Bond has been there for KCS on other occasions as well. In the mid-1990s, when the company opposed the merger of Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads, Bond held joint House-Senate hearings to examine the issue. Later he testified before the Federal Surface Transportation Board on the railroad's behalf. And in recent years, when the railroad industry was pushing asbestos liability "reform," which would cap the amount of damages culpable companies have to pay, Bond spoke out on the Senate floor on the legislation's behalf.

Kansas City Southern has demonstrated its appreciation for Bond's efforts with extensive campaign donations. From 1993 to 2004, 21 individual corporate officers and the company PAC contributed nearly $42,000 to Bond, according to Federal Election Commission records compiled by OpenSecrets.org. That sum includes $4,000 -- the maximum allowable -- from KSC's Erdman this election cycle. Members of the company's board of directors have kicked in an additional $8,500 this cycle. In addition, the company helped underwrite Bond's open-bar reception at the Union League during the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.

To understand how Bond's work has helped the company, all one needs to do is look at his stock portfolio. When in December 1999 Bond sold off between $1,001 and $15,000 of his KCS shares, he was liquidating part of a 250 percent profit, thanks to a 1997 three-way stock split and strong performance by the company.

According to information from the Motley Fool, the company's split-adjusted price (a tool used to track stock value across splits) was $1.10 when Bond initially bought the stock and had increased to $3.84 when he sold it nearly three years later. His son did even better. When Bond sold between $1,001 and $15,000 of his son's shares in May 2000, the split-adjusted value had risen to $4.36, an increase of nearly 300 percent.

Bond has bought and sold KCS shares numerous times since those early transactions, though he sold most of his stock in the company at the end of 2003, the latest period covered by the financial disclosure forms (which show that he held between $0 and $1,001 in each of two accounts).

This behavior "is a pretty clear conflict of interest," said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, an ethics watchdog group in Washington. "There's no other way to describe it. You're not supposed to feather your nest while you're a lawmaker." Lewis added, "It's not just another company that he's helping -- his former aide is there, and he has investments for him and his son, and the company did well after the actions he took. This picture seems fairly clear."

"What bothers me is not so much that he has bought stock in the company -- although that is somewhat troubling -- but ... that his former chief of staff is now lobbying," said Celia Wexler, Common Cause's vice president for advocacy. "Investments are a concern, but what is more of a concern is the relationships, personal relationships, that you find in Washington between ... members [of Congress] and former staff members ... How does this affect the public trust in elected officials? So [I'm talking about] a much higher standard than 'Is this against a particular rule, even an ethics rule, or even the law?'"

The Bond campaign declined to comment for this article.

During the 1998 Senate campaign, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, Bond's opponent, said that the senator's "going to bat" for Kansas City Southern raised ethical issues, but the incumbent brushed it off. "That's ridiculous," Bond said. "All of the leadership from Kansas City and the state were behind this. Erdman is a good friend, but he made a point not to discuss it with me."

As it happens, KCS is not the only home-state company with which Bond has had close financial and professional relations. He has been a longtime supporter of Monsanto, the agrochemical giant headquartered in St. Louis, touting the bioengineered crops that Monsanto and other such companies produce. He said he wants to create a "Silicon Valley of biotechnology" in Missouri. Indeed, he made sure that the 2000 foreign aid spending bill included $30 million to promote the sales of these crops to developing nations.

In January 2001, he put his own money where his mouth was, buying between $1,001 and $5,000 of stock in Monsanto, one of three biotechnology companies in which Bond has invested since 1998.

Bond's advocacy for Monsanto has continued since his stock purchases. In August 2001, on an official trip to Malaysia, Bond pushed the biotechnology agenda in a meeting with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. In December 2002, Bond cosigned a letter to President Bush criticizing the European Union's ban on products made from genetically engineered foods. In May 2003, Bond got a Senate resolution passed criticizing the ban, taking to the Senate floor to call the Europeans "Luddites" and complain of "Euro-sclerosis." When the Biotechnology Industry Organization in 2002 honored Bond with its Legislator of the Year Award, the presentation was made by then Monsanto president and CEO Hendrik Verfaillie.

Monsanto officers and the company's PAC were Bond's top overall source of campaign funds in the 1998 race, totaling $54,400. During the current election cycle, they have contributed more than $52,900 to his reelection campaign.

As for his contest against Farmer, Bond has out-raised her $7.6 million to $2.3 million. Bond has been advertising on television for weeks, while Farmer advertising had yet to go up as of the start of October.

Farmer is "articulate, she stays on message, she has a good presence and appearance," said Jones, of the University of Missouri. "The problem is that she's going up against a senator who has a base in the mid-50s."

Perhaps most important for Bond's reelection prospects are the inroads he's made among some Democrats, particularly in Kansas City, where Mayor Kay Barnes has raised money for him. The situation is so peculiar that "St. Louis Democratic leaders openly wonder: Have Kansas City folks lost their minds?" according to the Pitch, a weekly Kansas City newspaper. But there are some St. Louis Democrats who are not immune to Bond's favors. Prominent fundraisers like Kenneth Teasdale and Richard Baron have held events for the senator.

The predominant factor in Bond's support is his pork-barrel politics. And that may well make the uphill struggle his Democratic opponent faces even more difficult. But the interplay between Bond's public work and private finances -- a throwback to backroom, self-dealing politics -- is a story that remains largely untold in Missouri. Bond has not yet been forced to account for the capitalist cronyism that has made him the senator he is today.

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