We are about five weeks out from the August 2 primary in Missouri. With Roy Blunt deciding that it is time to move on, there are multiple candidates in both party’s primary. While Missouri has been gradually moving to the right, there is a chance that Democrats could pull out a win, but a lot depends on what happens on August 2.
To some degree, the Republican primary in Missouri is an echo of what we have seen in Ohio and Pennsylvania. With a large number of candidates and no clear favorite, we are looking at the potential for a very close race which in turn means that Donald Trump could very easily impact the result by putting his thumb on the scale (as opposed to the recent primary in Alabama where Trump had little noticeable impact on the race when he first endorsed Mo Brooks, less impact when he rescinded that endorsement, and no impact when he decided to endorse Kate Britt at the last second to get a cheap win for his endorsement scorecard).
There are twenty-one people running for the Republican nomination. For the purposes of the Trump endorsement race, there are three groups of candidates: the field, the chase pack, and the lead pack. The field consists of fifteen candidates with no state-wide name recognition and no significant resources. Each of these candidates would be lucky to get 2-3% of the vote. But each vote for the field is a vote that is not going to the top six candidates.
You then have the chase pack. Only or two of the three candidates in this field had realistic hopes when they started the race. But they still might get the Trump endorsement which could bump their numbers up somewhat.
The first candidate in this batch is Mark McCloskey. If this race had been in 2020 when he was the darling of the NRA and alt-right for standing up to Black Lives Matter protester by threatening them with his gun, he might have had a chance. However, his fifteen minutes of fame have expired, and he is too far back to have any chance at winning.
State Senator Dave Schatz is term limited. If other candidates had not gotten into the race, he might have been able to make an impact. Now, it looks like he would have been better off sitting his one out and seeing what statewide offices open up in the 2024 election. Like McCloskey, he will be lucky to get to five percent without the Trump endorsement. With the Trump endorsement, he might break ten percent, but still has no chance of winning.
Lastly, there is U.S. Representative Billy Long. On paper, he should be a decent candidate. He was one of Republicans who first got elected to the U.S. House in the 2010 election. While he has loyally voted the Tea Party line, twelve years in D.C. taints him with being part of the Washington establishment. Despite a quasi-endorsement from Trump (that he was somebody Missouri Republicans should consider), he has not managed to break ten percent in the polls. Again, a formal endorsement might help Long’s campaign, but it seems unlikely that Trump could move a candidate from ten percent to thirty percent.
Turning to the lead pack, there are three candidates who realistically could win this race. In third place is U.S. Representative Vickie Hartzler. Like Representative Long, she has been a loyal member of the Tea Party wing of the House Republican caucus since 2010. She has gotten the endorsement of Senator Josh Hawley, the soon to be senior Senator from Missouri/defendant on seditious conspiracy charges. She still trails the other two candidates with support somewhere in the 15-20% range. There are enough undecided voters that an endorsement from Trump might be enough to give her the win.
The other viable candidate for the national Republican party is state Attorney General Eric Schmitt. He has certainly toed the Trump Party line with the cases that he has brought as Missouri Attorney General. His reward has been the endorsement of Senator Ted Cruz and Americans for Prosperity. His best recent poll puts him just short of 30%, but the consensus seems to place him at around 20-25%. An endorsement from Trump would probably be enough for Schmitt to get the nomination.
And then there is the Trump clone — former governor Eric Greitens. Unlike President Trump who was able to hold the Republican together when his misconduct led to impeachment trials, the Republicans in Missouri were all in on impeaching Greitens and removing him from office. Under these circumstances, Greitens played the long game by resigning before he could be impeached. Now, he is playing the victim of a conspiracy between the swamp-dwelling establishment and the Fake News media. He has the support of a who’s who of the Trump establishment — Flynn, Giuliani, Jr., and Kimberly Guilfoyle. While there is a lot that Greitens has done that is controversial, his most recent controversy has been an ad depicting him as part of militia-type group of “patriots” breaking into a house to go RINO hunting. The mainstream elements of the Republican party have condemned this ad, but it certainly will appeal to a segment of the Republican primary electorate and to the Orange Menace.
For Greitens, getting the Trump endorsement should be enough to get the nomination. Alternatively, if Trump were to endorse somebody in the chase pat that might divide the vote against Greitens even more. The Greitens strategy in this race is to win with 35% of the primary vote — the exact same way that he won the nomination for governor in 2016.
On the Democratic side, there are eleven candidates running. Most people think that the race is a two-person race between two political novices. Lucas Kunce is the progressive candidate. His potential strength in the primary is that he has been in the race since the beginning and his spent time reaching out to Democratic groups across the state, including in the rural parts of the state. Trudy Busch Valentine is the establishment candidate with the support of most of what is left of the Democratic establishment. However, she got into the race at the last minute when the initial establishment candidate failed to catch fire. Her campaign has not been that visible. Fortunately for her, absentee voting and early voting is greatly restricted in Missouri, and she may be planning on a media blitz at the last minute. But time is running out. Especially if Eric Greitens gets the Republican nomination, whom the Democrats choose will create a test for the general election — when you are the minority party in a state, are you better off with a candidate who can peel off moderate voters or are you better off with a candidate who fires up the base.
One potential complication for the general election, with Greitens looking like he might win the Republican primary, traditional Republican (what Trumpists call a RINO) John Danforth is trying to put together a last second petition drive to get an independent candidate on the ballot. There is almost no chance that an independent candidate could win the election. If Danforth succeeds, it is debatable whether this candidate will help split the Republican votes by giving Republicans who rightly find Greitens repulsive a Republican to vote for or will split the anti-Greitens vote by giving those voters somebody other than the Democratic nominee to support. (And the likely candidate appears to be one of the Republican staff attorneys on the January 6 committee which will certainly not appeal to the Trumpis wing of the Republican Party in Missouri.)
