Missouri’s Wild Primary Election

State of the Union: The Show-Me State sees a moderate win its Republican gubernatorial primary, and a Progressive incumbent defeated in St. Louis.

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Missouri’s Tuesday primaries revealed deep divisions between both parties within the state, with Republicans seeing a hotly contested, ideologically charged primary for the governorship while Democrats saw a Squad member defeated by a moderate in one of the safest Democratic congressional seats in the country.

In the Republican gubernatorial primary, Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe, widely considered a moderate, defeated two opponents running to his right in a three-way race, the populist State Senator Bill Eigel and Missouri’s Secretary of State John “Jay” Ashcroft (the son of a former U.S. Attorney General). Kehoe won with 39.4 percent of the vote to Eigel’s 32.6 and Ashcroft’s 23.2 percent of the vote. Notably, Kehoe ran to the left of the other candidates on abortion, supporting a liberalization of Missouri’s current complete ban to allow exceptions for rape and incest. On the Democratic side, state legislator Crystal Quade won the gubernatorial nomination by a large margin.

In the Attorney General’s primary, the incumbent Republican Andrew Bailey defeated challenger Will Scharf by a wide margin of 64.0 to 36.0 percent. Bailey had been appointed to fill the vacancy created by Eric Schmitt’s election to the U.S. Senate in 2022, while Scharf is a prominent lawyer for the former President Trump; he boasted the backing of Texas’s Attorney General Ken Paxton and the conservative radio personality Charlie Kirk. Both Bailey and Scharf are considered conservatives and had been co-endorsed by Trump, as well as Missouri Right to Life. On the Democratic side, Elad Gross, a lawyer who focuses on civil rights law, won an uncontested primary for attorney general.

In the other notable result of the night, Representative Cori Bush, a progressive Squad member who represents St. Louis in Congress, lost her primary to Wesley Bell, a St. Louis County prosecutor, 51 to 46 percent. Bell is known for his pro-Israel stance and was strongly supported by AIPAC—to the tune of $8.5 million—in his challenge of Bush.

One of Missouri’s U.S. Senate seats saw its primaries last night, with the incumbent Republican Josh Hawley winning an uncontested race, while the Democrat Lucas Kunce defeated State Senator Karla May by a wide margin. 

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