Democrat Robin Carnahan went on the offensive Wednesday in Independence in front of a friendly audience.
“Congressman Blunt has forgotten who he works for,” she told labor representatives gathered at a United Steelworkers subdistrict office. Carnahan, Missouri’s secretary of state, is running for the U.S. Senate against U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, a Republican from southwest Missouri who was a top leader in the House when his party controlled in it the early and mid-2000s. The election is Nov. 2.
Carnahan consistently portrayed Blunt as being too close to special interests such as big banks and big oil. “This guy is in the pockets of those folks,” she said, pointing to more than $1 million in campaign donations from energy companies and $2.5 million from banks. She also drew a connection between Blunt’s support for those companies’ interests and the current economic slide.
“Only in Washington does someone come in after a performance like that and ask for a promotion,” she said.
Carnahan has been making similar visits with union members around the state. On Wednesday, she listened to their suggestions: Rebuild the country’s industrial base. Buy American. Trade wars are bad, but we need fair trade. One suggested simply banning lobbying.
Carnahan said the real problem there isn’t lobbying itself but the money that gets tied up in it.
“That’s not the American way,” she said. “We ought not be having them buy our elections.”
Carnahan was particularly critical of Blunt’s support for deregulating the financial industry in the late 1990s.
“And then when the thing went wrong, they come running to the government,” she said.
Carnahan said she was particularly distressed that even after the Wall Street meltdown of 2008 it took Congress two years to pass financial reform and still left the “too big to fail” idea in play. She noted that four banks hold 40 percent of the market.
“Now you tell me what’s going to happen if one of them gets in trouble and they go down to Washington asking for help,” she said.
Carnahan hammered away at Blunt’s connections to lobbyists.
“How many more of his cronies need to get taken care of before we say ‘enough?’” she said.
The half-hour get-together was mostly give and take. “Bingo,” said one union member when Carnahan said it’s time to stop giving tax breaks and other incentives to businesses that move manufacturing jobs overseas.
