An heir to the Anheuser-Busch beer fortune has filed to run as a Democrat for Missouri’s open Senate seat, raising the prospect the party could have a self-funding candidate against the eventual Republican primary winner from a currently crowded field.
Trudy Busch Valentine announced her candidacy for Senate on Tuesday, elevating the importance of the previously low-key Democratic primary. As a self-financed centrist with a share of the estimated $13 billion Busch family fortune, she could be a viable candidate in a state that leans Republican. But it could become more competitive if Republicans nominate scandal-plagued former Gov. Eric Greitens for Senate.
In her campaign announcement, Busch Valentine said she was open to other views and wanted to foster bipartisan respect. The registered nurse and widowed mother of six highlighted her ranching roots and her father’s American success story. She did not explicitly state policy goals but said her eldest son’s death from an opioid overdose sparked her passion to run for office for the first time.
MISSOURI SENATE CANDIDATE ERIC GREITENS’S EX-WIFE ACCUSES HIM OF ABUSE IN COURT DOCS
“Most Missouri families include Democrats, independents, and Republicans. Mine sure does,” Busch Valentine said. “But it seems we’ve lost our ability to be understanding and compassionate for each other. We have so much more that unites us than divides us. We just need to talk to each other again.”
Past campaign contributions reveal her family members fall on both sides of the aisle. Busch Valentine has donated and fundraised for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, as well as other Democrat Senate and House seats, the Associated Press reported. On the other hand, her brother, August Busch III, donated to Greitens’s 2016 gubernatorial campaign.
Greitens, recently the front-runner in the crowded Republican primary for the Senate seat left open by retiring Sen. Roy Blunt, resigned from his position as Missouri governor in 2018 after he allegedly took compromising photographs of his mistress to blackmail her.
Greitens’s campaign said court filings by his ex-wife alleging he abused her and one of their children was a political hit job orchestrated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican operative Karl Rove. Greitens branded himself “America First,” a line associated with former President Donald Trump. The campaign has filed subpoenas for those it believes involved, it announced Wednesday, and Greitens previously denied the allegations.
A recent poll showed Greitens sunk to second place. The Remington poll put Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt at the head of the Republican field with 24% and Greitens with 21%, two points ahead of Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley-endorsed Rep. Vicky Hartzler.
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Though Missouri has a good chance of keeping an all-red Senate delegation, some fear a “Todd Akin 2.0” situation, as one former Missouri Republican operative told the Washington Examiner. Akin was Missouri’s 2012 GOP nominee for Senate, who lost to incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill after divisive comments on abortion despite having been forecast to win before the comments.
“There could definitely be a groundswell of women who’ve been involved in the Missouri GOP who don’t want this guy to represent them, who have a lot of respect for Sheena and believe her,” the source said. “Frankly, as a citizen of Missouri, it’s embarrassing. Why would you want your senator, who already resigned, to be a guy with his dirty laundry hanging out everywhere?”
