Battle plan for tonight's Seventh District Congressional debate

The Seventh District caravan arrives in Joplin tonight for a debate at Missouri Southern State University. As I noted earlier, I stopped by the Joplin Globe office (and managed to get out of there alive) and picked up my ticket yesterday), so I will be providing updates both on this blog and my Twitter account throughout the evening.

Later, I will provide an assessment of how the candidates did during the debate. Please feel free to leave comments whether you agree or disagree with my opinions.

For those who would like to watch the debate, but cannot make it to Southern tonight, it will be televised live on Missouri Southern Television.

This is what the candidates need to do tonight:

Gary Nodler- Since this is Nodler's backyard, he needs to avoid any slipups and keep his support steady in his home area. There is no way Nodler can win if any of the other candidates makes any significant inroads in Jasper, Newton, and McDonald counties. Nodler needs to avoid any appearance that he thinks he is superior to those around him (even if someone says something he finds outrageous or silly). Gary Nodler is never going to come off as a regular guy, but he has a record that many in this area find appealing and, with the exception of the laughable Steve Hunter, Nodler is the only candidate from this corner of the district. If he can hold on here, and either Darrell Moore or Goodman, or even one of the lesser-known candidates can pull votes from Billy Long's Springfield stronghold, Nodler has a reasonable chance of emerging the winner come August.

Steve Hunter- It has long been suspected (no pun intended), that the other home candidate today, former Rep. Steve Hunter from Joplin, was planted in the race as a stalking horse for Billy Long, hoping to split Nodler's vote and let Long ride safely into Congress. If that was the strategy, it failed miserably. Perhaps if another candidate had been found, it would have been more effective. Hunter not only established a reputation of being in the pocket of lobbyists while serving the legislature, but he effectively served as a lobbyist, collecting paychecks from Associated Industries of Missouri as a recruiter while unsuccessfuly shepherding legislation favored by AIM. He also has the added weight of the legal troubles facing his wife, former Jasper County Public Administrator Rita Hunter, who is being sued and reportedly investigated by law enforcement for actions she took while in office. Hunter has provided some of the liveliest moments during the campaign, but the district might be served better if he repeated last night and simply failed to show.

Billy Long- People can say whatever they want (and they have) about how poorly Billy Long performs in these forums, and thus far he has- but it doesn't make a bit of difference. All Long has to do to keep from losing ground is not to make any horrible mistakes. If everybody in the Seventh District watched the debates, it might make a difference, but sadly, despite the importance of this election, only a small percentage will spend a summer night, much less two or more summer nights, watching a candidate forum. Long will likely repeat his talking points, stress how he has been signing paychecks for more than 30 years and how we need to send a businessman and not another politician to Washington. He is not necessarily needing to win new voters through these debates; he just needs to make sure he doesn't lose any of those who are already leaning in his direction. As long as he doesn't say something that can be used against him in campaign commercials (and time is running out for that), he will do all right tonight.

Jack Goodman- Goodman has the hardest road to the top among the three upper tier candidates, but he appears to be successfully navigating it. In order for him to come out on top next month, he has to clamp down on his home area- Barry and Lawrence counties, pull in a substantial vote from Taney County and the surrounding area, and carve a sizable chunk out of the home territories of Nodler and Long. From what I am hearing, he is doing that in Newton and McDonald counties, though not as much in Jasper. Billy Long territory has been tougher to corral voters, since Darrell Moore is a hometown boy with strong name recognition. Still, Goodman has not made any slipups, his advertising has been more effective than Nodler's and has held its own with Long's. Goodman seems to be the second choice of a lot of people who are currently in the Nodler or Long camps, which means a slipup by either candidate could open the door. Even without that happening, Goodman, as I have noted earlier, is the candidate with momentum in this race.

Darrell Moore- Who would have thought when this race began that Darrell Moore would not be in the upper tier of candidates, yet as the election winds down, he is smack in the middle- not raising enough money or doing enough to get his message out to join the heavy hitters at the top level, but still having the name recognition and record to avoid being lumped in with those on the lower rung. What Moore hopes to accomplish is beyond me, unless he is now trying to keep from alienating the eventual winner and perhaps landing some plum position in federal government as a result. Moore is the spoiler as far as Billy Long's route to victory is concerned and he also remains the best hope for Gary Nodler and Jack Goodman.

Jeff Wisdom, Michael Moon, Michael Wardell- No name recognition, no money, no chance. I hate to be that blunt (again, no pun intended) about it, but as long as money is king, the chief purpose of the candidates who do not have name recognition is try to bring new ways of thinking to the table, or issues that have not been discussed. This has not happened in this race. All three seem to be capable of doing the job, and Wisdom has a particularly attractive record, with economics, education, and military service in his background. This race has established him as someone to watch and perhaps he should have started at the state rather than federal level.  Moon has not made much of a dent in the race, and I have yet to figure out why Wardell is present. Last night, nearly every comment began with a reference to how the others were right. If Wardell does not feel he has anything different and more valuable to offer, he is simply taking up space. The best bet for Wisdom to get his name into the minds of voters for a future race.

Scott Eckersley and Tim Davis- This is a tough race for the Democratic party. Either candidate is better than 2004 and 2006 candidate John Truman, who not only was the director of the indie movie "Phone Sex Grandma," {starring his mother), but also did not even live in the Seventh District, but both candidates face serious problems. Tim Davis, while obviously knowledgeable, has the look and sound of nearly every straw man the Democrats have put up against Gene Taylor, Mel Hancock, and Roy Blunt for the past 40 years. That's not a knock against Richard Monroe, who ran in 2008, and it is not meant to include such candidates as Richard Franks and Pat Deaton, who came close to knocking off Republican incumbents, but it is hard to imagine Davis winning over the hearts and minds of southwest Missouri independents. Eckersley is more of a traditional politician, as far as looks and sound are concerned, and he has the "Hey, I went to bat for you in Jefferson City" argument that Davis can't make, but he has his own baggage. Ed Martin, as Matt Blunt's chief of staff, ran a sordid smear campaign against Eckersley during the battle over the public's right to know. Those same smears, though almost entirely discredited, will be prime fodder for a GOP candidate in the waning days of a close campaign.