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Last Updated June 22, 2005
One of the biggest tourist destinations in America today is Branson, Missouri--something almost no one predicted 25 years ago. Even today Branson has only 6,231 residents, is served by two-lane roads, is nowhere near a major airport; but it thrives, paralleling the surging popularity of country and western music. Branson was put on the map early in the century by Harold Bell Wright's novel, The Shepherd of the Hills, about the hardy people of the mountains, hills and meadows of southwest Missouri, just north of Arkansas. More tourists came in with completion of the Ozark Beach Dam that created Bull Shoals Lake in 1913, lured by the native bass and stocked trout. Then in the 1960s, new lakes were formed, a Shepherd of the Hills pageant and Silver Dollar City were started, and entertainers--the five Maybe brothers performing as "The Baldknobbers" and Box Car Willie from the Grand Ole Opry--started performing. Today Branson has 7 million visitors a year, 80% of whom have visited before, and more than two dozen theaters with 56,000 seats--more than Broadway. What do people like about Branson? The non-stop entertainment and fishing and boating; country music and family style entertainment; plenty of shopping and a safe atmosphere. Missourians like them enough to have rejected 56%-44% in August 2004 a ballot measure that would have allowed a gambling casino in Rockaway Beach a few miles away; they like things in Branson as they are. These are also the things that have made southwest Missouri the fastest growing part of the state in the last 20 years, generating new businesses and attracting retirees as well as vacationers. Workers come to Branson from as far away as Springfield, the biggest city in southwest Missouri. Springfield is the headquarters of such middle American institutions as the Mid-America Dairymen, the nation's largest milk producers' cooperative; the Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World, probably the nation's largest fishing equipment store; the Assemblies of God, one of the nation's and the world's largest and fastest-growing Protestant denominations; and two of the nation's three largest coachbuilders (stretch limousine manufacturers), Springfield Coach and DaBryan Coach Builders, with a third nearby in Seymour, Executive Coach, run by a Nigerian immigrant. Springfield and Greene County are home to 300 churches, one for every 826 people. Southwest Missouri is also dairy country and has a growing poultry industry; Latinos have been moving into McDonald County to work in chicken plants. The Ozarks, long considered a backwater, are on the cutting edge of many trends in today's America. The 7th Congressional District of Missouri includes Branson and Springfield and most of southwest Missouri. Historically, this area has been Republican since it opposed secession in 1861: pro-Union Springfield changed hands several times as Missouri staged its own civil war. Its conservative response to the big-spending government of the 1960s and cultural liberalism of the 1970s reinforced its allegiance, and now this is the most Republican part of Missouri. The congressman from the 7th District is Roy Blunt, a Republican first elected in 1996. Blunt grew up on a dairy farm near Springfield, in a political family; his father was a state representative. He graduated from Southwest Baptist University, 25 miles north of Springfield, and taught high school and college history and government. He got his start in politics by volunteering for John Ashcroft's unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 1972; the story goes that he showed up at campaign headquarters in his pickup truck, Ashcroft asked, "Have you got gas in this truck?" Blunt said yes and became his driver (another congressman, Democrat Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota, also started his political career driving around a future senator). In 1973, 33-year-old freshman Governor Christopher Bond, in his second appointment, named the 23-year-old Blunt to be Greene County clerk. In 1980 Senator John Danforth asked him to run for lieutenant governor; he did and lost. In 1984, at 34, Blunt was elected Missouri secretary of state, the first Republican to win that office in half a century; he was reelected with 60% of the vote in 1988. In 1992 he ran for governor and lost the Republican primary to William Webster, 44%-39%. Blunt became president of Southwest Baptist University. In 1996 Congressman Mel Hancock kept his pledge to serve only four terms and retired. In the primary Blunt faced Gary Nodler, businessman and one-time staffer to Congressman Gene Taylor, and won 56%-44%. In the general election Blunt won 65%-32%, running ahead of the Republican ticket and carrying every county with at least 62% of the vote. He has been reelected easily since. Blunt has shown great political skills and is now majority whip. He wanted to run for freshman class president in 1997, but at then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay's suggestion ran for the freshman spot on the Republican Steering Committee, on which he worked to get good committee assignments for freshmen. RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman was working for freshman Kay Granger then and remembers Blunt, "He was the one person every single member of his class felt like they could go to solve a problem." In the process he got good committee assignments himself--Agriculture, International Relations, Transportation and Infrastructure. On International Relations, he supported the bill to penalize countries that practice or allow religious persecution--a concern of denominations like the Assemblies of God, which has more members abroad than in the United States. Three weeks after the 1998 election Blunt won a seat on the Commerce Committee. Then in January 1999 Tom DeLay plucked him from the ranks of 48 deputy whips and appointed him Chief Deputy Whip, the position Dennis Hastert held until his astonishing elevation to speaker. Blunt has said that he never lobbied for the job and didn't even know he was being considered until he read it in a newspaper. On a number of issues Blunt was given the job of making more palatable to core Republicans measures that were going through in any case. As chief deputy whip, Blunt spent much time meeting with lobbyists, organizing groups interested in different issues like trade, taxes and energy. He developed a reputation as a good listener and took care to pay attention to party moderates. David Rehr, a lobbyist close to the Republican leadership, describes him thus: "Roy is more of the velvet glove, almost a confessor figure. He's the kind of guy who is able to say, 'That's a really good idea, but maybe it's better to do it this way,' without being confrontational." Speaker Dennis Hastert assigned Blunt to mediate disputes between Republicans and to win over votes on critical issues. Blunt also weighed in on some local issues. After Democrat Rob Andrews complained that New Jersey-licensed limousines were not allowed into New York without paying a tax, Blunt, representing the number one stretch-limousine-producing district, sponsored a bill limiting local regulation of limousines that cross state lines. It was opposed by New York officials eager for revenue and Nevada limousine drivers, worried about competition from California drivers; but it passed by wide margins and was signed into law in November 2002. In 2000 Blunt began keeping a list of members who would back him for a higher leadership position. In the 2002 cycle he headed the Battleground 2002 operation, which contributed $5.6 million to Republican House candidates. In December 2001 Majority Leader Dick Armey announced that he would retire in 2002. Immediately DeLay began to run for majority leader and Blunt said he would run for majority whip. Ray LaHood of Illinois, whose evenhanded presiding over important sessions has impressed members in both parties, announced he was running for whip too. But in February 2002 he said he would not run and was supporting Blunt; he found that Blunt had the support not only of most Republicans but of most moderates. In November 2002 both DeLay and Blunt were elected to their new positions without opposition; DeLay presented Blunt with a velvet-covered hammer. As whip, Blunt made two decisions on his own which showed that he was not DeLay's puppet. One was his decision to name as his chief deputy whip Eric Cantor, who had served only one term and who is the only Jewish Republican in the House; Cantor was as astonished as everyone else. And he proposed to change House rules by repealing the eight-year term limit Newt Gingrich had imposed on speakers; that was agreed to by the whole House. Naturally there was speculation that Blunt might some day run for speaker, presumably against DeLay. Blunt was for the most part successful as whip, but stumbled a couple of times. In June 2003 the leadership had to pull a compensatory time bill from the floor when it became apparent there were not enough votes to pass it. The Washington Post soon after reported that Blunt had inserted into the homeland security bill in November 2002 a provision benefiting Philip Morris. But Blunt met his toughest challenge in 2003, passing the Medicare/prescription drug bill. In June he assembled a huge coalition and helped to produce a one-vote victory on the floor. The leadership's strategy was to get a bill through and then negotiate in conference with the Senate. As Blunt put it later, "Our strategy in conference has to be a starting point that doesn't worry about a filibuster. We don't need a bill that 75 or 90 senators will vote for. We just need a majority." In November on the vote on the conference report the leadership went to the floor without the needed 218 votes; the roll call started at 3 a.m. and lasted a record two hours and 53 minutes. Finally conservatives Trent Franks and Butch Otter were persuaded to switch their votes by the possibility that if the Republican bill failed the Democrats would get a vote on a bill with much more government involvement; they switched and the bill passed 220-215. Later Blunt reflected, "It was important that we win that vote on the floor. We passed legislation three times straight to add prescription drugs to Medicare. It is important for Medicare to catch up with medicine." In December 2004, after Republicans increased their majority from 229-206 to 232-203, Blunt worried that more Republicans would feel free to go off the reservation. "Members expect to get free votes. It will make a difference in how we approach issues on a day in and day out basis." Blunt has been reelected by very wide margins. His son Matt Blunt was elected to the state House in 1998 and was elected to the statewide office of secretary of state in 2000--a sensitive position given the allegations of vote fraud in St. Louis in 2000. In January 2004, with his father at his side in the high school gym in Strafford in Greene County, Matt Blunt announced his candidacy for governor. But the two then parted their ways: Matt Blunt campaigned all over Missouri, while Roy Blunt did most of his campaigning for House Republicans across the nation. In November Matt Blunt was elected governor by a 51%-48% margin; he won 67%-32% in the counties in the 7th District. Roy Blunt was reelected by a 70%-28% margin. Will Roy Blunt someday be speaker of the House? He stands below Tom DeLay on the leadership ladder, but DeLay is controversial and in early 2005 was attacked by Democrats and the news media on ethics issues; he might choose to stand aside, as he did when Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston resigned in 1998. In any case, Speaker Dennis Hastert faces, thanks to Blunt's initiative, no limit in Republican rules from continuing to serve as speaker indefinitely and has shown no inclination to retire.
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