Then Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama speaks to a crowd of approximately 40,000 people on Oct. 30, 2008, at MU’s Carnahan Quadrangle in Columbia. Obama talked about education, health care, foreign policy and the economy during his speech (Truth Leem/Missourian)
Kamala Harris won’t be campaigning in Missouri in the final stages of her too-close-to-call presidential campaign against Donald Trump. But if the Show-Me State is ever going to regain the bellwether status it once had in presidential races, it may be because of candidates like Adrian Plank.
Plank, who has spent the better part of the last eight years knocking on local doors, represents a concerted effort by state Democratic Party leaders to rebuild the party by contesting as many local races as possible.
His dress as he runs for his second term in the state House of Representatives is casual but practical. Each of his cargo shorts’ many pockets are filled with campaign literature for various Boone County candidates.
As he goes door to door with a myriad of flyers, the 51-year-old union carpenter takes a country-casual approach. He likes to call people “Bubba.” Sometimes he offers unsolicited advice on how to address structural flaws he spots in their homes.
Plank focuses on local issues, like how to get money to improve sewage treatment plants.
“People are tired of the nonsense in politics. At least I am,” he said.
The first two times Plank ran for the Missouri House, he was a sacrificial lamb: A Democratic candidate running in a predominately Republican district with a popular incumbent. Then his luck changed.
Before the 2022 election, the western Boone County House district he now represents was redrawn to include more Democratic territory. The incumbent Republican lawmaker faced term limits. All those years of door-knocking paid off.
Plank now represents the most rural population of any Democrat in Missouri. In 2024, the shoe is on the other foot for Plank. His opponent, John Potter, is facing an uphill battle and raising little money to do it. He’s raised about $4,500 this election cycle, while Plank has generated 10 times that as of the Oct. 15 Missouri Ethics Commission filing deadline.
To former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean, that’s the model for a Democratic comeback in rural states like Missouri. Dean, a one-time presidential contender and former Vermont governor, was the architect of his party’s “50-state strategy” in the mid-2000s.
It stands in stark contrast to the laser focus of this year’s presidential campaign, where all the candidates’ energy and ad dollars are being poured into seven competitive states, which represent 18% of the nation’s population.
For Missouri candidates, that means no visits from presidential contenders who can help draw big crowds, drum up voter enthusiasm or headline high-dollar fundraisers. That puts the onus on statewide candidates to build up their own grassroots operation to be competitive. Dean thinks that’s where Missouri Democrats have to begin their comeback.
“We’re not going to win Senate races in places like Missouri until we start having a ground game,” he said.
Fielding good candidates for lower-level offices — even if, like Plank’s first contests, the races seem unwinnable — is important because candidates like Plank have direct contact with voters and “look them in the eye,” Dean said. “The person running for president can’t really do that with 300 million people.”
Dean said that it’s that kind of small ball that can win big contests.
“That’s what the Republicans have been doing for 35 years, grooming people and starting them, you know, at low levels, and that’s what you have to do,” Dean said.
Nobody knows that better than Russ Carnahan, chair of Missouri’s Democratic Party. More than a decade ago, Carnahan was a casualty of an elaborate and well-publicized strategy by former President George W. Bush’s political adviser, Karl Rove, to invest money and effort into state legislative races. That put Republicans in the driver’s seat when it came to redrawing congressional district lines after the 2010 census. Carnahan was forced into a race against another popular Democratic incumbent and lost the U.S. House seat he had held for eight years.
Since taking over as state party chair last year, Carnahan has focused on recruiting Democrats to run for the legislature. He revived “Camp Carnahan,” a candidate training program that his father, the late Gov. Mel Carnahan, launched in the 1990s.
“Democrats have to show up, and that’s challenging in some areas where you have few or no Democratic elected officials,” Carnahan said.
This year, Democrats recruited enough state House and Senate candidates to earn a grant from the Democratic National Committee. In a year when about 40% of state House races nationally feature only one candidate, Missouri’s Democratic party has candidates in 83% of state House races. That’s the highest number of seats they’ve competed in since 2008.
Carnahan thinks the state party is “making really good headway in Missouri.” But his goals are modest.
“Our short-term goal is to win the two or three seats necessary in each chamber to end the Republican supermajority in the legislature,” he added. One factor bolstering Carnahan’s confidence is the presence of Amendment 3 on the ballot, which is a proposal to restore abortion rights. Carnahan thinks it will be key in driving Democrats to vote.
“In recent years, the Missouri Democratic Party has kind of fallen through the cracks,” Carnahan said. “We’re turning that around.”
Carnahan pointed to Minnesota as an example for what Missouri could become. In 2016, Democrats were down 20 seats to the Republicans in the state House of Representatives. Now, they control the chamber.
“Just a few years ago, their politics in Minnesota looked a whole lot like Missouri today,” Carnahan said. “They turned it around by rebuilding their state party to be a genuine service organization for candidates and local democratic organizations.”
That was how Dean championed the 50-state strategy, by giving state parties money and training to support local candidates. Even if the candidates didn’t win, Dean believed it was important to deliver the party’s message.
“If the Democratic National Party is not in every state, then at the time, Rush Limbaugh gets to give the message for the Democratic Party,” Dean said, referring to the late conservative radio commentator, a Missouri native who used his nationally syndicated show to bait his political opponents.
Dean’s strategy was considered a major success after the 2006 midterms, as Democrats picked up nine state legislative chambers. In 2008, many of the young strategists behind Dean’s data-driven grassroots strategy helped Barack Obama win the White House. Obama lost Missouri by fewer than 4,000 votes out of more than 2.9 million cast.
As it turned out, that marked the end of an era for presidential politics in Missouri. With the exception of 1956, the state predicted the winner of every presidential contest from 1904 to 2004. That put Columbia on the itinerary for many presidential hopefuls.
Columbia native Stephen Webber, running to represent Boone County in the state Senate, said he remembers seeing three Democratic nominees to the national ticket speak on the University of Missouri’s campus — presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988, vice presidential candidate Al Gore in 1992 and Barack Obama in 2008. At Obama’s rally, Webber, who had just returned from active duty in Afghanistan, led the Pledge of Allegiance.
While Obama and members of his team “really did understand grassroots organizing,” Dean said they made a mistake in trying to use it to sell the president’s national policies rather than to support local candidates.
Democrats went from holding a majority in more than 60 legislative chambers in 2008 to controlling 40 in 2010. In Missouri that year, Democrats lost 17 seats in the Missouri House, which is the biggest loss the party has suffered in the 21st century.
That gave Republicans control over the once-every-10-year redrawing of congressional districts, including Carnahan’s. By 2012, Democrats held just two of Missouri’s congressional seats compared to four in 2008. Today, all of Missouri’s statewide elected officeholders are Republican and the state has become “flyover country” for the presidential campaigns.
Carnahan wants to put Missouri back on the presidential map. “Even though we’re not a top tier presidential competitive state, you know, we aspire to be again. And believe we can be again,” he said.
Getting there may require recruiting a lot more door-knockers like Plank. And that won’t be easy. Plank acknowledges that he considered not running after a challenging year for Democrats legislating under a Republican supermajority.
“But then I thought, who else is going to do it?” Plank said, preparing to knock on his next door.
This story originally appeared in the Columbia Missourian. It can be republished in print or online.