U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., is catching flak from both sides this primary season in his bid to win the seat that Christopher “Kit” Bond is surrendering in the U.S. Senate.

The former House majority leader and House GOP whip said in a recent interview that he decided to run for the Senate after seven terms representing Missouri’s 7th Congressional District primarily because of what he sees as the position in which the nation was put by the election of Barack Obama and the gains of the Democratic Party two years ago.

“Frankly, the surest way to stop the radical agenda of Obama and the Democrats is to have at least 41 Republicans in the Senate who say this is not the way to do this,” Blunt said.

The congressman said he is proud to have served the interests of Joplin and Southwest Missouri the past 14 years. Blunt said he has always voted for the lowest budgets brought to the House floor and has always tried to cut the budgets sought by presidents, whether Democrat or Republican.

“I would like to continue that same conservative position if I get to serve in the Senate,” Blunt said.

Front-runners

Blunt is expected to win the GOP primary on Tuesday and face Democrat Robin Carnahan, the state’s current secretary of state, in the general election, although Blunt has eight other candidates in his primary, and Carnahan has two in hers. The best shot at an upset in either primary probably resides with Republican state Sen. Chuck Purgason, who has been campaigning as the “true conservative” alternative to Blunt.

Purgason, 50, of Caulfield, points to a 14-year tenure of his own in the Missouri Legislature, and the reputation he believes he has established there as a social and fiscal conservative who sponsored legislation in 2005 that led to “the largest decrease ever” in state government spending.

He has been critical of Blunt on several fronts, from the congressman’s vote for the financial-sector bailout to his support of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind program and his coziness with lobbyists over the years.

“If you believe in free-market principles, you would not have voted to allow the government to pick the winners and losers in a free-market society,” Purgason said of the $750 billion bailout.

He sees the bailout as having “traded short-term pain for a long-term cancer” and believes it ran counter to the purported top priority of the Republican Party platform: balancing the federal budget. He doubts that the bailout and the subsequent financial reform law have fixed any of the problems that led to the bank crisis since “the same people who were supposed to be regulating the banks are still regulating them.”

Carnahan also has taken an anti-bailout stance, telling the Globe recently that it “created a lot of wrong incentives.” She is trying to dovetail populist resentment of the bailout into an image as a candidate who cut her own state office’s budget by 20 percent and who stood up against big business in helping to recoup money for Missourians in a national settlement two years ago with Wachovia Securities.

“I’m running because I’m fed up with what seems like a broken Washington that spends more time looking out for corporate lobbyists than it does for us,” Carnahan said.

Blunt defends the Troubled Asset Relief Program as “a short-term investment” that he said brought the economy back from a brink at the time and that will benefit taxpayers in the end since most of the money already has been paid back and with significant interest. He said TARP was a separate matter from other recent attempts to address the economy.

“I opposed the stimulus,” Blunt said. “I opposed money to car companies. I opposed money to both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Purgason questions whether Blunt has any vested interest in cleaning up those particular government home loan programs when he is the top recipient of campaign contributions coming from their political action committees. But Blunt said he stands behind his record of having voted “for all legislation to clean up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Blunt, 60, is a graduate of Southwest Baptist University and holds a master’s degree in history and government from Missouri State University. Purgason, 50, grew up in West Plains and graduated from high school there. He is the owner of Ozark Wings Hatchery and Hunting Preserve.

Carnahan, 48, is a graduate of William Jewell College with a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. She is the daughter of former Gov. Mel Carnahan and former Sen. Jean Carnahan. She is in the middle of her second term as secretary of state.

Other Republicans

The other Republicans seeking the Senate seat are: Hector Maldonado, of Sullivan; Deborah Solomon, of Independence; Mike Vontz, of Lake St. Louis; Tony Laszacs, of Dixon; R.L. Praprotnik, of St. Louis; Kristi Nichols, of Kansas City; and David Conway of St. Peters.

Maldonado, 38, is a naturalized American citizen who was born in Mexico. He served 15 years in the Army and National Guard, and resigned from the Guard to make this first run for a political office.

Solomon, 49, operates a marketing and accounting business out of her home, and has a degree in management and human relations from Mid-America Nazarene University.

Vontz, 52, is a former real estate agent. Laszacs, 40, is a retired Army first sergeant with the Military Police Corps with experience in writing policy and developing curricula for the not-for-profit organization Concurrent Technology Corp., which serves as a consultant to the government in homeland security and anti-terrorism matters.

Efforts to reach Praprotnik, Nichols and Conway for the purposes of this article were unsuccessful.

Other Democrats

Kansas City real estate developer Richard Tolbert and a retired air traffic control specialist, Francis Vangeli, who lives near Columbia, are Carnahan’s competition in the Democratic primary.

Tolbert, 65, holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale University, and owns the Bannister Mall group in Kansas City. He served on the City Council in Kansas City from 1971 to 1974 and recently was re-elected to the board of trustees for the Metropolitan Community Colleges.

Vangeli, 73, who worked as a teacher for the Federal Aviation Administration before retirement, is making his first bid for an elective office. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Villanova University and a master’s degree in theology from Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Connecticut.

Two Libertarians are seeking the open Senate seat: Cisse Spragins and Jonathan Dine. Spragins, 47, of Kansas City, has a doctorate in physics from the University of Wisconsin and owns Rockwell Labs Ltd., which manufactures biological cleaning products. Dine, who is from Riverside, could not be reached for information on his candidacy.

Three candidates filed to seek the Constitution Party’s nomination for the post, but one of them, Mike Simmons, of New Haven, has withdrawn from the race. Still in are Joe Martellaro, 65, a retired wood craftsman from Cuba, and Jerry Beck, 70, retired businessman from La Monte. This is Martellaro’s first bid for an elective office. Beck ran for president as a Democrat in 2004.