Josh Hawley turns once-blue Missouri Senate seat into ruby-red refuge

For more than a decade, former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill held a crucial seat for Democrats in a state otherwise dominated by Republicans.

But in his first reelection since unseating two-term McCaskill in 2018, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has turned the once-competitive Show-Me State seat into a GOP sanctuary that’s out of reach for Democrats and an afterthought for election forecasters.

“Claire McCaskill was the most talented Democratic Missouri politician of her generation,” said Gregg Kelly, a Missouri GOP strategist and former Hawley campaign political adviser. “She won elections she had no business winning for years in the state based on how progressive she was and yet how good of a politician she was.”

Hawley was unopposed in his primary on Tuesday. He’ll now face Democrat Lucas Kunce, who ran unsuccessfully for his party’s Senate nomination in 2022, in the November general election. The outcome is all but predetermined in Hawley’s favor. But that wouldn’t have always been the case.

His quick rise to GOP stardom can be attributed to several factors, including his alliance with former President Donald Trump, a constant quest for the media spotlight, a streak of populism, and an influential wife in conservative politics.

“It is no surprise he is in a great position to serve a second term,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), the state’s other first-term senator, told the Washington Examiner.

Hawley ousted McCaskill in the 2018 midterm elections by roughly 6 percentage points, a wider-than-expected margin for a race with such national attention. That cycle, Republicans expanded their Senate majority by defeating McCaskill and several other Democratic incumbents, including in Florida, Indiana, and North Dakota.

Hawley’s seat is now considered as safe as it gets in the eyes of nonpartisan election watchers: “solid Republican.”

“I think that Josh recognized a populist bent of this state before a lot of other people, even on the Republican side, did,” Kelly said. “In some ways, I think he perfectly mirrors where your average Missouri family and average Missouri voter is.”

Hawley has, at times, forged some unexpected alliances, such as with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for the duo’s vocal advocacy during the pandemic for a second round of $1,200 stimulus checks. In 2022, he was among a trio of GOP senators to vote with Democrats to provide a week of paid sick leave for rail workers threatening to go on strike.  

Hawley, one of the youngest senators at age 44, is widely believed to have future presidential aspirations. Much to the chagrin of Senate Republican leadership, he’s opposed establishment members like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and called for the party to bend more toward working-class voters and away from corporate executives.

Even House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) at one point found himself in Hawley’s warpath in recent months over a bill to compensate Missouri radiation victims under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. Opposed by Republicans due to its cost, Hawley has tried, so far unsuccessfully, to attach the bill to other must-pass measures. The fund expired in early June, and only the Democratic-led Senate has passed the bill.

“I always kind of laugh when Josh does something that the Chamber of Commerce crowd doesn’t like, and they think that he’s going to pay some sort of price for this at the ballot box,” Kelly said. “The exact opposite is true because Josh Hawley’s voters like it when he picks and chooses his spots to speak truth to power to entrenched Republican interests. It’s part of his allure. It’s a feature, not a bug.”

Hawley is a staunch supporter of Trump, who carried Missouri by roughly 16 points in 2020. In a now-infamous photo of Hawley raising his fist to the crowd of Trump supporters amassed outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, he was a leading proponent of overturning Electoral College results during Congress’s certification of the election.

In the same vein, perhaps his greatest skill, and most valuable as a senator, is the ability to land himself in the spotlight.

Hawley is one of the chattiest and most easily accessible senators for reporters at the Capitol, frequently pausing on his way to or from votes to talk at great lengths to those peppering him with questions. He’s eager to offer behind-the-scenes details about private meetings among Senate Republicans where others are often tight-lipped.

In the committee hearing rooms and in front of the cameras, Biden appointees testifying can often expect harsh lines of questioning from Hawley that become made-for-TV moments.

“I don’t think there is a Republican U.S. senator today who is better at earned media than Josh Hawley,” Kelly said. “Josh Hawley sees something that is newsworthy, and he and his team recognize it immediately. They are decisive. He knows what he believes in. He stakes out a position, and he makes that position clear.”

The senator isn’t the only well-known Hawley among Republicans, particularly those in Missouri.

Erin Morrow Hawley, the Yale Law graduate and former Supreme Court clerk married to the senator, is also a staple in conservative politics for her legal career on abortion-related cases.

As senior counsel for the conservative advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, she was on the legal teams responsible for getting Roe v. Wade overturned and the case that sought to restrict access to the popular medical abortion drug mifepristone.