Comment POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. — Republicans vying for the U.S. Senate nomination in Tuesday’s primary spent the final day of their campaign in a familiar state of anxiety — checking their phones for a statement from Donald Trump. But by the end of the day, the former president brought more chaos to an already tumultuous race by simply endorsing “ERIC” — a first name shared by two opposing candidates — former Gov. Eric Greitens and state Attorney General Eric Schmidt — as suggested that he is leaving her. to voters to choose between them. “There is a BIG Election in the Great State of Missouri and we need to send a MAGA champion and a true warrior to the US Senate, someone who will fight for border security, election integrity, our military and great veterans, along with a strong toughness on crime and the border,” Trump wrote in a statement. “I trust the Great People of Missouri, on this, to make up their own minds, as they did when they gave me landslide victories in the 2016 and 2020 Elections, and therefore I am proud to announce that ERIC has their full and Complete endorsement!” Trump’s endorsements in the 2022 Republican primary The unusual statement came just hours after Trump wrote on Truth Social: “I will be endorsing the Republican race in the Great State of Missouri (Nomination) for Senate sometime today!” In recent days, several of the candidates to replace retiring Sen. Roy Blunt (R) have made an 11th-hour move to get the nod in the hotly contested race. At his latest campaign rally at GOP headquarters in the St. Louis area, Schmidt told supporters he had been “endorsed by President Trump” and thanked Trump when he called with the news. On Twitter, before his latest rally at an airport near the state’s largest city, Greitens also said she thanked Trump by phone. The double confirmation was a small victory for Senate Republicans, who were worried that Trump would support Greitens. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, pressed Trump on Monday, urging him not to endorse Greitens, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity to to describe a private. INTERACTION. The day’s events amounted to a fresh dose of turmoil in a race that has been filled with it. Greitens, who governed that state for 16 months before resigning amid personal and political scandals and more recently facing domestic violence charges he denies, has campaigned as a martyred underdog who fought in the same “swamp” as Trump. To stop him, GOP-aligned donors have poured at least $6 million into a super PAC, Show Me Values, with ads highlighting allegations of abuse and warning that he is unfit to represent Missouri. “We have all the right enemies,” a defiant Greitens told an afternoon crowd at a party here last week. “What that tells me is that they recognize that our campaign is a threat to business as usual.” Before Tuesday, some Republicans here expressed hope that the ads had neutralized Greitens and that a possible endorsement by Trump would seal the race for Schmidt. The campaign for a seat held by Republicans since 1987 has tested whether electability concerns and a scandal-plagued candidate dragging the party are enough to stop a candidate who is exploiting conservative grievances and mistrust of the media. and the party establishment. Schmitt and Rep. Vicky Hartzler, who is backed by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), attacked Greitens while trying to distance themselves from Republican leaders. By the final weekend of the race, both had called for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to be replaced as GOP leader, and both warned that Greitens could put the position in jeopardy in November. “Will you vote for the ex-governor who abused his wife and child, assaulted his child, and resign in Missouri?” Schmitt said at a rally with supporters in Columbia last week. The attorney general, who has pushed for Trump’s support as he has climbed in narrow public polls, referred to allegations by Greitens’ ex-wife, which the candidate had called a distraction, after separate allegations forced him to resign from office in 2018. , without charges being brought against him. him. “This man is the one who resigned,” Schmidt said. “And when the going gets tough, he started.” Schmidt said after those remarks that he was still seeking Trump’s support, with the former president likely “knowing the split in the polls last week.” But Trump, whose endorsements in other states have occasionally saddled the party with weak candidates, has remained silent for most of the race except for a statement condemning Hartzler. That left many Republican voters guessing which candidate shares the values and priorities they appreciated from Trump — or at least, the fighting spirit against an establishment they believe had ceded too much ground to liberals. “Eric Schmidt is the establishment candidate,” said Kym Franklin, a 55-year-old social worker who supports Greitens. Waiting for the former governor to speak at a Saturday rally at a sports bar where neon signs marked the “stairway to heaven” and the “avenue to hell,” he compared the former governor to former presidents. “Both have been railroaded and we the people who voted for them have been robbed.” Show Me Values PAC, funded with startup cash from donors Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield and Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts (R), has worked in recent weeks to try to dispel such impressions. In some of its 30 seconds, an actress portraying Greitens’ ex-wife read from an affidavit accusing him of “abuse,” both of her and their young son. Greitens called his ex-wife’s allegations “baseless.” But that was unconvincing to some Republican primary voters. “I wish Greitens would drop out,” said Matt Fisher, a 42-year-old loan officer who leaned toward Schmidt. “He continues to embarrass us. It is a shame for our state.” Greitens entered the primary in March 2021, claiming on Fox News that he had been “completely exonerated.” An investigation found no wrongdoing on a campaign finance charge and a felony invasion of privacy charge against a woman, his former hairdresser, with whom he admitted to having an affair was dropped by prosecutors. The former governor has won some endorsements from Trump allies with a strong following, such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Greitens has portrayed himself as an enemy of RINOs, which stands for “Republicans in Name Only.” He had faced criticism for running a campaign ad showing him pretending to hunt down members of his party with guns — a message his campaign is raising money for with “RINO Hunting Permits” to put on vehicle windows. “We have to recognize that we are in a fight against evil,” Greitens said at Saturday’s rally in St. Charles County, where he condemned Republicans who he said had defied Trump’s push to finish a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Blunt, whose retirement plans kicked off this primary, was among the Republicans who decried Trump’s decision to shuffle defense funds to pay for the wall. And in March, after Sheena Greitens released an affidavit accusing her ex-husband of abuse, Blunt called on Greitens to drop out of the race. Polling and private polling, which has a spotty record in Missouri, found the affidavit hurt Greitens. The ad campaign focused on the new charges, the strategists say, helped push Schmitt and Hartzler forward. And support for the PAC group, which had given Greitens air cover before his ex-wife’s sworn testimony, had dried up. In the late stages of the race, some Greitens supporters have made smaller-scale efforts to help him prevail. Blake Johnson, a 45-year-old contractor, placed a refrigerator-sized Greitens sign in the bed of his Ford F-350. Driving through St. Charles County, a Republican stronghold outside St. Louis, he had watched the support he was seeing for the former governor. “I had three people flag me down today, but they were all driving Priuses, so you’d guess they were leaning left,” he said Saturday. “I had 21 people give me a thumbs up.” In late June, former U.S. Attorney John Wood launched an independent bid for the Senate and called Greitens a “danger to our democracy,” convincing some Republicans that Greitens might lose a November election that anyone else should win. in his party. “It looks like Greitens might be dead now,” Democratic candidate Lucas Coons, a veteran and antitrust campaigner vying for his party’s nomination, said at a town hall Wednesday night in Columbia. If Greitens lost on Tuesday, Coons hoped Wood and the GOP nominee could descend into “a little civil war — the country club Republicans versus the Trump side.” Other candidates in the crowded field have also sought Trump’s support and are running in his mold. Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.) ran a limited campaign while urging Trump to endorse him. Mark McCloskey, a lawyer who became a Trump 2020 surrogate after pointing a rifle at Black Lives Matter protesters marching in his St. Louis neighborhood, is also in the race. Hartzler and Schmitt have different conservative bonafides and different strategies for winning. Earlier this year, Hartzler, the farmer-turned-legislator, was censored by Twitter — a badge of honor in GOP primaries — for an ad that singled out transgender athletes. “Women’s sports are for women,” Hartzler said in the ad, which focused on University of Pennsylvania swimmer Leah Thomas. “Not men pretending to be women.” But on July 8, shortly after the Missouri Farm Bureau endorsed Hartzler, Trump posted a counter-endorsement of the candidate on his Truth Social website. “I don’t think he has what it takes to take on the Radical Left…
