Missouri may send Eric Schmitt to the Senate, but which version would arrive in Washington?

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt left the state Senate in early 2017 with a reputation as a pragmatic Republican who was willing to work across the aisle.

Nearly six years later, voters are on the verge of sending a very different Schmitt to the U.S. Senate.

The business-oriented state senator from St. Louis has given way to an aggressive and hard-line conservative attorney general more focused on winning over diehards in red “Make America Great Again” caps than the suit-and-tie chamber of commerce crowd.

Schmitt, 47, has spent much of the past two years suing schools and cities over mask mandates, as well as challenging the pandemic and immigration policies of the Biden administration in court. He has continually sought the backing of former President Donald Trump and his supporters, culminating in Trump’s unusual endorsement of “ERIC” the day before the Republican primary in August that allowed both Schmitt and former Gov. Eric Greitens to claim his blessing.

After supporting a lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election, Schmitt has continued to use his office to aid the former president. He signed onto a brief supporting Trump in his ongoing legal dispute with the Department of Justice over classified documents seized by the FBI at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

As the Nov. 8 election – in which Schmitt is favored to defeat Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine – approaches, little evidence suggests Schmitt plans to pivot back to the bipartisan pragmatism of his state Senate tenure.

He is poised to replace retiring Sen. Roy Blunt, one of the Senate’s most practically-minded members.

But interviews with legislators, former colleagues, Republican operatives and others familiar with Schmitt and his political career suggest his approach would be much closer to Sen. Josh Hawley, who preceded Schmitt as attorney general. Hawley helped spearhead the effort in the Senate to overturn the 2020 election and regularly offers provocative legislation with close to zero chance of passage.

This week Hawley proposed allowing states to deport migrants. In the past, he has proposed stripping Disney’s copyrights after the company opposed a Florida law aimed at prohibiting teachers from discussing gender identity or sexual orientation.

“I think that he will continue to be the person that we’ve known him as attorney general — a conservative fighter, not afraid to take on some of the big issues and and take on some of the big dogs per se, like big tech and things like that. So I think that he will be more of a conservative fighter like Senator Hawley,” said state Sen. Denny Hoskins, a Warrensburg Republican.

Underscoring Schmitt’s continuing hard-right posture, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall headlined a high-dollar fundraiser for Schmitt in Parkville on Thursday night. An invitation listed Hawley as a co-host. The senators are among the chamber’s most conservative members and all three voted against certifying the 2020 election.

But Schmitt hasn’t severed ties to the Republican establishment.

Even though he said in July he doesn’t endorse Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for leadership, Thursday’s fundraiser was also co-hosted by Blunt, who as the No. 4 Senate Republican is a close McConnell ally.

Former colleagues say Schmitt’s recent right-wing tact won’t preclude him from being an effective legislator. He is, after all, a former state senator with a reputation as an affable member who on occasion was able to reach bipartisan agreement, they say.

State Sen. Dave Schatz, a Sullivan Republican and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate who ran against Schmitt in the U.S. Senate primary, predicted Schmitt wouldn’t try to “set the world on fire” in the Senate in contrast to some of his campaigning. In the Senate race, Schmitt was trying to win over parts of the Republican electorate, Schatz said.

“I hope he’s more like Roy Blunt. Quite frankly, that’s part of the reason why I was in the race is because I believe we needed someone like Roy that actually did the hard work and you know, working hard for Missouri, bringing back the infrastructure dollars and doing what I would consider to be the dirty work. It’s not in front of a Fox News camera,” said Schatz, who earned less than 2% of the vote in the primary.

‘Entirely different politician’

Schmitt’s political transformation has been an overarching theme of the Senate race – and of his time as attorney general. Schmitt left the Missouri Senate in January 2017 for a relatively low-profile stint as state treasurer that lasted until January 2019, when Republican Gov. Mike Parson appointed him attorney general to replace Hawley, who resigned when he won election to the U.S. Senate. Schmitt then won a full term in 2020.

Democrats and some Republicans say the Biden-fighting anti-mandate “avenger” who has emerged in the Missouri Attorney General’s Office bears little resemblance to the more moderate state senator from St. Louis.

As a state senator, Schmitt championed reforms for individuals with disabilities and emotionally described raising a son with autism and seizures as he pushed to legalize CBD oil. He also pushed for new restrictions on the revenue that cities could collect from traffic tickets and other citations following unrest in Ferguson in 2014.

He also led an ultimately doomed effort to turn Lambert-St. Louis International Airport into a major destination for international cargo, a project dubbed the “China Hub.”

“He’s an entirely different politician today than he was in the state Senate,” said state Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat. “He can be that deal broker, he can get things done for people, but I think he’s seen that political extremism and a radical bravado gets rewarded in Missouri politics and in Republican politics.”

Former Sen. John Danforth, who represented Missouri in the U.S. Senate from 1976 until early 1995, said he’s not certain what kind of senator Schmitt would be.

Danforth, the embodiment of a fading old-school Republican establishment, supported the brief independent candidacy of John Wood, who dropped out in August. Danforth said while Wood was still in the race, he fielded calls from prominent Republicans who he refused to name who sought to assure him about the prospect of Schmitt becoming a senator.

“All of them said the same thing to me,” Danforth said. “Which was, in fact, some of them used the same word to describe Eric, and the word was malleable. And one of them said during this campaign he’s been playacting. In other words, he doesn’t really believe it.”

Schmitt and his allies have insisted in the past he is the same person he has always been but that attorney general and state senator are different roles. Still, in response to questions about how he would approach the job of senator, Schmitt’s campaign gave no hint of future moderation.

“Eric Schmitt has a record of taking on the tough fights and winning against Big Government, Big Tech, and insurance companies, and he will always be unafraid to fight for working-class families. As Democrat-driven inflation soars, his out-of-touch opponent--the Heiress Trudy Busch Valentine--cannot understand and relate to the struggles of working-class families, who find it more and more expensive to live in Joe Biden’s America,” Schmitt spokesperson Rich Chrismer said in a statement.

Busch Valentine, a nurse and heir to the Anheuser-Busch beer fortune, is hitting Schmitt over his role in triggering Missouri’s near-total abortion ban moments after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal right to an abortion in June. She has also attacked Schmitt over his votes as a state senator to allow the sale of farmland to foreign owners – a criticism Schmitt also faced in the Republican primary.

“Eric Schmitt is such an extreme Republican and he’s hurting our democracy,” Busch Valentine told The Star’s editorial board in a recent interview.

Influence depends on Senate control

Every public poll of the race conducted since the August primary election has shown Schmitt with a strong lead over Busch Valentine. The latest, conducted Sept. 14-18 by SurveyUSA, placed Schmitt’s support at 47% and Busch Valentine at 36%.

If Schmitt wins, his approach to the Senate may depend in part on whether Republicans take back control of the chamber. The Senate is currently divided 50-50 between the two parties, with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.

A GOP-controlled Senate could offer Schmitt additional opportunities to sit on committees where he could wield influence over legislation. But at a more basic level, Schmitt and other Republican senators would have a better chance of bringing their proposals to the floor.

Biden would still be able to veto any legislation that passes Congress for at least the first two years of Schmitt’s six-year term if he’s elected.

Schmitt would have a much more difficult time advancing legislation if the Senate remains under Democratic control, especially if his bills reflect his current hardline stances on migrants, the pandemic and other issues.

“It takes a lot of time and effort and work to get something through. You have to deal with a lot of personalities, get at least 50 to agree with you in some cases and 59 in others,” Peverill Squire, a University of Missouri political science professor said, referring to the 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster.

David Sater, a former Republican state senator who was in the Missouri Senate alongside Schmitt, said Schmitt was able to work across the aisle but was “tough” at the same time. He predicted Schmitt will adopt an approach closer to Hawley than Blunt because both are attorneys.

But ultimately, he said, Schmitt will be Schmitt.

“He’s going to be an Eric Schmitt,” Sater said. “You’re going to get what you’re going to get.”