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Missouri Rep. Billy Long announces candidacy for U.S. Senate

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SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – Republican Congressman Billy Long announces his candidacy for U.S. Senate in the state of Missouri.

Long represents Missouri’s 7th district which includes both Joplin and Springfield. He made the announcement Tuesday evening on Tucker Carlson Tonight. He’ll be seeking the seat of retiring Senator Roy Blunt.

He enters a high profile Republican field that includes Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, former Governor Eric Greitens, Rep. Vicky Hartzler and St. Louis lawyer Mark McCloskey.

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Mark McCloskey announces bid for U.S. Senate in Missouri

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ST. LOUIS – Mark McCloskey, a St. Louis personal injury lawyer who gained national attention after he and his wife waved guns at racial injustice protesters who marched near their home last summer, said Tuesday he will run for the U.S. Senate in 2022.

McCloskey made the announcement on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News. Earlier Tuesday, the Federal Election Commission’s website showed “Mark McCloskey for Missouri” was registered, and a website, mccloskeyforsenate.com, was seeking campaign donations.

“God came knocking on my door last summer disguised as an angry mob,” McCloskey told Carlson. “And it really did wake me up.”

Incumbent Missouri Republican Roy Blunt announced in March he would not seek a third term. McCloskey will seek the Republican nomination against two contenders with strong name recognition: Former Gov. Eric Greitens, who resigned from office amid a sex scandal in 2018; and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.

Several members of Congress are weighing runs in heavily-Republican Missouri. Five lesser-known Democrats also have announced Senate bids.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey became celebrities in conservative circles – and were vilified among Democrats – after the incident on June 28 outside their lavish home in St. Louis’ Central West End.

Demonstrators were marching to the home of then-Mayor Lyda Krewson amid nationwide protests after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. The protesters ventured onto a private street that includes the McCloskey mansion. The couple, both of them attorneys in their early 60s, said they felt threatened after protesters broke down an iron gate and ignored a “No Trespassing” sign. Protest leaders denied damaging the gate and said the march was peaceful.

Mark McCloskey came out of his home with an AR-15-style rifle and Patricia McCloskey emerged with a semiautomatic handgun. Cellphone video captured the confrontation.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, a Democrat, charged the couple with unlawful use of a weapon. A grand jury in October indicted them on the same charge and added an evidence tampering charge. The indictment states that a semiautomatic pistol was altered in a way that “obstructed the prosecution of Patricia McCloskey” on the weapons charge.

The couple contended the charges were politically motivated. They spoke via video at last year’s Republican National Convention. Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has said he will pardon the McCloskeys if they are convicted.

Their case is due to go to trial in November, but Gardner’s office won’t be prosecuting it. A judge sent the case to a special prosecutor because Gardner made reference to the case in fundraising emails during her successful bid for reelection in 2020.

GOP Missouri Attorney General Schmitt running for US Senate

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COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Wednesday announced he’s making a bid to replace Roy Blunt in the Senate, setting up a Republican primary against disgraced former Gov. Eric Greitens.

Schmitt is a strong contender with a record of winning statewide elections and who is backed by Missouri mega-donor Rex Sinquefield. In a written release, Schmitt pushed his conservative credentials and railed against “the radical left.”

 

Blunt’s March 8 decision not to run for another term opened the floodgates for ambitious Republicans interested in succeeding him. But the GOP field is narrowing. Early favorite Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft bowed out, as did Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe.

Political scientists have speculated that Republicans are trying to unify around a single candidate to avoid a potentially damaging primary. Greitens’ candidacy complicates that.

Greitens, who has been laying the groundwork for a comeback for months if not years, is a polarizing figure unpopular with the state’s Republican establishment.

The former Navy SEAL officer was once seen as a rising star in Republican politics, possibly even a future presidential candidate.

Those aspirations seemed to vanish in 2018 when his extramarital affair was exposed. A felony charge accused him of taking a compromising photo of the woman as potential blackmail if she spoke of their encounters.

Greitens then faced a second criminal charge accusing him of using a donor list from his charity for his political campaign.

Greitens, who is now divorced but was married at the time, admitted to the affair but denied wrongdoing in both cases. Still, he resigned in June 2018 and the criminal cases were dismissed.

He maintains a core of support that could be enough to win a primary, but political observers have said the scandals that pushed him out of the governor’s mansion could thwart Republicans’ chances of keeping the U.S. Senate seat.

Schmitt in his announcement alluded to the threat of Republicans losing the Senate seat if Greitens wins the GOP nomination, saying Missouri needs “a leader who can hold this Senate seat in firm Republican hands without giving Democrats any chance to take this seat back.”

“In my public service, I have never quit fighting for Missouri and our conservative values,” Schmitt said. “Missourians deserve a life-long conservative who they know will never quit fighting for them.”

Voters first elected Schmitt to the state Senate in 2008 to represent a suburban St. Louis district. He was elected state treasurer in 2016, then took over as the state attorney general after Josh Hawley vacated the seat to join the U.S. Senate in 2019.

He won another term as attorney general in 2020.

WATCH: GOP Sen. Roy Blunt announces he will not run for reelection

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WASHINGTON D.C. – Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of GOP leadership, announced Monday that he will not run for reelection, the latest Republican senator to announce he’s not running next year.

“After 14 general election victories — three to county office, seven to the United States House of Representatives, and four statewide elections — I won’t be a candidate for reelection to the United States Senate next year,” Blunt announced in a video message.

Blunt serves as the ranking Republican member of the Senate Rules Committee.

“In every job Missourians have allowed me to have, I’ve tried to do my best. In almost 12,000 votes in the Congress, I’m sure I wasn’t right every time, but you really make that decision based on the information you have at the time,” he said in his announcement.