ST. LOUIS (Monday, March 18) - Seeking to wrest control of the U.S. Senate from the Democrats, President Bush raised $1.5 million on Monday for Republican Jim Talent's campaign to unseat Democratic Sen. Jean Carnahan.
"I'm here to support as strongly as I possibly can this good man," Bush told about 1,200 donors who were asked to pay $1,000 each to dine on lemon garlic chicken and sauteed asparagus washed down by Chardonnay and Merlot wines. 
Jim
Talent, Thomas Wong and Francois Ho
Led by Francois Ho, Thomas Wong and Matthew Yu, about 70 Asian, including Chinese Americans, Taiwanese Americans, and Vietnamese Americans joined the March 18 fund-raising dinner party at America Center to show their support to President Bush and Jim Talent. Ho, Wong and Yu were invited to a private party to meet with the President Bush before the dinner.
The dinner was the latest in a series of fund-raising events that Bush has attended this year, many of them pulling in upwards of $1 million for Republican candidates aiming to erase the Democrats' one-vote advantage in the Senate. Political analysts believe Talent, who spent eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives, has a reasonable chance of ousting Carnahan, who was appointed to a two-year term to the Senate seat won by her late husband, Mel Carnahan.
Mel Carnahan died in a plane crash three weeks before the 2000 election but his name remained on the ballot and he beat then-incumbent Sen. John Ashcroft, allowing Missouri's governor to name Carnahan's wife to the seat for two years. Ashcroft became attorney general in the Bush administration.
Bush took one slight dig at Carnahan, suggesting that she opposed Republican Sen. Christopher Bond's anti-fraud election reform proposals to keep unqualified people from voting in U.S. elections. 
"He's making sure that we encourage people to vote, but he's working hard to make it tougher to cheat," Bush said of Bond, who attended the dinner. "Seems like one out of the two senators from Missouri understand that."
Sam Fox, a co-chair of the fund-raising event, said the dinner had raised $1.5 million for Talent. A Talent spokesman, however, earlier said that the money would be split between Talent's campaign and the state Republican party.
Noting that Talent had served on the House Armed Services Committee, Bush said his experience would be useful in the Senate, particularly given the U.S. war on terrorism launched after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
"The enemy must have thought they were a society that was so soft, so self-absorbed, so materialistic that we would ... sue em" Bush said to a ripple of laughter. "They didn't understand America. ... They don't know what we're made out of -- or at least they didn't. Now they do." 
 
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