Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt emerged from a field of 21 candidates, including former Missouri governor Eric Greitens and U.S. representative Vicky Hartzler, to become the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in the Show Me State on Tuesday.
As of just after 10:00 p.m. EST on Tuesday night, Schmitt had garnered 45 percent of the vote to Hartzler’s 23.1 percent and Greitens’ 19.4 percent, with 46 percent of all precincts reporting, according to election results from the New York Times.
Ahead of the election, Schmitt told National Review he is the “real America First candidate” and plans to take a “blow torch to Biden’s radical agenda” if elected.
“Voters are tired of their elected officials lying to them and using their time in office to enrich their family,” he said, adding that his record proves he is “the true conservative in this race who takes on the tough fights and does not back down.”
Schmitt’s victory comes after Greitens had been the front-runner in the race to replace retiring Republican Senator Roy Blunt for months. Then, an anti-Greitens super PAC funded by top Republican donors aired ads rehashing a number of misconduct allegations against the former governor.
Greitens took a hiatus from politics after resigning as Missouri governor in 2018 over a scandal involving alleged sexual misconduct and campaign-finance violations.
His hairdresser alleged in 2018 that the two had had an affair and that he had taken a nude photo of her in an effort to blackmail her into silence about the affair. She said he tied her up in his basement and took the photo for blackmail. Greitens has admitted to having the affair but denied the blackmail.
A Missouri house of representatives special committee released a report about the affair later that year, claiming that Greitens allegedly touched the hairdresser in her genital area without consent during an appointment in March 2015 shortly before the two began their affair.
Greitens’s political return was rocked by yet another scandal this year, when his ex-wife Sheena Greitens alleged in custody battle court documents that her husband was physically abusive and showed “unstable and coercive behavior.” She also claimed in an affidavit that her ex-husband has shown “physical violence toward our children, such as cuffing our then 3-year-old son across the face at the dinner table in front of me and yanking him around by his hair.”
Eric Greitens has denied the allegations, calling them “politically motivated” and saying his ex-wife has a “documented history of mental illness and emotionally abusive behavior.”
Schmitt told NR that Greitens “quit on our state and abused his wife and kid. He quit on Missouri once and will quit on Missouri again when the work becomes too hard and the pressure too much for him to handle.”
Greitens infamously anointed himself a “RINO hunter” in an ad that saw him cosplaying as SWAT team member attacking a “Republican in Name Only.” However, Greitens himself was once a Democrat, who even drove to the Democratic National Convention with former Missouri governor Bob Holden, a progressive Democrat, in 2008 when Barack Obama was nominated.
While the national co-chair of Greitens’s Senate campaign was Kimberly Guilfoyle, fiancée of Trump’s eldest son, former president Donald Trump issued a confusing endorsement in the race just one day before the primary.
Trump on Monday seemed to decline to endorse just one candidate, instead choosing to endorse “ERIC,” the first name of both Greitens and Schmitt.
“There is a BIG Election in the Great State of Missouri, and we must send a MAGA Champion and True Warrior to the U.S. Senate, someone who will fight for Border Security, Election Integrity, our Military and Great Veterans, together with having a powerful toughness on Crime and the Border,” Trump wrote in a statement. “I trust the Great People of Missouri, on this one, to make up their own minds, much as they did when they gave me landslide victories in the 2016 and 2020 Elections, and I am therefore proud to announce that ERIC has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”
Both Greitens and Schmitt issued statements accepting the endorsement.
“I’m honored to receive President Trump’s endorsement. From the beginning, I’ve been the true MAGA Champion fighting against the RINO establishment backing Schmitt,” Greitens tweeted. “President Trump said it best when he characterized Schmitt’s campaign as ‘great dishonesty in politics.’”
“I’m grateful for President Trump’s endorsement. As the only America First candidate who has actually fought for election integrity, border security & against the Left’s indoctrination of our kids—I’ll take that fight to the Senate to SAVE AMERICA!” Schmitt wrote.
Meanwhile, all three frontrunners in the race said they do not support McConnell remaining in his Senate leadership role.
“Mitch McConnell hasn’t endorsed me and I don’t endorse him for leadership,” Schmitt said recently, adding that McConnell has lost touch with Republican voters.
Schmitt said he would support either Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) or Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah) to lead Republicans in the Senate. Both Cruz and Lee endorsed Schmitt.