WASHINGTON _ Looking at it conventionally, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's decision last week to spend at least $3.5 million to help Secretary of State Jason Kander win the U.S. Senate seat in Missouri was a classic case of a fundraiser shifting priorities when opportunities elsewhere faded.
But the fluid Senate map in 2016 also touches a more unique complexity in Missouri, where outsider-vs.-insider arguments have historically played out more fiercely than in some other states _ and where an independent voter streak can make party-line appeals moot.
As Democratic Senate candidates' chances have faded in other states _ most significantly Florida and Ohio, where the DSCC has cut support _ Democrats are looking for ways to expand the map in a quest to gain five seats and win the Senate.
Hence, announcements last week that the DSCC would spend another $3.5 million on Kander's behalf in his battle to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. The National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee responded with a $270,000 initial pro-Blunt TV ad buy in the St. Louis media market, with more to follow, an NRSC spokesman confirmed Monday.
Kander's fundraising and poll showings had long made him an attractive dark horse. But he emerged from the shadows when incumbent Republican Sens. Rob Portman in Ohio and Marco Rubio in Florida surged to poll leads.
At the same time it made its Missouri announcement, the DSCC also said it would spend significantly to defeat Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who faces former State Rep. Deborah Ross.
The same kinds of anti-incumbent, anti-status quo impulses that are propelling Kander's challenge of Blunt are the basis of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's appeal in Missouri, and elsewhere.
But in many other states where Republican-held Senate seats are in the balance, Trump does not appear to be doing as well. And in many cases, the Republican incumbent senators face opponents who, unlike Kander, are long-term political insiders with household names.
In that way, Missouri is both an outlier in the conventional fight for the Senate and also a good example of the complicated cross-currents of this election season as a whole.
If polling so far holds, the prospects of some Missourians voting for Trump and Kander is real. Such a split-ticket vote reflects little fealty to any policy positions.
In this construct, both Blunt and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton are the insiders with long Washington pedigrees, even though they are on different ideological planets, and Blunt has vigorously tried to tie Kander to Clinton, and both to President Barack Obama.
This calculus also hinges on the reality that for more than a year, Trump has attacked the Republican status quo _ hence the extraordinary number of establishment Republicans who say they can't vote for him _ as much as he has any Democrat with the possible exception of Clinton.
Missouri has a history of anti-Washington bomb throwers exceeding their national performances. In both 1992 and 1996, independent presidential candidate Ross Perot did better in Missouri than he did nationally. That independent streak may again be emerging in 2016.
"Some Trump voters also kind of like Bernie Sanders," said David Robertson, head of the political scientist department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. "The policy positions _ you can hardly find a match there. But that outsider, that sort of angry outsider feeling of (Trump and Sanders) really speaks to a lot of people who are very frustrated with the American government right now."
Robertson said that Blunt "is really a part of the Republican establishment. I am not sure how many voters in Missouri perceive that, but those that do can see Blunt having a harder time defending himself against these kinds of winds of change that are blowing across the nation."
"Kander is young, he is energetic, he has the military background, and I think that all of those really are helpful to Kander in this race," he continued.
Blunt and Kander are in a virtual clinch, according to polls taken over the past several months, with Kander for the first time taking a slight, within-the-margin lead in the latest one released last week. A RealClearPolitics average of polls on Monday still gave Blunt a 3.8-percentage-point advantage.
But the same Emerson College poll that showed Kander with a 2-point lead over Blunt also showed Trump up 13 points over Clinton in Missouri. Robertson said he'd have to see more polling to consider that a decisive trend, but he also said he believed Trump's national poll surge is reflected in Missouri.
In Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and other states where Republican senators also face stiff challenges, Trump either trails Clinton, or has a much narrower lead than he appears to have in Missouri. Many of these pivotal Senate races do not have an "outsider" Democratic challenger like Kander, in his first term as Missouri secretary of state.
In Wisconsin, current Republican Sen. Ron Johnson trails former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold by about 9 points in recent poll averages, while Clinton's average poll lead has hovered around 5 percentage points. In New Hampshire, two well-known political heavyweights, incumbent Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan, are in a virtual tie, while Trump trails Clinton by an average of 5 percentage points, according to RealClear Politics.
And in Ohio, the Republican Portman has surged to a double-digit lead over former Gov. Ted Strickland, not a new face.
Missouri is one of the rare exceptions where Trump appears to be doing at least as well or better than a Republican senator facing stiff re-election headwinds.
The effect of this counter dynamic in Missouri was illustrated recently when Blunt, who long has favored free-trade agreements, announced that he was re-thinking whether or not to support the Trans Pacific Trade Partnership pact forged by Obama.
Trump has attacked the agreement as a sellout of American workers. Clinton herself has pulled back support after once describing it as a "gold standard" of global trade agreements. That's opened her to charges she is flip-flopping, the same ones that Kander is leveling at Blunt.
Kander, who opposes the TPP, recently was asked whether he was trying to ride the same anti-Washington wave as Trump. He cited Blunt's position on TPP as evidence that it was his opponent who was worried about that wave.
"All I know is that Senator Blunt has never seen a bad trade deal," Kander said.
Is Blunt using trade to catch a bigger Trump wave in Missouri?
"You would have to ask him," Kander said. "I think that Senator Blunt is concerned about keeping his job."
Blunt, on the campaign trail and through surrogates, argues that he is the true outsider because he would prevent Missouri from having Kander as a rubber stamp for a Clinton presidency.
"The status quo in Washington is represented by Hillary Clinton and Jason Kander who want to double down on the failed policies of President Obama and liberals in Congress," said Andy Blunt, Sen. Blunt's son and campaign manager.
Kander, Andy Blunt said, "can't be a rubber stamp for President Obama and Hillary Clinton and then claim to be a change agent."
