National spotlight shines on McCaskill-Hawley race as candidates make final pitches

As voters head to the polls today, the showdown between U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill and Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley is getting national attention.

McCaskill, a two-term incumbent Democrat, is hoping to fend off the toughest challenge of her political career by focusing on her moderate bona fides and her opponent’s attempts to repeal the federal health care law.

Hawley, a Republican who had never held public office when he was elected in 2016, is hoping a state that voted for President Donald Trump by 19 percentage points is ready to oust one of its last statewide Democratic officeholders.

The outcome of this hotly contested race could ultimately decide which party has control of the U.S. Senate next year.

McCaskill spent the day before voters headed to the polls crisscrossing the state hammering Hawley on a myriad of issues — from his lawsuit that could end legal protections for those with pre-existing conditions to his support for a right-to-work law that Missourians voted overwhelming to repeal earlier this year.

McCaskill made her final stop of the campaign Monday night at St. James United Methodist Church in Kansas City, led by Emanuel Cleaver III, the son of Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.

“People always say this is the most important election ever. In this case, I think it really is,” Cleaver said.

McCaskill clapped along as the crowd sang, some dancing in the pews.

As the congregation bowed their heads and held their hands in the air, a group of local pastors encircled McCaskill and prayed over her.

After the prayer, McCaskill took the microphone to address the congregation.

“This is gonna be close,” McCaskill said. “I mean, I guarantee you this race could be decided by the number of people in this sanctuary and there will be more than 2 million votes cast…So that tells you how close this is gonna be. So every vote counts.”

Hawley also held events around the state Monday, accompanied by GOP officeholders like U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, Gov. Mike Parson and Treasurer Eric Schmitt. He ended his day in Cape Girardeau, where Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity joined President Donald Trump for the president’s seventh Missouri event this election cycle and second in the last week.

At a stop in Blue Springs Monday afternoon, 65 people packed a tiny office no bigger than a sandwich shop in a strip mall off Missouri 7 to hear Hawley implore supporters to “fire Claire.”

McCaskill, he said, was out of touch with Missourians, supported open borders and palled around with coastal elites who frowned on Missourians and their way of life.

He also said McCaskill had some role in the allegations that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted a woman when he was in high school.

“She waited, she knew,” Hawley said of McCaskill. “She was part of the smear.”

Hawley has worked to nationalize the race and paint McCaskill as a liberal who was out of step with Missouri voters. He latched himself politically to the president, hoping to send a message that voting to oust McCaskill was the same as casting a vote for Trump’s agenda.

And he has at times appeared to be running just as much against U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader in the Senate, as against McCaskill.

Emblazoned on the side of Hawley’s campaign bus was the message at the heart of his entire campaign: “Stop Schumer. Fire Claire. Don’t let the liberals take over.”

Meanwhile, McCaskill has worked to convince Trump voters that she is a moderate willing to work with the president to get things done for Missouri.

She never misses a chance to highlight bills she sponsored or co-sponsored that Trump signed, and regularly touts independent analysis that found she has voted with the president about half the time.

She ran a radio ad in rural Missouri proclaiming that she’s not “one of those crazy Democrats,” upsetting some liberal Democrats in the process.

In the last week, McCaskill has seized on recent revelations by The Star that within weeks of Hawley’s swearing in as attorney general in 2017, the political team that would go on to run his U.S. Senate campaign had stepped in to help direct his official office and raise his national profile.

Hawley had pledged to Missouri voters in 2016 that he was not the kind of career politician who would use” one office to get to another,” proclaiming during his victory speech that year that consultants would no longer wield influence in Missouri’s government.

McCaskill labeled Hawley a hypocrite, calling the use of campaign consultants to help run his government office “inappropriate and potentially illegal.”

The attorney general’s office initially declined to comment on the story, but eventually released a statement insisting that “no taxpayer resources were expended for campaign purposes” and “no government employee participated in political activity.”

Hawley has not publicly denied that consultants were brought into his official office. But he has pushed back at the idea that they ran the office, calling the idea “absurd.”