A midterm election forecast predicts former Gov. Eric Greitens (R-MO) will win Missouri’s U.S. Senate race in a blow-out, with his odds of victory sitting at 96.1 percent against a Democrat opponent in the general election.
A central talking point among establishment conservatives against the America First candidate is that Greitens would have trouble overcoming a Democrat in the general election, but Decision Desk’s model, which ran through 14,000,605 midterm election simulations, has Greitens winning 96 out of 100 races, dismantling the establishment’s talking points.
As evidenced in Dan Cox’s Maryland’s GOP gubernatorial primary win Tuesday, a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party is front and center this mid-term election cycle as America First candidates are rising up against the establishment. It is no different in Missouri, where the political insiders have levied an all-out assault on Greitens’ campaign, unsuccessfully, in an effort to prevent him from becoming the nominee.
The contest was largely viewed as a three-way race between Greitens, MO Attorney General Eric Schmitt, and Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), but in a Truth Social post earlier this month, Trump told voters in the Show Me State that they “can forget about Vicky Hartzler for Senate” adding that he “will NOT BE ENDORSING HER FOR THE SENATE!”
Trump’s rejection of Hartzler was a brutal blow to her campaign in a state where Trump won handily in 2020 and seemingly set up a fight to the finish between Greitens and Schmitt with Trump’s endorsement still on the line.
Last week Breitbart News exposed Schmitt’s ties to radical former state legislator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, who called for Trump’s assassination in 2017. Chappelle-Nadal posted a picture of herself and Schmitt to Twitter with the caption “7 years ago today. We are still moving mountains,” just months before the attorney general held a private fundraiser at Trump’s luxurious Mar-a-Lago estate in March.
She told Breitbart News that Schmitt and she “worked very well together” in the state legislature, where they passed legislation that Democrats like and conservatives do not. Their relationship raises questions about Schmitt’s conservative record and if he will ally with Democrats in the U.S. Senate as he did with a the state senator who called for Trump’s assassination.
“Eric Schmitt continues to be one of her friends. He obviously has to answer for himself,” Greitens said over the weekend while appearing on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday. “I mean, I find it despicable that an elected official, that Nadal, would say something and not resign. I called for her to resign when I was governor, and I think anybody who still associates with her should seriously consider disavowing her. But that’s the kind of differences in this race, the really bright contrast.”
While former President Donald J. Trump has called on Republican senators to oust Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) from leadership, Greitens has vowed to vote against the seven-term senator as leader if elected. No other candidate in the race has made such a pledge, and when Schmitt was asked if he would vote against McConnell on three occasions, he sidestepped the question. The former governor certainly ruffled establishment feathers with his promise, as well as with his metaphorical RINO (Republican in Name Only) hunting campaign advertisement, as one of McConnell’s biggest donors, and others in the Missouri establishment, have pumped money into a PAC that launched an ad campaign against the America First candidate.
“Look, one of the reasons why they come after me… is because they know that in the United States Senate, I’m going to be President Trump’s biggest champion. They know that I’m going to be the biggest champion for the MAGA movement,” Greitens previously told Breitbart News Saturday. “I’m going to be the biggest champion for America First, and that’s why they are so desperate to stop me.
“That’s why [Mitch] McConnell is coming after me, that’s why Karl Rove is coming after me, that’s why all of the RINOs in Missouri are coming after me: because they want to stop me, and they are also really trying to stop President Trump and the America First movement,” he continued