Republicans worry scandal-tarred former gov could cost them Missouri Senate seat

What should be a safe Republican U.S. Senate seat in Missouri could be in play for Democrats due to scandals surrounding one of the top GOP contenders.

Republicans have had statewide success in Missouri in recent years, with Donald Trump taking 57 percent of the vote in both 2016 and 2020. The GOP also won the governor’s mansion and both Senate seats. But Sen. Roy Blunt’s retirement has resulted in a crowded primary to replace him, and the Republican candidates include former Gov. Eric Greitens.

Greitens resigned in 2018 after a woman testified under oath that he had tied her up in his basement, stripped her naked, taken photos of her, threatened to use those photos as blackmail if she discussed their extramarital affair and then forced her into oral sex. Greitens, who says he was the target of a conspiracy, has claimed the actions were consensual, and while a grand jury indicted him on a felony charge of invasion of privacy, prosecutors later dropped the case.

The former governor has also been embroiled in scandals involving donor lists and campaign finance violations. He stepped down after many in the state GOP demanded he resign, including Sen. Josh Hawley, who was serving as state attorney general at the time.

Greitens’s situation has invoked comparisons to the 2012 race, when Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill was trailing in polls. However, McCaskill’s opponent, Rep. Todd Akin, made a comment that women who were victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant, stirring up a massive controversy and helping McCaskill cruise to an easy victory. She lost to Hawley six years later.

Despite the scandals that forced Greitens from office, a poll earlier this month showed him with a slim lead in a general-election matchup.

Republican lawmakers are hoping that Greitens loses the August primary and are trying to rally support against him. In December, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt pleaded with Trump not to endorse Greitens, calling the prospect a “nightmare.” Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top Trump campaign official and girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., joined the Greitens campaign last year, allegedly angering the former president.

Greitens has promoted the false conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen, and called for results in Arizona to be decertified. Although repeating Trump’s lies about the election is crucial to securing his endorsement, the former president has stayed out of the race so far.

Hawley, one of the leading figures in the Republican effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, endorsed Rep. Vicky Hartzler to be his colleague in the Missouri delegation. Hartzler is a former state legislator who has served in the U.S. House since first winning her seat in 2010. She was one of the congressional Republicans who voted to overturn the election in the aftermath of the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, and recently releasedan ad criticizing transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.

“Women’s sports are for women, not men pretending to be women,” Hartzler says in the ad.

Hawley’s endorsement, thus far, has not cleared the field to ensure that Greitens cannot reach the general election with a plurality of the vote. Rep. Billy Long, who is also running for the Senate nomination and also voted to overturn the 2020 election, went on a long tirade against Hawley in the aftermath of his Hartzler endorsement, saying that the senator had misled him and stating that he planned to stay in the race.

“I’d always considered us to be friends, I’d always supported him, I think a lot of him and his wife and his kids still,” said Long. “But it’s just disappointing, it’s very disappointing. Why didn’t he just say, ‘Hey, you’re not raising the money, you’re down in the polls, we need to consolidate. Billy, I’m probably going to endorse Hartzler here pretty soon.’ I just wish he’d shot straight with me.”

The Republican candidate who raised the most money through the end of 2021 is state Attorney General Eric Schmitt. Schmitt also received the endorsement of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who announced his support days after Hawley publicly backed Hartzler. Both Cruz and Hawley are seen as 2024 GOP presidential contenders.

As candidates court Trump’s endorsement, Schmitt is set to hold a fundraiser at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort next month, although it’s unclear if Trump himself will attend. In his role as attorney general, Schmitt backed a lawsuit claiming fraud in the 2020 election. The suit was rejected by the Supreme Court.

Other Republican candidates in the race include Mark McCloskey, who gained fame after waving a gun at Black Lives Matter protesters outside his mansion in 2020, and Dave Schatz, president pro tem of the Missouri state Senate.

The leading Democratic candidate is currently Lucas Kunce, a 39-year-old Marine Corps veteran who is campaigning as a populist. Kunce is a Missouri native who attended Yale before getting his law degree at the University of Missouri. He has focused his campaign around breaking up corporate monopolies and banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks.

In interviews with Politico, Kunce declined to say where he’d fit in among Democrats’ congressional factions. But he also spoke out against the centrist duo of Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., who have been holdouts on a number of Democratic priorities.

Kunce has raised $2.5 million for the race, putting him just ahead of Schmitt. With Democrats contesting so many seats in swing states, it’s unlikely his campaign will become a focal point for the party’s donors unless Greitens wins the GOP nomination and is toxic enough to make the race appear winnable.

So far, Kunce has received the endorsements of VoteVets, an organization that promotes liberal military veterans running for office, and the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group.

Other Democrats running for the seat include Scott Sifton, a former state senator, and Spencer Toder, founder of a medical equipment startup. Former Republican Sen. Jack Danforth has called for a conservative independent to enter the race, but one has not yet emerged, and all candidates must file by March 29.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report still rates the race as safely Republican, while the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics considers it slightly more competitive, placing it in the same “Likely GOP” category as Florida and Ohio.