Missouri AG Eric Schmitt beats Greitens in Senate race
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt defeated scandal-scarred former Gov. Eric Greitens and 19 others Tuesday in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate.
Republican leaders have long feared that a Greitens win would jeopardize a red state Senate seat in the November general election. Greitens resigned four years ago in the midst of a sex scandal, two criminal charges that were eventually dropped amid a very real risk of impeachment. This year, his ex-wife accused him of abuse.
Republican Sen. Roy Blunt’s announcement last year that he would not seek a third term set off a frenzy for his job, with nearly three dozen people in the two major parties filing to run. The Democratic race, largely a showdown of Marine veteran Lucas Kunce and Anheuser-Busch heiress Trudy Busch Valentine, had not yet been called.
Schmitt defeated a field that also included U.S. Reps. Vicky Hartzler and Billy Long, and Mark McCloskey, who gained notoriety in 2020 when he and his wife pointed guns at racial injustice protesters outside their home.
Greitens, a former Navy SEAL officer and Rhodes scholar, had been governor for a year when in January 2018 he confirmed a TV report about a 2015 extramarital affair. He was subsequently charged with felony invasion of privacy for allegedly taking a nude photo of the woman and using it to keep her quiet. That charge was dropped months later amid allegations that the chief investigator and local prosecutor mishandled the investigation.
Greitens, 48, says he was the victim of a political hit.
He faced a second charge accusing him of illegally using a donor list from a charity he founded to raise money for his campaign. That was dropped when he resigned in June 2018 after the Missouri House began an impeachment investigation.
This year, Greitens’ ex-wife accused him of abuse in an affidavit in a child custody case. She cited one instance where Eric Greitens allegedly slapped their then-3-year-old son’s face and yanked him by the hair. In another, she accused him of pushing her to the ground.
Greitens denied the allegations and accused his ex-wife of colluding with Republican stalwarts such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to sabotage his campaign.