Missouri Democrats will have to make their choice in Tuesday’s presidential primary without benefit of a last-minute televised debate in St. Louis.
The Missouri Democratic Party said Friday that it pulled the plug on a Monday night broadcast debate because there was too little time to resolve the candidates’ many scheduling conflicts. A party official in Jefferson City, Mo., also said the prospect of a winter storm over the weekend–when the candidates are trying to visit seven states holding primaries Tuesday–made the debate nearly impossible.
Missouri offers the biggest delegate prize among next week’s primaries–74 pledged and 14 unpledged delegates.
–Tim Jones
BY THE BOOK
Candidates have their talking points. At the Shoney’s restaurant in Aiken, S.C., on Friday morning, Yvonne Kenner had hers.
The 63-year-old homemaker from Ridge Spring, S.C., came to hear Sen. John Edwards from North Carolina armed with a pocket-sized spiral notebook.
In it, she had written four questions she wanted to ask Edwards as she weighs whether to vote for him or the front-runner, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. Her careful script read like a playbook for the Democrats’ campaign against President Bush:
“1. Health care, prescription drugs
2. Economy
3. Did you vote for the Medicare bill?
4. Would you support an independent investigation into Bush’s `going to war’ theories?”
Like many South Carolinians, Kenner was still without electricity because of a recent ice storm. She tried to watch Thursday night’s debate on a battery-operated TV, but it kept fading. So “I came here to listen to him one-on-one,” Kenner said as she sat in a corner booth at Shoney’s.
Soon after, she got to shake hands with Edwards but not ask him all her questions. Still, she liked what he had to say. “I’m impressed,” she said.
–Flynn McRoberts