Platte County Rick Rolled

By Mark Vasto

     There was nothing to be gained delegate-wise, but Missouri's primary certainly put momentum behind the Rick Santorum campaign for president.

     Santorum, the former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, prevailed in Missouri, garnering 55 percent of the vote in the Tuesday election. Mitt Romney, considered the front runner nationally, only captured 25 percent of the vote. Ron Paul came in a distant third with 12 percent. Newt Gingrich failed to secure enough signatures to make it on the ballot. 

    The state results mirrored the results in Platte County, too. Here, Santorum garnered 55 percent to Romney's 29 percent. As of this writing, local Parkville numbers were not available but Romney had a considerable advantage in fundraising in the area, as reported in a previous Luminary post. 

     Historically considered a "blue" or Democratic state, Missouri went "red" last presidential season, backing John McCain over current president Barack Obama. Considered a crucial bellwether for the presidency, it was nonetheless the first presidential election since 1956 that the state's voters didn't vote for the winner in a general election. (Eisenhower, a Kansan and the world's foremost conquering general at the time won in a landslide but supposedly lost favor locally due to the relative local popularity of outgoing Missourian Harry Truman. Truman, ironically, had one of the lowest approval ratings in history when he left office.)

     The Missouri primary election, as a whole, has been criticized because none of the state's 52 delegates are assigned to the winner. Therefore, the  primary amounts to little more than an opinion poll that costs taxpayers $7 million dollars. 

    Incumbent president Barack Obama won the Democratic primary. In Platte County, there were six votes for Libertarians. In a major setback for the Constitution party, zero votes were garnered. 

   Only five percent of eligible voters in Platte County pulled a lever leading state officials to advocate a caucus or something along those lines for the next election because the current process seems like a pretty big waste of money.