In politics, when a candidate is called a “golden boy” it’s usually not a compliment. More often than not, it means he has been elevated to a position he didn’t deserve, through help from party bigwigs or big donors.
The press is primed to target such candidates. And when it is looking for flaws—the more embarrassing the better—it can usually find some. Republicans, far more than Democrats, are targets of this treatment because the media love to poke holes in Republican candidates.
This brings us to Missouri’s Senate race. Missouri is a red state. President Trump won here by nearly 19 percentage points in 2016. Nonetheless, Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill, 65, was regarded as highly competitive in her bid for reelection. She is tough and resourceful, and her campaign is massively well financed.
Republicans were apoplectic when she won in 2012. She ran ads in the GOP primary—yes, the other party’s primary—that boosted congressman Todd Akin, the weakest Republican aspirant. He won the primary and then lost ignominiously to McCaskill.
To avoid a repeat, four prominent Republicans intervened. In July 2017, they addressed a public letter to Josh Hawley, 38, the state attorney general, urging him to run against McCaskill. The four included two who’d been senator and governor (John Ashcroft, Kit Bond) and two former senators (John Danforth, Jim Talent). At first leery, Hawley then acquiesced.
You can see where this is heading. Hawley won the primary and became a “golden boy.” And the onslaught began. In May, Politico called him “lackadaisical” and headlined its story “GOP golden boy mails it in.” In July, the New York Times reported Democrats and Republicans were saying “his swift rise made him a political opportunist who was looking ahead to a Senate bid when he ran for attorney general.” There’s no evidence for this accusation.
It’s at this point an unexpected thing happened. Hawley defied the golden boy stereotype. He emerged as an impressive and likable candidate. He campaigned effectively. He did well in the first televised debate with McCaskill, put her on the defensive time after time in their second debate, and did it again in the third. And as he moved ahead in polls, the golden boy tag faded. The press and critics had been wrong.
He never fit the label in the first place. A golden boy in politics is supposed to be an intellectual lightweight. Hawley isn’t—a point made by the party leaders. He graduated from Stanford and Yale Law School and served as a clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts. He met his future wife, Erin, at the High Court, where she was a fellow clerk. For all his education, Hawley is an old-fashioned conservative. He’s a champion of his state. He’s running as one “who’s of our way of life, who knows it, who loves it, and will represent it.”
“We are convinced that you would be more than an additional vote for a functioning Senate,” the four leaders wrote in their letter. “You are a constitutional scholar. You have studied constitutional law, written about it, and taught it at law school. You understand that advocacy for a functioning legislative branch is the essence of what it means to be a conservative . . . and [you have] the ability to be a leading voice for the constitutional order, not only in Missouri but nationally.”
That appeal would apply to few other potential candidates and never to a politician like McCaskill. “I think Senator McCaskill would be a tremendous senator from Hollywood,” Hawley told me. She has been endorsed by a bevy of movie stars.
By the third and final debate on October 25, McCaskill looked outclassed and worn out by the pressure of Hawley’s campaign. She appeared to lose her way as the debate neared the end. She hesitated to find the right words. Her message was disorganized.
Hawley’s wasn’t. He was disciplined and relentless. He returned again and again to his message: that McCaskill’s time is past and she doesn’t represent what the people of Missouri want. She’s become a liberal hack. The Republican landslide in 2016 showed that.
Hawley linked the senator to opposition to Trump’s priorities. She voted against his tax cut, funding for the border wall, replacing Obamacare, confirmation of Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
Hawley’s consistent support for the Trump agenda is enough to make Democrats and Never Trump Republicans weep. He doesn’t quibble publicly with Trump on any matters. It’s as if he’s adopted the pre-Trump position of never getting on the wrong side of the president of one’s own party.
If Hawley has any qualms with the Trump presidency, he’s skillful at hiding them. Take the trade war with China. His position is: “If we’re going to be in a trade war, I’m for winning.” Since Missouri is a farm state, “I would pick Missouri farmers as winners. I want to pick China as losers.”
Nor does Hawley acknowledge defeats. Rather than accept the Democratic charge that Republicans would do away with mandatory health insurance for those with previously existing conditions, he has his own plan for keeping these patients insured.
A few months ago, Missouri voters killed a right-to-work law. Since Hawley believes in supporting the will of Missourians, does he now oppose a national right-to-work law? Hawley wiggled out, saying he’d never considered that proposal.
But Hawley gives McCaskill no wiggle room. “She does not represent this state any more,” he said in the second debate. “She does not represent the people of Missouri any more. She has not accepted what the people said in 2016. She has not worked with this president or this administration on any major priority. She does not vote with this state anymore.”
McCaskill, Hawley said, “has been in politics 36 years. She’s been in the Senate 12 years. She’s become a party-line liberal. She said she’d be independent. She said she’d be bipartisan. But she hasn’t been.”
Hawley insists McCaskill’s reputation for willingness to compromise is a myth. “She’s had many opportunities to cross the party aisle” to support Trump’s plan for border security. “She has voted no on wall funding. She has mocked the idea of it. She rejected a Dreamers compromise plan because of wall funding. It’s the party line over and over and over.”
While losing on issues and doubling down on Trump, whom she criticized sharply in the third debate, McCaskill has one advantage: money. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has made her reelection the top Democratic priority in the midterm election. And she has raised more than Hawley.
But there are a couple of twists. Campaigns only need to have enough money to get their message out, and Hawley’s done that. The latest quarterly report shows that Hawley had more on hand for the closing weeks of the campaign than McCaskill did. A golden boy wouldn’t have thought of that.
States change politically, few as dramatically as Missouri. But great candidates always have an advantage. That’s what Hawley is counting on.
