Big Matt Attack

Erdman attended the September board meeting. In fact, he spoke of the Downtown Council's efforts to vet statewide candidates on the basis of their positions on life sciences.

A few days after the meeting, the Pitch asked Erdman if championing Bush and championing Kansas City's status as a research center were incompatible. Erdman said the two were "apples and oranges."

Erdman noted that in 2001, Bush allowed federal funding for existing stem-cell lines (which had been derived from embryos left over from in vitro fertilization). "The president has said what federal funding can and cannot be used for," Erdman said. "The matter we're talking about is whether or not that research should be made illegal in Missouri. They are separate issues, and they are not inconsistent."

Bush did approve funding for the existing lines, though scientists today dispute the assertion the president made at the time that "more than 60" lines existed. The number is actually 22, according to recent press reports.

More significant, Bush's support of a broad cloning ban is apples and apples compared to what is happening in Missouri.

Pressed on the matter today, Erdman tries to plead ignorance. "I'm unaware of the president's involvement in somatic-cell nuclear transfer," he says.

The president might not have uttered the phrase somatic-cell nuclear transfer in any address, but he has spoken out against cloning, and therapeutic cloning is somatic-cell nuclear transfer. "It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of the chamber," Bush said in 2002, while the Senate considered Brownback's bill. Bush's comment appeared in a story The Washington Post ran on the front page (headline: "President Presses Senate to Ban All Human Cloning").

After conceding that he might disagree with the president on the topic, Erdman suggests that he and other Republicans opposed to Bartle's bill are heroes.

"You ought to be delighted I'm taking that position," he tells the Pitch. "I'm putting myself out on a limb."

Erdman will continue to play an important part in the drama; he has the ear of Gov. Matt Blunt. Once he took office, Blunt tapped Erdman, who donated more than $2,000 to Blunt's campaign, and another man to lead a commission on making state government more effective.

It appears that Bartle has the votes he needs to get the cloning ban through both houses of the Legislature, putting the bill on the governor's desk. Blunt has said that he does not oppose therapeutic cloning.

But if the young governor -- who campaigned on a promise to represent Missouri "values" -- sides with his anti-abortion supporters, the people who care about economic development in Kansas City may decide that, with friends like Erdman, who need enemies? Matt Bartle runs.

He tries to run 20 miles a week, though it's difficult when the Legislature is in session and he stays up until midnight answering e-mails. In off-election years, he trains for marathons. "One of my goals in life is to do all the big marathons. I've done New York and Chicago. I want to do Marine Corps [in Washington, D.C.]. Grandma's up in Minnesota is a fantastic run. Rock and Roll in San Diego."

Bartle wants to run for higher political office as well. It only makes sense. Former Sen. Jacob imagines that Bartle does not feel intimidated when he looks at his Senate colleagues. "He looks around the room and says, 'I'm smart enough, and I'm right,'" Jacob says.

And he's clearly burnishing his conservative credentials. The list of bills he has sponsored is long. Bartle says he's responding to what he hears people telling him to do. The sex-shop tax is not a blatant attempt to score political points with certain voters, he argues, because he has "already scored whatever political points there are to be scored" on the issue by going after the billboards last year.

Still, looking at his proposals, it's not hard to find evidence of political opportunism. One bill seems designed to rouse voters suspicious of liberal causes, real or imaginary. The bill would amend the state constitution so that it recognizes and preserves an individual's right to hunt and fish.

Bartle says the amendment is needed because it is "a long-term goal" of animal-rights organizations to outlaw hunting and fishing. He admits, though, that no groups are clamoring for such a ban right now in Missouri.

"This is one where you look out a decade and you anticipate," he says.

However the cloning debate ends, Bartle will be able to say he stood for principle. Rumor has the business community looking for a strong Democrat and a strong Republican to oppose him in 2006. Bartle says he welcomes the challenge. "I think that will be excellent," he says. "I'll take my case to the people, and I'm very comfortable doing that. And then the people can decide."