Democrats are targeting Republican Senate candidate Josh Hawley with a nearly $1 million ad buy tying him to scandal-plagued Gov. Eric Greitens.
The spot from Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is running statewide in Missouri, with a heavy rotation in the St. Louis media market. In the ad, Democrats accuse Hawley, the state attorney general, of going easy on Greitens, a Republican facing impeachment in Missouri’s GOP-controlled legislature over allegations of sexual impropriety and mismanagement of a charity.
Hawley is the presumptive GOP nominee for Senate, called on Greitens to resign earlier this year. He is set to challenge Sen. Claire McCaskill, perhaps this cycle’s most vulnerable Democratic incumbent, in the midterm. President Trump won Missouri in 2016 by about 20 percentage points, and McCaskill has largely opposed his agenda in Congress.
Meanwhile, Greitens is refusing step down and preparing to fight impeachment. Republicans worry the intraparty fighting could hamper Hawley’s Senate bid. The Republican base is upset with him for investigating the governor in his capacity as attorney general; swing voters and soft partisans, particularly women, could be turned off by the whole mess.
Polling suggests a tight race, but Democrats have to be concerned with McCaskill’s approval ratings — they consistently trail her ballot number in recent surveys, suggesting Hawley has room to grow in a state inclined to vote Republican absent mitigating circumstances.
McCaskill was the recipient of just such a circumstance in 2012, when voters rejected her Republican opponent, then-Rep. Todd Akin, because of controversial comments he made about “legitimate rape.”
