Government & Politics
Mar-a-Lago primary: Missouri Republicans seek Trump’s favor with open Senate seat
U.S. Rep. Billy Long has been handing out novelty $45 bills with former President Donald Trump’s face on them for years. In late 2019, as the House prepared to impeach Trump for the first time, the southwest Missouri auctioneer sat with a wad of the fake cash stuffed in his front suit coat pocket — an image that went viral.
Weeks later, at the conclusion of the 2020 State of the Union address, he had Trump sign his tie.
On Wednesday, Long will be in Florida for a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s golf resort and “winter White House” that is now his primary residence.
Two days after that, U.S. Rep. Jason Smith will be doing the same thing.
Both are contemplating runs for Missouri’s open Senate seat in 2022. They know that winning Trump’s endorsement could be the key to capturing the GOP nomination to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Roy Blunt.
Both Smith and Long supported Trump’s failed effort to overturn the 2020 election, signing onto an amicus brief in support of Texas’ lawsuit against four swing states that went for President Joe Biden and voting to block Pennsylvania and Arizona’s electors just hours after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The two announced candidates in the have already been working every angle to to win Trump’s favor in what’s shaping up as the Mar-a-Lago primary.
Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who recently visited Trump’s resort, has named former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., his campaign’s national chair. It’s an unusual position for a Senate campaign, one intended to ingratiate Greitens with Trump’s inner circle and appeal to his base.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt never wastes an opportunity to remind audiences that he will sue the Biden administration at every turn, vowing to “take a blowtorch” to his agenda.
For all their ardent courtship, there’s no guarantee Trump will get involved in the race. Kansas Republicans Roger Marshall and Kris Kobach both sought his favor in 2020, but Trump ultimately stayed neutral and only endorsed Marshall after his primary victory. He went on to win the general election.
But their pursuit of Trump is a reflection of his still-overwhelming popularity among Republicans nationally and in Missouri, which he carried by 15 points last November.
Trump’s early endorsement of then-Attorney General Josh Hawley in 2018 cleared the Missouri Republican’s path to the nomination and eventually the Senate.
Even if Trump makes no endorsement in the race, GOP candidates will be eager to associate with him in any fashion ahead of a likely crowded primary next year.
“His endorsement will definitely be very significant. He’s well-liked in our state,” said Smith, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, whose southeast Missouri district is the state’s most GOP-leaning. He’s strongly considering a run but said he has no timeline for a decision.
“If you look at all the names that are out there and the two that have announced, I would put my conservative credentials and my record for fighting for working class families against any of them,” he told The Star last week. He declined to say whether he’d be meeting with Trump during his April 30 Mar-a-Lago fundraiser.
Dueling devotion
Greitens and Schmitt were both keen to highlight their Trump bona fides at an April 17 Jackson County Republican Committee dinner in Blue Springs.
In the first five minutes of his speech, Greitens rattled off a list of Trump associates who have endorsed him: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani; former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik; former Trump White House adviser Sebastian Gorka; talk radio host Dennis Prager and retired Marine and veterans advocate Jessie Jane Duff, as well as the leaders of Hispanics for Trump, Jewish Americans for Trump and Black Voices for Trump.
He boasted that he also had the same critics as Trump.
“We need to have fighters who have calluses on their hands,” Greitens said. “President Trump would fight... President Trump wouldn’t kneel down to the swamp.”
Schmitt, signatory to multiple lawsuits contesting the 2020 election results, told his story of meeting Trump in the Oval Office and getting his autograph.
“What he was talking about was, ‘How are things in Missouri? I love Missouri,’” Schmitt recounted. “He came to Missouri in 2018 with that Senate race about a dozen times, and he wanted to know how we were doing. He says, ‘Tell everybody in Missouri I love Missouri, and I’m never going to stop fighting for this country.’”
That same evening Long was in Taney County, where pledged his loyalty to Trump before another crowd of Republicans.
“Trump knows me, I know Trump, and he knows I was with him from Day 1,” Long said, according the Springfield News-Leader.
Smith and Long’s upcoming Mar-a-Lago trips will offer important opportunities to pitch Trump on their potential candidacies, but neither man has to rush into a campaign.
They’ll be able to shift money from their U.S. House campaign accounts into Senate campaigns if they choose to run. Missouri’s filing deadline isn’t until March of next year.
Long, who holds the Springfield-area House seat that was once Blunt’s, had nearly $540,000 cash on hand at the end of March. Smith is sitting on more than $1.4 million in his campaign account after racking up 40-point wins in recent elections, according to their most recent filings with the Federal Election Commission.
Suburban lawmaker and gun-toting lawyer
Another big Missouri Republican name looking at the race has a more complicated relationship with Trump. But U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, who represents the affluent St. Louis suburbs, is one of the most prolific fundraisers in the delegation.
She outperformed the top of the GOP national ticket to pull off a 6-point victory in 2020, despite heavy Democratic spending against her. After depleting her cash in the last election, Wagner is replenishing at a rapid rate.
She raised more than $590,000 in the first quarter of 2021, far above the rest of the Missouri delegation in the House during the same period, and has more than $620,000 cash on hand.
“I’d love the opportunity to take the issues that I’ve advanced and worked on here in the House to perhaps a broader statewide constituency. And really the big motivating factor is to push back against this Biden agenda that is rolling through... at record speed,” Wagner said last week, adding that she’ll be traveling the state as she weighs a run.
As the representative of a swing district, Wagner framed herself as more prepared for a general election campaign than her colleagues.
“I have been in tried and true races. I have taken punches and I have landed many of them,” said Wagner, who chairs the House Suburban Caucus.
She rescinded her 2016 endorsement of Trump after release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which he was heard bragging about groping women. She ultimately ended up supporting him.
Wagner backed the Texas lawsuit, but was the only House Republican from Missouri to oppose motions to block states’ electors. She cited her constitutional duty to adhere to the Electoral College results.
However, she made a point of praising Trump Tuesday and credited him with the size of her victory margin in the recent election.
“I have always outrun the top of the ticket and work hard to do that, but I’ve got to tell you I’ve got to credit President Trump in this last election. He came in and endorsed, did a tele-rally and did a number of calls for me,” said Wagner, who confirmed she’d welcome Trump’s support in 2022 if she runs for Senate.
Another potential Senate candidate has campaigned for Trump, St. Louis attorney Mark McCloskey, who spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention.
McCloskey became famous after he and his wife brandished firearms at protesters who entered their private road last year in an incident that made them pariahs on the political left and celebrities on the right.
He confirmed his interest in the race last week to Politico after dropping hints on social media and appearing in Blue Springs earlier this month alongside the declared candidates at the Jackson County GOP event.
McCloskey has engaged in election denialism and conspiracy-mongering, saying on Twitter on Jan. 9— three days after the Capitol riot—that “there is no question that Donald Trump won the legitimate vote.”
During his appearance at the Jackson County GOP dinner, McCloskey asserted his ongoing devotion to Trump.
“He’s still my president,” McCloskey said to cheers in Blue Springs. “People in the mainstream Marxist media pretend that Joe Biden and his cohorts are running the country. And every morning they spring upon us a new assault on our freedoms.”
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