AG Schmitt trumps Greitens, will face beer heiress Busch Valentine in Missouri Senate race

Missouri Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt will face Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine in the race for U.S. Senate, pitting a well-known state official against a deep-pocketed novice candidate in a year where abortion rights will play prominently in the election.

Schmitt and Busch Valentine both secured their party’s nominations with solid leads in crowded primary fields. Both are poised to bring significant financial resources to the race —Schmitt from wealthy Republican benefactors and Busch Valentine from her personal fortune as an heiress to a storied Missouri beer family.

Republicans now head into the general election with a standard bearer many are confident can easily dispatch the Democratic nominee. Schmitt has cast himself as a key ally for conservatives in a struggle with liberals on everything from taxes to gun rights to critical race theory.

Schmitt’s victory blunted an attempted political comeback for former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens four years after he resigned as governor amid cascading scandals involving campaign finance violations and sexual assault.

The former governor attempted to rebuild his political stock by courting the devoted base of former President Donald Trump, repeating Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, aggressively denouncing “Republicans in name only” and loudly criticizing U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But his loyalty was half-heartedly rewarded by Trump, who put out an election eve endorsement of “ERIC,” splitting his bet between Schmitt and Greitens. Trump called Schmitt to congratulate him Tuesday night, according to Schmitt’s campaign.

As of 10:00 p.m., Greitens had not made the same call.

Control of the evenly-divided Senate may hinge on the outcome of the Missouri race. Republicans are widely expected to make gains in Congress in November as President Joe Biden struggles with poor approval ratings and the highest inflation in decades raises prices across the nation.

The race may ultimately turn on whether Busch Valentine, who has never run for office before, can effectively attack Schmitt in a state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race since 2012.

Schmitt played a key role in implementing Missouri’s near-total abortion ban after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, making the procedure illegal within minutes of the decision. Busch Valentine has been an adamant supporter of abortion rights and Democrats are expected to highlight Schmitt’s hard-line position amid a national backlash against the court decision.

The failure of anti-abortion amendment in neighboring Kansas by a wide margin Tuesday suggests that the issue will be potent in November even in Republican-leaning states.

But Republicans will look for ways to link Busch Valentine to President Joe Biden, who is struggling with poor approval ratings, as well as the highest inflation in decades, which is raising prices across the country.

“Now is the time to unify in this fight against the radical progressives,” Schmitt said in his victory speech in St. Louis. “We are entering the most consequential decade in American history since the Civil War. The Democrats aren’t playing small ball. They’re playing for keeps… Right now we need proven conservative fighters to stop them in their tracks.”

Democrats hope the fact that Busch Valentine became a nurse– despite being a recipient of the Anheuser-Busch fortune– will help solidify her credentials on women’s healthcare and abortion rights, cementing them as a key campaign issue in a state that has grown increasingly conservative.

Nationally, Democrats are banking on abortion rights helping them maintain the coalition that helped President Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump in 2020 and won Democrats control of the U.S. House and Senate. Trump beat Biden in Missouri by more than 15 percentage points.

“I never saw myself running for public office. I always wanted to be a nurse. When I was young, I saw nurses taking care of people, staying calm in crisis and solving problems,” Busch Valentine said during her victory speech in St. Louis.

“I became a nurse because I was inspired by their dedication to service, and that same service is why I stand here as your Democratic nominee for the United States Senate.”

Schmitt, 47, built a statewide reputation and, eventually, won over Republicans through a seemingly endless string of legal challenges against the Biden administration over everything from vaccine mandates to immigration policy.

Schmitt was criticized for using the Missouri Attorney General’s Office for political purposes, though Schmitt and his allies say he’s simply doing his job by fighting government overreach.

But combined with other lawsuits targeting school districts and municipalities over mask mandates, the strategy raised his profile as he worked to sell himself as an aggressive fighter in the eyes of conservatives.

“He’s been an outstanding attorney general,” said Diann Bomkamp, a Schmitt supporter from Creve Coeur. “His beliefs and mine are very similar and I think he stands up for Missouri values. I think he’s a fighter. I like someone that goes out there and stands up for what they believe in.”

Busch Valentine, 64, is the daughter of August “Gussie” Busch, the powerful beer magnate who helped grow Anheuser-Busch to one of the most recognizable brands in the country. She grew up on the family farm that has now become an event venue in St. Louis.

She said she was inspired to become a nurse after her 8-year-old sister died in a car crash in 1974. Busch Valentine became a candy striper and later got her nursing degree before working at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She eventually moved back to Missouri and worked for three years with children at the Salvation Army Residence in St. Louis before leaving to raise her family and continued to work in a volunteer capacity.

Kevyn Schroeder, a former nurse, said she had known Busch Valentine since elementary school.

“She’s a very honest person. She’s a very compassionate person. She’s very caring and she has lived her whole life doing good for people under the radar until now,” Schroeder said.

Busch Valentine spent at least $7 million of her fortune in donations to St. Louis University’s nursing school, which has been named after her. She entered the primary two days before the state’s filing deadline, officially launching her bid after she filed.

Both candidates will likely face John Wood, a Republican who is running an independent campaign backed by Missouri Stands United, a PAC bankrolled by former Sen. John Danforth, who has given at least $10 million to the effort. On Monday, Wood said he had gathered 22,000 signatures to appear on the November ballot, far more than the 10,000 required.

Schmitt beats Greitens

Greitens delivered a brief speech at his election night party in Chesterfield, thanking the people who attended and telling them to go home with “strength and pride.” His speech talked about the lies, fear and cruelty his voters faced.

He did not acknowledge Schmitt as the winner and didn’t explicitly concede the race.

“God has a plan,” Greitens said. “It doesn’t always work on our timeline. But it does work on his. And sometimes we have to practice patience. What I can tell you, is that I love you guys. I love you guys. And I will continue to work for you, continue to fight for you, continue to serve you every single day of my life.”

At least one Greitens’ supporter took the speech as a concession, saying he thought Greitens’ pledge to keep fighting meant he would run for a different political office.

“I think he said he wouldn’t win,” said John Gotway, the mayor of Garden Prairie. “I thought it would be a lot closer.”

Schmitt’s biggest rival besides Greitens had been Rep. Vicky Hartzler, whose campaign suffered a setback after Trump told his supporters on July 8 that they could “forget about” the congresswoman. Hartzler, Trump said, didn’t have what it takes to take on Democrats and what he called RINOS – Republicans in name only.

Hartzler is an ardent social conservative, whose campaign emphasized her Christian faith, support for the military and opposition to transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. While she was always among the top three Republicans vying for the nomination, according to publicly-available polling, she never appeared to truly break through into the lead.

A trio of other candidates – Rep. Billy Long, St. Louis attorney Mark McCloskey and state Sen. Dave Schatz – each earned a percentage

Busch Valentine defeats Kunce

The Democratic the race turned bitter in the final weeks. It was a rarity for the state party. Missouri Democrats haven’t experienced a highly competitive Senate primary in decades. Every Democratic nominee for Senate since at least 1998 has won with at least 66% of the vote.

Busch Valentine’s main opponent was Lucas Kunce, a former Marine from Independence who ran a brash, populist campaign.

In a speech conceding to Busch Valentine, Kunce said he was proud of his “band of misfits” who ran a campaign without “taking any corporate pac money, no federal lobbyist money, no big pharma executive money, no fossil fuel executive money, we did that anyway because we knew it was important.”

Busch Valentine secured the support of key Missouri Democratic figures, like U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver and former U.S. Sen. Jean Carnahan, appealing to more establishment Democrats who were uncomfortable with Kunce’s message that he wanted to be disruptive in Washington D.C. and upset the current power structure.

She invested more than $5.3 million of her own money in her campaign – using it to advertise her campaign to increase her name recognition and attack Kunce over his opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage when he ran for the Missouri House in 2006.

“She had the most money and she hailed from a family whose name had a large reservoir of goodwill throughout the state– a state of Busch drinkers,” said Jeff Smith, a former Democratic member of the Missouri House.

Kunce, meanwhile, set out to tap into Missouri’s populist streak, adopting the same posture of outrage against the elites as Greitens and U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, but gearing it toward Democratic policies. His populist message appeared to win several rural counties in the state, particularly in the boot heel region.

But it didn’t prove enough to overcome Busch Valentine’s lead among Democrats in the state’s two biggest cities and the suburbs that surround them.

The Star’s Emily Hood, Brittany Swearingen and Ella McCarthy contributed reporting