, as he had in the 1990s, for increased defense spending. He argued that the Navy wouldn't be able to maintain superiority in seapower with current and projected spending. "Forward presence and surge capacity should not be an either-or proposition." He was pleased in June 2004 when Boeing won a $3.9 billion contract to produce in St. Louis the Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft, a new anti-submarine plane. And he helped Boeing get $25 million in November 2004 for research at its St. Louis Phantom Works on the X-43C hypersonic plane; the X-43A had flown 7,000 miles per hour over the Pacific. On the transportation bill, Talent and Democrat Ron Wyden proposed a $30 billion bond issue to finance new transportation infrastructure; bondholders would receive income tax credits instead of interest. But his Missouri colleague Christopher Bond, head of the subcommittee handling the bill opposed it, and the Bush administration said it would veto a bill if it included the bonds. Talent formed a Biofuels Caucus with Norm Coleman, Tom Harkin and Blanche Lincoln. He and Bond introduced in March 2005 a bill to increase usage of renewable fuels from 4 billion gallons in 2006 to 8 billion gallons in 2012. Talent comes up for reelection in 2006; it will be his third statewide election in six years. The first two were decided by very narrow margins, and Democrats in early 2005 hoped to field a strong candidate. But newly elected Congressman Russ Carnahan said he wasn't interested, as did his sister, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan. Lieutenant Governor Joe Maxwell said he would focus on his family and law practice. Auditor Claire McCaskill, who lost the 2004 governor's race 51%-48%, at first rejected the possibility of running against Talent but met with recruiters from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in May 2005. At the end of 2004 Talent's campaign treasury contained only $245,000, and he started fundraising in March 2005. But in the 2002 cycle he raised $8.9 million and he is likely capable of raising similar funds again.
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