WASHINGTON — On Monday, former President Donald Trump’s super PAC sent out an email.
This is common for the Twitterless Trump, who uses his PAC to share articles he likes, send out statements about things he doesn’t and — most important for the crowded field of Republican candidates running for U.S. Senate in Missouri — share his endorsements.
“ICYMI:” it said. “Exclusive–Greitens: The U.S. Senate Doesn’t Just Need More Fighters, It Needs New Leadership When Republicans Reclaim the Majority.”
It linked to an op-ed former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens wrote in September, in which he pledged not to support Sen. Mitch McConnell for majority leader should Republicans take back the Senate in 2022.
Greitens is one of two Senate candidates in the country who has made the promise. It came in response to Trump’s repeated calls to oust McConnell — who has been clear about his dislike for the former president and has blamed him for the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The feverish effort to secure a Trump endorsement has made the Kentucky senator’s leadership position an issue in the Aug. 2 Missouri primary, lifting an intra-party Beltway squabble into a litmus test for devotion to the man in Mar-a-Lago.
After the 2012 election, when several fringe candidates won Republican primaries, causing the Democrats to keep control of the Senate, McConnell started intervening in some primaries against candidates he didn’t think could win.
McConnell has made it clear he thinks Greitens, who resigned to avoid impeachment after allegations of sexual abuse and blackmail, is one of them.
Meanwhile, Greitens appears to be betting that highlighting his conflict with McConnell might help him win the favor of Trump.
Whether it changes the minds of other voters is a different question.
“I don’t think it’s going to have much of an impact at all,” said Kenneth Warren, a political science professor at St. Louis University. “You have a lot of voters who couldn’t even tell you who Mitch McConnell is.”
So why is this even a thing?
McConnell is the 80-year-old minority leader of the U.S. Senate. He has been in office since 1985 and leader of the Republican Party in the Senate since 2007, which makes him the longest-serving Republican leader in Senate history. In that time, he has been compared to the grim reaper, Darth Vader, a turtle and an old crow, the last of which is Trump’s moniker of choice.
He did not rise to party leadership with his charisma. He is rather dour, and his humor may be generously described as dry. His power came from his ability to raise a lot of money, a willingness to take unpopular stands to grow the party and his perceived political guile.
McConnell is also a creature of the Senate, someone who’s always proclaimed the value of its history and traditions.
So, when a man with a blue and red painted face, viking horns and a fur pelt was able to stand at the Senate dais after a mob of pro-Trump supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol and disrupted the certification of the 2020 presidential election, McConnell was outraged.
And he blamed Trump.
McConnell had never been particularly fond of Trump. But the two had a working relationship and collaborated to achieve what Trump considers one of his most significant accomplishments — seeding the federal judiciary with young conservative judges granted lifetime tenure. That includes three U.S. Supreme Court Justices.
After Jan. 6, the relationship appeared over. While McConnell didn’t vote to convict Trump after he was impeached by the House of Representatives, he has had no qualms about criticizing the former president. His leadership PAC donated to Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a prime Trump target after voting to impeach him and serving on the House of Representatives Committee investigating his role in Jan. 6.
Over time, animosity has only grown.
Through much of 2021, Trump called for Republican Senators to oust McConnell. He struggled to find anyone to support the effort. Even Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who is more closely aligned with Trump than McConnell, avoided questions about McConnell’s future.
Greitens is one of a few Republicans who has responded to Trump’s call. In September, he was the first U.S. Senate candidate who said he wouldn’t vote to retain McConnell as leader.
“McConnell has lost touch with our conservative movement,” Greitens wrote in the September op-ed that Trump circulated. “He has also lost his fight, and his leadership over the Republican Party does not represent our values. That is why I am committing to Missouri and the Nation that as a U.S. Senator, I will seek to support fresh, bold conservative leadership in the Senate.”
The Trump endorsement
Political scientists will tell you that endorsements usually don’t mean much.
While they can signal where a candidate stands and can open up donor networks, voters are generally unmoved by such testimonials.
Trump is different. His enduring popularity can tip the scales for a Republican candidate. In 2020, 77% of the candidates he backed in regularly-scheduled elections won their races. In “battleground primaries” 91% were successful, according to Ballotpedia.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at the type of support Trump has in states like Missouri,” Warren said.
The candidates certainly appear to believe that Trump’s endorsement carries weight.
Attorney General Eric Schmitt is hosting a fundraiser at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort next week, putting him in shouting distance of the former president. Missouri Rep. Billy Long has made several appeals for endorsement and is using one of Trump’s top advisers, Kellyanne Conway, as a campaign consultant. Rep. Vicky Hartzler has the support of Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who says he frequently speaks with Trump about the race.
But Greitens seems to be making the hardest play. He’s firmly positioning himself with Trump’s base by emphasizing “America First” policies. He’s also tried to reframe his resignation amid scandals of sexual assault and blackmail as a partisan “witchhunt,” just as Trump portrayed his two impeachment trials and the Robert Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election.
His decision to oppose McConnell also appears to be geared toward Trump rather than to the average Missouri Republican primary voter.
“I would be shocked if there’s a single primary voter in any state who’s casting a vote based on who a candidate would support in an internal leadership election,” said Billy Piper, a former McConnell chief of staff.
But Greitens’ message is directed to one person — Trump. If he can convince Trump to support him, it may not matter whether voters know who Mitch McConnell is.
It appears to be working. Politico reported Friday that Trump has warmed to Greitens specifically because of his willingness to oppose McConnell — and that bashing the minority leader won him special access to Trump during his trip to Florida for CPAC, the conservative conference in Orlando in late February.
So who’s it gonna be?
Rep. Long said he chatted with Greitens at CPAC, which drew most of the Republican primary field.
Long said he explained to Greitens that leadership races in Congress are often uncontested. He said neither the current House nor Senate had contested elections and that it would most likely be the case for the next Congress.
“I posed a question to Greitens,” Long texted. “‘If the Senate is 50-50 and Mitch is unopposed, you’re saying you won’t vote for him?’ He said ‘I’m not voting for McConnell.’”
Greitens spokesman Dylan Johnson did not respond to an email requesting confirmation of the conversation. But he equated a vote against McConnell with a potential vote for Democrat Chuck Schumer.
“I will not vote for Chuck Schumer directly or indirectly,” Long said.
Any focus on a leadership election may distract from the messages campaigns usually try to convey to voters. Right now, Republican candidates are focused on criticizing Biden, denouncing inflation and throwing red meat to their base on immigration, LGBTQ rights and “cancel culture.”
“It does no campaign any good to make inside baseball a core campaign strategy,” said Scott Jennings, a Republican political consultant. “And it does no potential future Senator any good to begin handicapping leadership elections before a single vote has been cast.”
That seems to be the approach taken by the rest of the field. Schmitt, dodging the question at CPAC, said he would take his cue from people like Hawley and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on who to vote for in a leadership election. Hartzler said she would vote for the most conservative option.
“I’m going to support the most conservative person running for that,” said Hartzler.
“I don’t even think anyone’s running against him,” Schmitt said of McConnell.
