Robin Carnahan has converted her bid for U.S. Senate into a daily assault on the status quo.

Traveling across the state, Carnahan has taken the well-worn path of skewering unpopular Capitol Hill customs - such as lobbyist contributions and the clandestine "earmark" process - and excoriating her opponent as a Beltway insider.

It is a tenuous position for Carnahan. She is no stranger to Washington, and she has been immersed in politics since she was a little girl.

Not only is Carnahan the third member of her family to run for U.S. Senate, she's not even the only Carnahan on the November ballot. Her brother, Russ, is seeking a fourth term representing St. Louis in Congress.

The juxtaposition has left Carnahan, currently in her second term as Missouri secretary of state, offering a nuanced message on the campaign: playing up her own experience, while attacking Roy Blunt, a veteran of the GOP leadership, as the wrong kind of insider - a Washington insider.

Will voters see a difference?

Largely absent from her campaign is her personal history: Carnahan is a breast cancer survivor whose life, and career, has been traced by a public tragedy still vivid in the minds of many Missourians.

In another year, that might serve as the fulcrum for a campaign narrative. The current political climate - where the public has voiced frustration with insiders and incumbents - has led Carnahan to stay away from her own story, and her family's. She is presenting herself as a political outsider, even if she has one of the most recognizable names in the state.

"She has to her advantage in Missouri that she's so well-known. Not just Robin Carnahan - the name, the brand ‘Carnahan,' " said Mitchell McKinney, an associate professor of communications at the University of Missouri-Columbia who has studied political messaging. "She doesn't have to remind voters of her personal history - voters know that."

Instead of focusing on her six years in statewide office, Carnahan's stump speech has drawn on her other job, one that has nothing to do with politics: running the family farm near her hometown of Rolla, Mo.

Carnahan's "No Bull" tour has taken her around the state, mixing farm metaphors with policy pledges.Washington, she says, would benefit from a dose of Missour-ah horse sense.

"I learned to know bull when I see it," she says

The refrain doesn't always resonate. In June, she asked a roomful of chamber of commerce members at a downtown St. Louis luncheon what you do on a farm when something breaks. ("You fix it," someone finally offered, cracking an awkward silence.)

Friends say Carnahan's farm pitch is not a gimmick. Carnahan's stake in the 800-acre family spread - where she keeps horses and raises beef cattle - is worth between $250,000 and $500,000, according to financial disclosure forms.

On the way to a recent campaign stop in Columbia, Mo., Carnahan appeared perfectly content watching the cornfields along the highway, straying from a copy of her speech to offer commentary on the landscape instead.

In Callaway County, Carnahan pointed to a roadside pavilion where cows are sold at auction.

"I've done political events inside the sale barn," Carnahan said. "I was the only one of the political candidates who was comfortable while standing in the middle of the sale barn floor."

As comfortable as Carnahan is in the countryside, that ease doesn't translate on the stump.

Supporters acknowledge she can sometimes appear wooden or stilted when delivering campaign remarks. That could be owing to a political career spent mostly behind the scenes, helping on the campaigns of her father, former Gov. Mel Carnahan, rather than running herself.

Robin Carnahan, who turned 49 last week, did not become a candidate until 2004, when she won her first term as secretary of state.

"If you're looking for Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan in either of these candidates, you're not going to find it," Mike Kelley, the former executive director of the Missouri Democratic Party, said of Carnahan and her GOP rival.

It's not just Carnahan's delivery that has raised eyebrows. In her ethics platform, Carnahan proposes getting rid of so-called "leadership" political action committees that have fewer restrictions than regular campaign funds.

She also wants to abolish congressional earmarks, a furtive process Carnahan has condemned as "broken" and "dysfunctional."

Left unsaid: Both Carnahan's mother, a former U.S. senator, and her brother formed leadership committees. Russ Carnahan also sponsored or co-sponsored nearly $9 million in earmarks in the 2010 fiscal year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

"This harsh criticism will undoubtedly lead to some awkward family events," asserted a news release from Republican Ed Martin, Russ Carnahan's opponent in November.

Before serving as secretary of state, Robin Carnahan also worked at a federally chartered credit agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Carnahan later returned to Missouri, working as a private trade consultant.

She has attempted to draw a distinction between her political résumé, spent mostly in Missouri, and her opponent's, who is in his seventh term in Washington.

"There's really only one of us in this race that's been in Washington for the last 14 years, and that's Congressman Blunt," Carnahan said. Her aim is to channel the general frustration with Washington and the economy at her opponent, and not her, a member of the party in charge.

"It's just like business - if you don't change, you'll continue to do the same thing you've always done," said Jim Clemens, 70, a Carnahan supporter from Springfield who came to see her speak at a coffee shop there last month.

Will voters see Carnahan as a career politician just like her opponent?

"They could. I guess that some of them will," Clemens said. "It's still a new face to Washington politics."

Robin is the third of four Carnahan children. Carnahan's grandfather, A.S.J. Carnahan, was a congressman and later ambassador to Sierra Leone. Carnahan, who is married but has no children, said extending her family's legacy was not a goal. She shudders at the suggestion that her election could make the Carnahans the "Kennedys of Missouri."

"That's doesn't motivate me at all - it's not what I'm about," Carnahan said.

Carnahan says she speaks to her older brother Russ regularly, and talks to her mother every day. Another brother, Tom, served previously as her campaign treasurer and now runs a wind energy firm based in St. Louis.

Still, it's the family members that are no longer with her that seem to loom largest.

Carnahan took over the family farm from her brother Randy, who was piloting their father's campaign plane when it crashed in October 2000, killing both men and an aide.

The farming life that Carnahan has played up in her campaign began as a way to honor her brother, said a neighbor, Ken Lenox.

"There was a great deal of change that occurred in her life," Lenox, who operates a nearby farm in Phelps County, said. The farm, Lenox said, "gave her an outlet."

Carnahan now finds herself running for the same office that her father died campaigning for, an election that famously saw him posthumously defeat John Ashcroft.

She gave the eulogy at his funeral, telling mourners, "Don't let the fire go out." But she rarely, if ever, talks about her father in campaign appearances. In an interview, she said losing him had given her perspective on a Senate bid that has proved an uphill climb.

"I've had cancer. I've watched my dad and brother die. I've gone through a campaign - lots of campaigns. This is not the hardest thing I've done in my life," Carnahan said. "This isn't difficult, compared to what I've seen."