Hot Contender: If looks count, Sarah Steelman may be your next governor

Recently, she had a run-in with fellow Republicans over Show Me Ethanol. The $82 million plant cannot qualify for a cheap, taxpayer-financed loan until its investors comply with the treasurer's strict conflict-of-interest policy. The Associated Press reported in January that the ethanol plant's 700 investors include Chillicothe state representative John Quinn, his wife Mary, and the governor's brother, Andy Blunt. Steelman's policy requires the elected officials and their relatives to sell their shares. As a result, the loan has been delayed for more than a year.

A top agriculture official and old senate colleagues paid visits to her office. "I caught so much grief from people," she says quietly, while sitting in a booth at the McDonald's in Salem. A Rolla Bulldogs baseball cap shields her eyes and her long hair falls down around her face like a protective curtain. The intense lobbying on Show Me Ethanol made her doubt her hard-line stance, she says. Then she sought advice from her two wise men, her 82-year-old father, John Hearne, and her father-in-law. "They agreed with me — of course not," she says, her voice rising to a stubborn tone. "Elected officials shouldn't reap the benefits."

Steelman avoids naming those who have opposed her various crusades. She says she harbors no grudges. Her husband, though, can't help but keep score. Says David Steelman: "I remember the enemies."

David Steelman plays a central role in his wife's campaigns. "He is a very, very analytical thinker, and that helps her," says Franc Flotron, a former senator from Chesterfield and friend of the family. Flotron adds, "She is by no stretch of the imagination David's pawn."

An older generation will remember David Steelman as the hotshot politician; his home district elected him as a state representative in 1978, the year he graduated at the top of his University of Missouri-Columbia law class. In the House, he rose to the rank of minority floor leader.

David Steelman earned a reputation as a gloves-off campaigner in 1992, when he ran for attorney general and lost to none other than Jay Nixon. The race was a slugfest. "That thing digressed into, 'You smoked dope. You didn't pay your child support,'" recalls Nixon's former campaign manager, Chuck Hatfield. Hatfield adds that Nixon had in fact admitted to trying marijuana, and Steelman's first wife had gone to court, seeking support for their daughter. A Steelman campaign with Sarah as the candidate would be just as aggressive, Hatfield predicts. "They're not going to overlook anything," he says. "They're not afraid to not only punch back, but to throw the first punch."

Now a lawyer in private practice, Hatfield still crosses paths with the couple. He and David have mutual friends, and he has worked with the treasurer's office on behalf of clients. "She's surprising," he says of Sarah. From a distance, Hatfield says she seems pugnacious. "That whole thing with 'We're not going to invest in terrorist companies,' it looks like she's going out of her way to start a fight." Up close, he says she's unassuming. "Interpersonally, she's not quite as aggressive as some politicians you'll run into."

Hatfield concludes: "I haven't quite figured her out."

---

As a six-year-old in 1964, Sarah and her family rang doorbells for Barry Goldwater. John Hearne raised his three children in the conservative cause, and Steelman remembers the volunteer-run bookstore her father opened after Goldwater's landslide loss to Lyndon Johnson. "I remember going up to The Freedom Center," she says, before ticking off authors in the store's collection: William F. Buckley, as well as the more obscure Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.

At home, Hearne liked to host political discussions with Sarah's neighborhood friends, Democrats included. "I've always been able to appreciate other points of view," she says. But Steelman did not deviate from her father's influence. In 1976 she tagged along with him to the state convention. "I actually got to meet Ronald Reagan then," she remembers. As a senior at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1980, she led a few of her Pi Beta Phi sorority sisters to Iowa for a weekend working a phone bank for Reagan. "It's really pure, grassroots Republican politics that I've been interested in," she says.

Her brother Tom Hearne notes that while they were growing up, Democrats dominated state government, as well as Jefferson City society. He thinks that's why his sister comes across as a right-wing populist. "Growing up in that environment made me, and I suspect Sarah, appreciate the people who've always been on the outside a little bit, looking in."

Steelman chose to announce a second run for treasurer from her parents' Jefferson City kitchen. In a speech recorded by the Missourinet radio network, she called the Hearne home a "magical" place, where a ten-year-old girl was welcome to participate in political discussion. "We didn't discuss polls and triangulations. We discussed ideas. We dreamed and debated about where they might take a people, a nation."

Seated at the kitchen table and reading from a script, she said, "It's a different kind of politics than what has become the norm today. It's a politics that brings me here today, not to tell you that I want to hold an office, but that I want to be your partner. Together we can put the power back where it belongs."

Behind her, relatives unfurled a banner with the slogan: "Power to the people."

---

The party faithful pack into The Columns banquet center in St. Charles on a Friday night in February to hear their leaders give patriotic speeches and crack jokes about Democrats. "Barack Obama managed to carry Missouri, despite Claire McCaskill's endorsement," Governor Matt Blunt says of his former opponent. "Who would've thought Claire McCaskill would endorse the candidate of youth and inexperience?" A slide show playing on the back wall highlights Republican accomplishments: the number of abortion clinics reduced from ten to three, and "NO NEW TAXES" among them.

A Republican candidate's late-winter calendar is full of Lincoln Day dinners like this, but one cannot afford to skip St. Charles. A populous Republican stronghold, the county delivered 59 percent of the vote to George W. Bush in 2004.

In the room full of dark suits, Hulshof's faded-copper hair and round, boyish spectacles are easy to spot. Tossing his head back in laughter, he stands just beyond a gauntlet of kids who are itching to put campaign stickers on anyone who wanders past. Later, Hulshof will give a rousing speech full of poignant imagery: his cotton-farmer father's weathered hands, his uncle Francis exchanging salutes with the first President Bush, and a young war veteran saluting Reagan's casket with an amputated arm.

A former economist and stockbroker, Steelman lacks Hulshof's lawyerly ease in front of a live audience. In St. Charles, she relies on a script. She begins the speech by relating a conversation she had with her son Michael after one of his basketball games. "What is winning, Mommy? What's the definition?" she recounts. "It's not you becoming governor. Winning is making Missouri a better place to live."

Steelman goes on to talk about her record: "I am proud to be pro-life," she says, reminding the audience that as a state senator in 1999 she cast the deciding vote to ban "partial-birth" abortion. The bullet-point draws applause, but the extra attention only seems to make her more nervous. Steelman recovers her poise once she's back in familiar rhetorical territory: "It is the governor's job to fight and work hard for the people of this state. I'm committed to doing that with all my strength."

Later, Steelman says she lost her place in the script, and she regrets using one. "I'm embarrassed that I did so poorly that night." She says she performs better with few notes. "We've had a running discussion about that in the campaign."

Steelman is shy, and even in a one-on-one setting, she lets others do the talking. "It's hard for me to talk about the things I've done. David gets on me for it," she says. During the pre-dinner mingling in St. Charles, Steelman gets an assist from Willliam "Buddy" Hardin, a local activist and friend of her consultant, Jeff Roe. Hardin, a barrel-chested man whose suit lapels are covered with stickers, introduces her to several people. Steelman greets each of her new acquaintances with a long, earnest handshake. "She's not your traditional, kiss-a-baby, look-how-great-I-am politician," Hardin says.

Hardin acknowledges Hulshof's popularity, but asserts, "An informed primary voter has to look at electibility. A female candidate has some advantage, at least getting the door open for a closer look."

With her petite figure and chiseled features, Steelman has never wanted for attention. "She's an attractive candidate — physically," says Scott Alford, a Republican committeeman who lives in Steelman's rural part of the state. Alford is often amused to watch one local supporter's response to her presence. "Every time he sees her, he goes up, 'I gotta get my hug.'"