The senate race in Missouri is one of the closest watched of the midterm elections. According to preliminary polling, it is also one of the tightest. As of Nov. 3, most preliminary polls had the race tied at 47 percent for both the Democrat and Republican candidates. This comes as no surprise in an election that has been defined by an incessant flow of advertisements from both sides painting the other candidate as “out of step” with Missouri voters.
The race is being watched carefully by party leaders and the sitting POTUS, made evident by his recently announced visit to Cape Girardeau as the last stop in a massive 11th-hour push to grow support for Republican candidates and his own administration.
During an Oct. 30 campaign stop at Port Cape in downtown Cape Girardeau, two-term incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill, Democrat, referenced ad attacks and the influence of “dark money” interests from both parties.
“We have a front-row seat in Missouri this year at what Dark Money is doing — these anonymous contributions from behind the curtain — every Missourian has the right to know who’s paying for the ads,” McCaskill said.
Southeast professor of political science Jeremy Walling said the outside money is not uncommon in high profile races.
“That’s just the nature of the beast these days,” Walling said. “It’s at a time when the Democrats in particular are seeking to make a gain. They want to take control of the house and Senate, and for them to do that they need to maintain this seat. For Josh Hawley to pick up this seat would be a huge blow for them and their efforts to do that.”
Walling said historically, McCaskill's status as an incumbent would be a benefit, but in a political climate where politicians are praised for a lack of political experience, it could be a hindrance. McCaskill was elected to the Missouri State Legislature in 1982 before serving as a county prosecutor and winning the race for State Auditor in 1999. She became the first female in Missouri history to serve as United States senator in 2006 and easily defeated opponent Todd Aiken in 2012 for a second term.
Hawley, on the other hand, is relatively new on the political scene and has very little in terms of voting history. Walling said there are pros and cons to Hawley’s youthful career, noting he lacks controversy and “baggage” but also retrospective achievements.
“He’s only been attorney general for five minutes, so now he’s running for senate, we don’t really have enough background on him to look back and say ‘OK, I like what you’ve done, I want to put you in this other job,’ so it’s kind of an unknown there,” Walling said.
A graduate of Stanford and Yale, Hawley served as a Missouri prosecutor before being elected to attorney general in 2017. Some of his notable work in that office includes investigations of former Gov. Eric Greitens, the Catholic clergy and an audit of untested sexual assault kits.
Since declaring his bid to unseat McCaskill, Hawley has been coined as the “Golden Boy” of the GOP, and has appeared with Trump at each of the president’s three MAGA rallies in Missouri.
At the rally in Springfield in September, Hawley recycled phrases commonly used by the Trump administration and commended the President’s follow-through on campaign promises.
“In 2016, this man, and you made history and now everything he is fighting for, everything you voted for is on the line,” Hawley said at the Springfield rally. “Let’s make history again, let’s make America great again.”
Hawley is expected to be in for Cape Girardeau for the last MAGA rally of the midterm election season, along with conservative radio personalities Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
Walling said Trump “showing up and stumping for Hawley” just makes sense. He said the stakes are high, Democrats are targeting this race in order to hold the seat.
“This will be a huge thing in who has control of the senate,” Walling said.
On McCaskill, the New York Times wrote, the race is the “fight of her political life.”
The Senator told reporters at the Port Cape event that health care is without question the most important issue of this race. She said if the lawsuit Josh Hawley has filed as state attorney general is successful, there is no back-up protection for patients with pre-existing conditions.
“I’m taking on the drug companies, I’ve been able to have some success doing that, they actually publicly said this week that I’d be trouble if I got back to Washington,” she said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that they are behind the curtain funding a lot of these nasty negative ads about me that are not telling the truth about my record.”
On health care, Walling said it is about the bigger issue.
“Which [candidate] do you want to be around to make that decision if it comes up?” Walling said.
He said the advertisements sound like a “he said, she said.”
“They’re having a campaign over who’s too elite to be Missouri senator,” he said. “He’s an educational elite, she’s a financial elite. Well, I’ve got news for you: just about everyone in Congress is more elite than everyone. These people are all going to high-end colleges, high end law schools, and it’s not like the average person in any way.”
