Jack Danforth denounced Hawley for his role in Jan. 6. His daughter donated to him.
After Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley declared that he would object to certification of the 2020 presidential election and challenge the results from Pennsylvania, his former mentor came down on him swiftly.
“Lending credence to Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen is a highly destructive attack on our constitutional government, former Sen. John Danforth said at the time. “It is the opposite of conservative; it is radical.”
After the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, Danforth blamed Hawley and said supporting him was the “biggest mistake” he had made in his life.
Danforth’s regrets are apparently not shared by every member of his family.
On October 12, Eleanor Danforth Shaheen, one of Danforth’s five children, donated $750 to Hawley’s campaign in two checks, one for $500 and one for $250, according to Hawley’s latest financial disclosure report. She was also seen at an October 16 fundraiser in Westphalia.
Shaheen could not be reached for comment at a landline listed as her phone number.
“In our family there is a wide range of political opinion,” Danforth said. “My love for my children and grandchildren has no relationship to their politics.”
The donation from Shaheen is part of a larger trend where Republicans appear to have moved past a brief moment of outrage over the January 6 riot, even as former President Trump continues to claim that the election was stolen.
In a statement Sunday, Trump criticized a bipartisan effort in the U.S. Senate to revise the Electoral Count Act, which deals with how the Senate should respond if there’s a dispute over who won a state. A proposed revision would make it clear that a vice president cannot overturn the result of an election, something Trump has suggested and reiterated Sunday was within the authority of then-Vice President Mike Pence.
In the immediate aftermath of the riot, several companies either said they would stop donating to Hawley or to politicians altogether. Hallmark, which is based in Kansas City, even demanded its money back from Hawley (though it did not get it).
Still, Hawley more than quadrupled his 2020 fundraising total last year, according to his latest campaign finance report, mostly from smaller, grassroots donations. Hawley swore off corporate PAC money in April after a controversy over companies protesting an election reform bill that changed the state’s absentee voting rules.
His campaign reported $1.17 million in the final three months of the year, for a total of $8.3 million over the course of 2021.
Along with fundraising, his campaign released an internal poll last week that found he had an 81 percent approval rating among Republican primary voters and 47 percent of general election voters viewed him favorably compared to 39 percent who viewed him unfavorably.
Danforth, who represented Missouri in the Senate between 1976 and 1995 and served as the ambassador to the United Nations during former President George W. Bush’s administration, met Hawley at a dinner party at Yale when Hawley attended law school there.
Danforth has said he was impressed with Hawley’s intellect and played a role in helping launch his political career. He was a leader in the effort to recruit Hawley to the U.S. Senate against former Sen. Claire McCaskill in 2018.
This story was originally published February 1, 2022 at 4:34 PM.