Will Schmitt

WSCHMITT@NEWS-LEADER.COM

When Sen. Claire McCaskill said she wouldn't support a single-payer health care system, the audience could have heard a pin drop.

McCaskill, a Democrat, rounded out her foray into conservative Missouri on Friday morning by holding an hourlong town hall at The Old Glass Place in downtown Springfield. Her personal appearance was part of a string of events that allowed constituents to ask questions of Missouri's senior senator.

Topics including opioid abuse, whether to work with or resist President Donald Trump, climate change, abortion, taxes, education, Russia and Syria. A full video of the town hall is available online at News-Leader.com.

McCaskill is expected to face heavy Republican opposition in her 2018 re-election run, which she first announced last year in Springfield. She's been criticized by some conservatives for being too liberal and by some liberals for being too conservative. Friday, she demonstrated self-awareness of this predicament.

"I may be primaried, but I have to be who I am," she told reporters afterward. "I'm a moderate, and I'm not going to pretend that I'm not.

"I'm used to having folks on the far ends be cranky with me, and I hope they understand that on a whole lot of things, I am there for them, in terms of their values. But I am also not going to veer to the left when it's fiscally irresponsible to do so."

This was the case with her opposition to a single-payer health care system, which she said would be too expensive and was not realistic. A single-payer system, in which a public entity manages health care as opposed to myriad private companies or public programs, became a talking point for progressives during the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The crowd, which had cheered the mention of single-payer, fell silent at her answer. But generally, McCaskill's answers resonated with her audience, even on potentially divisive topics.

One question McCaskill fielded was whether she would support aborting fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome.

"That would never be an option I would consider," she said, adding that she didn't believe the government should be making that decision. And she pivoted to praising the importance and abortion-reducing effect of birth control, which earned her some rousing cheers from several in the audience clad in pink Planned Parenthood shirts.

Other questions dealt with Trump, ranging from his agenda's effect on the environment to whether he was colluding with Russia. One questioner asked McCaskill whether she considered herself part of the "resist Trump" movement.

Instead of bashing Trump, McCaskill stressed the importance of bipartisan collaboration and said she would support Trump when it came to investing in infrastructure or reducing prescription drug costs.

She also said it was important to wait for the conclusion of the multiple investigations into whether the Trump campaign was working with agents of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"While it may feel good to throw around 'treason' and 'impeachment' and all of that," McCaskill said, "for me, I need to keep my head down and keep trying to work on your behalf."

She added that she was disappointed that Trump's budget eliminated the Meals on Wheels program, echoing ongoing efforts from the left to draw attention to the expense of Trump's semi-regular trips to his southern mansion in Palm Beach, Florida.

"If Donald Trump would stay home from Mar-A-Lago one weekend," she said, "it would pay the entire Meals on Wheels budget for the state of Missouri for two years."

She also said she was concerned that the Republicans' continued effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would drive up health care costs in Greene County and that the plan was being worked out behind closed doors without input from her or other Democrats.

McCaskill also said she supported Trump's decision to fire missiles at Syria following a chemical attack that killed 89 people. U.S. officials have said they believe the strike was ordered by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, though Assad has said this is a "fabrication."

However, McCaskill said she was concerned about whether Trump's decision was part of a strategy or was a moment of impulsiveness, and she is still waiting to see Trump's strategy to defeat ISIS. (She said she hadn't been briefed on the more recent decision to aim a massive non-nuclear bomb at ISIS-held areas in Afghanistan, killing 36 Islamic State fighters.)

"Now, (Trump) says he wants to be unpredictable. I gotta tell you, unpredictability on a world stage is dangerous," she told reporters afterward. "Our allies need to know where we stand. They need to know that we'll stand with them. This changing (his) mind every day is about instability, and instability is where people like the leader of North Korea and Syria thrive."

McCaskill also addressed her opposition to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, which earned her favor from the left and frustration from the right, and tied her resistance to Gorsuch to the Colorado judge's opinion in the "frozen trucker" case, where Gorsuch ruled against a trucker who was fired for abandoning his stalled vehicle to seek help in subzero temperatures.

Reactions and a pre-emption

Before the event started, Republicans were trying to head off McCaskill's message.

Rep. Jeff Messenger, R-Republic, met with a News-Leader reporter in a nearby parking lot about a half-hour before McCaskill took the stage. He took issue with McCaskill's voting record and criticized her for being "real strong with Obamacare."

Missouri may not have any sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants, Messenger said, but McCaskill's vote to fund such cities goes against Missouri values, as does her support for amnesty. McCaskill was first elected to the Senate in 2006 on a platform that included blanket opposition to amnesty, though she voted for the DREAM Act in 2009 to establish amnesty for certain people brought to the country as children.

"Missouri people don't have a problem with immigrants being legal, but just to give amnesty to illegal immigrants is not a value that Missourians hold dear to their hearts," Messenger said.

Messenger also brought up McCaskill's opposition to Gorsuch, and he said that a lot of pro-Trump voters cast their ballots with the Supreme Court in mind.

"I think it's important that the people understand that McCaskill, even though she tries to make herself out a moderate, she's really not," Messenger said.

Even so, McCaskill stuck by her self-proclaimed moderate status in her remarks, which came at one of several town halls she has held across the state this week. After an event in Rolla later Friday, McCaskill's town hall total stood at eight for the week.

Stephen Webber, chair of the Missouri Democratic Party, noted that none of the Missouri Republicans in Congress had held such a town hall during the current Senate break. Webber said their absence was disappointing, though it made McCaskill's presence all the more impressive.

"It does take guts to stand in front of constituents and answer questions that you haven't screened beforehand," Webber said.

Since the November elections, there has been a nationwide clamor for senators and representatives to return to their districts and take questions from voters. Attendees, most of whom appeared to support McCaskill, were invited to write down questions and place them in a basket, where they were to be drawn by somebody who said they would never vote for McCaskill.

That turned out to be 21-year-old Nick Comito, a New Jersey native who is studying business and marketing at Ozarks Technical Community College.

Comito told the News-Leader afterward that he attended to speak against McCaskill, though several people asked him afterward whether he would change his mind.

Never going to happen, Comito said. He considers himself "a loyal conservative" and took issue with McCaskill's opposition to Ben Carson as secretary of the Housing and Urban Development Department.

Even so, Comito thought McCaskill "came off as honest." He said he would like to see Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft run against her, and speculation about which Republican will oppose her runs rampant.

The two names mentioned by both Webber and Messenger were those of Attorney General Josh Hawley and congresswoman Ann Wagner.

Webber also mentioned the possibility of challenges from Rep. Vicky Hartzler, Missouri House Speaker Todd Richardson and Treasurer Eric Schmitt. He told the News-Leader he was not aware of any Democrat in Missouri seeking to run against McCaskill.