Eric Schmitt wins Senate race in Missouri with promise to ‘blowtorch’ Biden agenda
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt was elected to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday after a campaign that centered on appealing to conservative voters with a promise to “take a blowtorch” to President Joe Biden’s agenda.
He easily defeated Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine, who lent her own campaign more than $16 million as she unsuccessfully tried to flip the Republican Party’s hold on a U.S. Senate seat in an increasingly red state that was once considered the bellwether of the nation.
“Let’s be clear, the Biden administration’s unchecked assault on our jobs, on our families, on our liberties, on our values must end,” Schmitt said at his campaign watch party in Maryland Heights, a St. Louis suburb, Tuesday night. “The era of fighting back and speaking out for the rights of parents and small business owners and working families is just beginning.”
The Associated Press called the race for Schmitt at 9:12 p.m. As of 11 p.m. he had won 57% of the votes, with 2,962 of 3,266 precincts reporting, according to the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office.
Busch Valentine, with 40% of the vote, conceded the race in a statement posted on Twitter.
“Tonight did not go the way so many of us had hoped,” she wrote. “While I am incredibly proud of the campaign we built together and the tireless work we did to get our message out across the state, a majority of voters have spoken and I am committed to respecting their will and these results.”
Schmitt’s victory means Republicans will maintain control of the seat previously held by Sen. Roy Blunt, who served as the chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee and decided to retire.
While Blunt has been instrumental in helping the Biden administration pass a number of bipartisan priorities — including a bill to fund infrastructure projects across the country and an attempt to address gun violence in the aftermath of two high profile mass shootings — Schmitt has positioned himself as someone who will serve as an obstacle.
On the campaign trail, Schmitt, 47, repeatedly said his job as attorney general was to wake up in the morning and sue Joe Biden.
He largely built his reputation, and won over the Republican base, through a barrage of legal challenges as the state’s attorney general. In 2020, he signed onto a baseless lawsuit that sought to overturn the results of the presidential election.
He unsuccessfully tried to sue China for the COVID-19 pandemic. He filed lawsuits against 47 school districts for enacting mask mandates. And he filed legal actions against the federal government and the Biden administration over a host of policies, from vaccine mandates to immigration.
Schmitt in June triggered Missouri’s near-total ban on abortion just minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The abortion ban does not include exceptions for rape and incest.
Abortion rights activists and doctors have criticized the law as too vague and said it forces women to carry unsafe pregnancies or travel out of state for the procedure. They also have said the ban puts an unnecessary strain on doctors tasked with performing an abortion to save a woman’s life.
“I’ll just pray that he’ll get past the phoniness with which he has conducted himself in the office of attorney general for the last two years, the demagoguery with which he has approached both his campaign and his day job, and instead decide that he wants to be a senator for all Missourians,” said Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, who has frequently sparred with Schmitt.
To win a competitive Republican primary among a crowded field of conservative candidates, Schmitt made direct appeals to the base of former President Donald Trump, eventually securing a joint endorsement with former Gov. Eric Greitens on the eve of the August primary.
At a rally in Columbia Monday, Trump’s former acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker touted Schmitt’s role as attorney general. Whitaker previously worked for Axiom Strategies, the political consulting firm that advises Schmitt.
“He was such a reliable force for us in the Trump administration,” he said. “We were able to partner with him and when he came to me and said, ‘I want to run for the Senate,’ I said ‘I’m all in for you, Eric.’”
Instead of moving to the political middle after the primary, Schmitt continued his aggressive posture against the Biden administration. In October, he joined a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s policy to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for some Americans. The case is still moving through the federal court system, and Schmitt has been critical of the program, painting it as a handout to college graduates.
Schmitt will now transition from litigation to legislation, joining Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, Schmitt’s predecessor as Missouri attorney general who has built a reputation as a conservative firebrand in the Senate.
Hawley praised Schmitt in a statement to The Star: “Eric Schmitt is going to be a fighter for Missouri in the Senate. He will stand up to Big Tech, take on the woke mob and fight for a nationalist foreign policy.”
Schmitt has been echoing those sentiments.
“I think we’re at a very important point in our country where we’ve seen this federal overreach that we’ve never seen before, and I’m going to push back against that and if we can get support anywhere, I’m happy to have it,” Schmitt said Tuesday when asked if he would be willing to work with Democrats in the Senate.
Schmitt was able to win without making a major overture to Democrats and independents in Missouri. The state has seen a seismic shift from bellwether to deep red in the last 10 years, particularly in rural parts of the state.
“I don’t know that Jesus Christ could have won this cycle with a D after his name in Missouri,” said Jeff Smith, a former Democratic state senator.
Busch Valentine attempted to win over more conservative voters by criticizing Schmitt for a vote he made in the Missouri Senate to allow foreign companies to own a larger share of Missouri’s farmland, something he was also criticized for in the general election.
She also touted her decision to become a nurse, even though she was a beneficiary of the Anheuser-Busch fortune. And made abortion rights one of her key campaign issues. She repeatedly attacked Schmitt for triggering the state’s abortion ban.
Democrats had hoped that Busch Valentine’s name recognition — as heir to the Anheuser-Busch fortune — would be enough to sway voters away from Schmitt.
“It was an interesting experiment, to run someone with such a famous surname,” Smith said. “But given the polarization of national politics, even that widely recognized name, that for decades has generally had positive connotations for people, or the money that came with it, did not seem to move the needle.”
Schmitt’s critics said his tenure as attorney general focused more on national politics than on the people of Missouri. But Schmitt and his allies argued he was doing his job by fighting government overreach. His litigation strategy earned him national name recognition and generated support from a hyper-conservative base.
At the campaign rally in Columbia, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican who appointed Schmitt as attorney general in 2018, defended Schmitt’s role in pushing back against perceived government overreach and said he would continue that work in the Senate.
“He caught tremendous amount of heat for just doing the right thing — for standing up for basic fundamental rights called freedom,” he said. “And that’s why we need good people in Washington, DC. That place is a mess.”
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat who previously worked with Blunt to steer federal money to Missouri projects, said he hopes he will be able to work with Schmitt to pass legislation.
“My great hope is that he and I could work together,” Cleaver said. “I have had a partner in the Senate, fortunately for Kansas City and the surrounding areas, since I was elected.”
This story was originally published November 8, 2022 at 9:17 PM.
