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Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt has secured the Republican nomination for US Senate in the Show Me State.
Schmitt won the race easily, beating his nearest rivals, Dem. Vicky Hartzler and former Gov. Eric Greitens (R-MO) by a wide margin. With 46 percent reporting, the attorney general took 45 percent of the vote, effectively doubling Hartzler in second place with 23.1 percentaccording to Associated Press election results was drafted from New York Times. Greitens was third after garnering 19.4 percent of the vote.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt won the state’s GOP U.S. Senate primary. It’s a relief to Mitch McConnell and other Republican incumbents, who feared the former governor. Eric Greitens would win and potentially cost the party a safe seat. https://t.co/S3Smwly2dn
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 3, 2022
Schmidt’s win comes a day after former President Donald J. Trump, who expressed his support for “ERIC” in the race without specifying whether he was endorsing Greitens or Schmidt:
This 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 our great veterans, together with a strong toughness on crime and borders. We need a person who won’t back down to the Radical Left Wing Maniacs who are destroying our country. I trust the Great People of Missouri, in this, to decide, 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 my Complete and Total Endorsement.
Schmitt and Greitens vied for endorsements throughout the race, both emerging as the true America First candidate in a months-long battle for Trump’s support. Greitens had set the tone for the contest last year by pledging to vote Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) out of the U.S. Senate leadership. Schmitt echoed the sentiment in the days leading up to the primary, saying he was not endorsing McConnell for leader. Ultimately, millions of dollars in negative publicity proved too much for the former governor to overcome.
Eric Greitens, Republican U.S. Senate candidate for Missouri, speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, U.S., Thursday, February 24, 2022. (Tristan Wheelock/Bloomberg via Getty Images )
For her part, Hartzler did extremely well in her stronghold district, but the loyalty among her voters was not enough to push her over the finish line. What might have kept Hartzler from a closer matchup with Schmitt was her rejection of Trump as an America First candidate, telling voters they could “forget” her in the race.
Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., speaks during the Republican Study Committee’s press conference to introduce a ‘Bill of Rights for Women’ outside the Capitol on Thursday, May 19, 2022. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
It remains to be seen whether Schmitt will face Trudy Busche-Valentine or Lucas Kunce in the general election.
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