WASHINGTON — Rep. Billy Long thinks he has two paths to winning the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Missouri.
The first is the path of Kathy Barnette in Pennsylvania. After losing a congressional bid in 2020, Barnette set out to find voter fraud in her district based on a faulty statistical analysis of her race. In the process, she became a prominent figure in election denial circles, providing her with enough grassroots support to keep up with Trump-endorsed Mehmet Oz and billionaire David McCormick, both of whom spent millions on the race.
Barnette, after a late surge, finished in third place.
The second path is that of J.D. Vance in Ohio. Vance, the venture capitalist who wrote the book “Hillbilly Elegy,” was trailing the Republican field for U.S. Senate in Ohio with only 11% of the vote in some polls. Then he got the endorsement from former President Donald Trump.
Vance ended up winning the primary by about 8 percentage points.
The leading Republican candidates running for U.S. Senate in Missouri have long coveted Trump’s endorsement, perceiving a blessing from the most powerful member of their party as a potential catapult to the nomination, heaving them ahead of a crowded field.
They’ve courted current and former Trump advisers. They’ve made pilgrimages down to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. They’ve battled with Biden. They’ve branded themselves as America First candidates. They’ve touted how many times they voted according to his wishes. They’ve used his stances as a shield to beat back attack ads.
As the 2022 primary season stretches through its first month, the political power of a Trump endorsement is being put to the test — and so far it is passing. All of the non-incumbent candidates in congressional races with Trump’s endorsement have won their races.
This Tuesday’s primaries in Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia, the trend will continue. Retired professional football player Herschel Walker, who played for Trump’s short-lived USFL team in the 1980s and won his endorsement decades later, won the Republican primary in Georgia. Trump endorsed Sen. John Boozman, the incumbent Republican in Arkansas, who won more than 50% of the vote. Even Trump’s forsaken candidate, Rep. Mo Brooks, earned a place in a runoff in Alabama.
Trump has yet to pick a candidate in Missouri, which leaves candidates like Long hopeful they may be tapped before the Aug. 2 primary. And the results throughout the country serve as evidence for how an endorsement from Trump could change the course of his campaign.
“Trump is very popular in Missouri,” Long said at the U.S. Capitol last week. “I said since day one: he endorses in this race, it’s over. Everybody else might as well fold up their tent go home, I don’t care who he endorses. If he endorses, it’s a done deal.”
The non-endorsement
To win a potential endorsement from Trump — and to win over a base that remains loyal to him — candidates have run on their proximity to the former president and his policies.
Long — a buoyant auctioneer turned 12-year congressman from Springfield who wears themed pins on his suit and hands out fake $45 dollar bills in honor of the former president — was in a Walmart one day in late March when he got a phone call from Trump. The former president told him he was about to put out a statement the congressman would like.
“Have the great people of Missouri been considering the big, loud, and proud personality of Congressman Billy Long for the Senate?” Trump said in a statement. “Do they appreciate what they have in him, a warrior and the first major political leader to say, ‘You better get on the Trump Train, it’s leaving the station.’ That was before I even announced I was running for President.”
He finished the statement saying it was “not an endorsement,” but he was “just askin’.”
It’s the only statement Trump has officially released about the Missouri primary. In April, Long used part of his five minutes at the Boone County GOP Lincoln Dinner to tell the story about the non-endorsement. He said he looked down at his phone and saw Trump was calling. He took the call and started walking quickly so people couldn’t overhear, joking that if they did, they’d think he was a runaway from the nursing home who believes they’re talking to the former president. Then he read the statement to the crowd.
“He didn’t endorse,” Long said, wrapping up his speech. “But he wants you to look at me.”
Former top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, who Long has paid more than $135,000 for consulting, painted it as the most definitive statement Trump has put out in support of a Senate candidate in Missouri. She said she has spoken to Trump about the race and encouraged him to back Long.
He’s not the only candidate with a surrogate trying to get Trump’s ear. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley has talked up Rep. Vicky Hartzler to the president. Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who runs a Trump super PAC, has close ties with Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.
“Eric Schmitt has defended President Trump’s policies at every turn, he’s since taken a blowtorch to Joe Biden radical agenda as attorney general, and he will continue defending and restoring President Trump’s America First agenda in the U.S. Senate,” said Schmitt’s spokesman, Rich Chrismer.
Donald Trump Jr., the son of the former president, appears to be hoping his father looks somewhere else.
In an interview on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast — a show where former Gov. Eric Greitens has been a frequent guest — Trump Jr. said he didn’t know what his father would do in the race, but in his opinion he liked Greitens.
“I see who the press hates the most, that’s usually the guy I like,” Trump Jr. said.
Greitens hired Trump Jr.’s fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle, to work on his campaign and paid her consulting firm at least $10,000 in 2021 (he also reimbursed former Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn for trips to Mar-a-Lago and the Trump resort in Palm Beach that year). In April, Trump Jr. made a trip to a gun range with Greitens where they shot at a target and said they were striking fear in the heart of liberals.
Afterward, he spoke to a crowd in St. Charles. He started off his speech by saying he wanted to talk about the importance of kindness, saying it was essential in order to revive the republic. Then he talked about enemies.
“One of the things he said when he was here, when you look at all of the madness they’re doing,” Greitens said. “He said look at who they’re attacking. I look at who CNN attacks and who The New York Times attacks and who George Soros attacks and if they’re all going after, the same guy then he’s our guy.”
It remains to be seen whether Trump will weigh in. The president previously balked at the idea of backing Greitens, not because of his blackmailing scandal or allegations of domestic abuse, but because Greitens resigned from office in 2018 instead of continuing to fight, according to reporting from Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin in their book "This Will Not Pass."
Still, Greitens has remained the front-runner, despite some polls that had him trailing Hartzler and Schmitt after the domestic violence allegations in February. The race remains close enough that a Trump endorsement could put any of the leading candidates over the edge, said James Harris, a Republican strategist based in Jefferson City.
“I think in a race that will be as close as the Missouri Senate race come July, between Vicky Hartzler, Eric Schmitt and Eric Greitens, a Trump endorsement of any one of the three candidates would give them the momentum the final stretch to help him win the nomination,” Harris said.
Trump’s record
Trump’s endorsement record has taken on an outsize impact with the Republican base, especially compared to other former presidents. With eyes on the 2024 Republican presidential election, some are using the endorsements as a measure for determining how strong of a hold Trump has on the party.
While Trump has faced setbacks in gubernatorial primaries — his chosen candidates have lost in Nebraska, Idaho and Georgia, including former Sen. David Perdue’s loss to Gov. Brian Kemp, who Trump actively campaigned against for his refusal to overturn the 2020 presidential results in the state — he has fared better in federal races.
Trump beefs up his average by endorsing congressional incumbents. In the Kentucky primary, Trump endorsed all five of the House Republicans in the state and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul about a week before the election, none of whom faced a particularly tough primary. That added six wins to his tally.
In other cases, an early Trump endorsement for an incumbent waves off serious primary challengers — like Sen. Jerry Moran’s race in Kansas — again, helping boost his average.
Incumbents make up about 70% of the candidates Trump has endorsed for Congress.
Except for Rep. Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina, who lost his reelection bid amid a bevy of scandals, every candidate Trump has endorsed in a Republican primary for Congress so far has won — depending on the recount for the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race, where as of Tuesday morning Oz has a slight lead over McCormick.
His record of picking winners in open races is a little more muddled. In Pennsylvania, he endorsed Sean Parnell who withdrew from the race amid a custody battle with his wife in which she accused him of domestic violence. He then backed Oz, the celebrity candidate made famous by his time on “The Dr. Oz Show,” which ran for 13 seasons.
Like the candidates in Missouri, McCormick campaigned as an America First candidate and tried to woo Trump. Despite the effort, Trump said at a rally that McCormick was a “nice guy, but he’s not MAGA.”
In Alabama Trump backed former U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks. At first. After Brooks was well behind in the polls to U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby-backed candidate Katie Britt — and after Brooks suggested it was time to move beyond the 2020 election — Trump publicly announced he was rescinding his endorsement.
Brooks, however, has surged toward the end of his campaign. He, too, has continued to run as an “America First” candidate, even without Trump’s endorsement. On Tuesday he won a spot in a runoff against Britt next month.
The alternative path
Barnette missed the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania by about 6 percentage points, but her late burst caught Long’s attention. He saw it as a sign that the race had gotten so negative that people were turning to an alternative.
He thinks he can be that alternative in Missouri as the other candidates go increasingly negative on each other. Long’s PAC, called WinMo, has only purchased ads supporting Long. It has not yet gone on the attack.
Still, Long isn’t afraid of throwing mud. Talking about how Greitens’ message seemed to be resonating with voters elicited a list of comparisons from the auctioneer.
“He’s a salesman,” Long said. “He’s a flimflam man and Professor Harold Hill reincarnated. That or Snidely Whiplash. Snidely, you know, had a penchant for tying women up to railroad tracks all the time.”
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