Sometimes, the true outcome of a political campaign isn’t reflected in the final vote count.
Jason Kander’s 2016 Senate race is a prime example. Despite Donald Trump winning Missouri by nearly 19 points, Roy Blunt only squeaked out a win with a margin under 3%, thanks in part to a viral advertisement featuring Kander assembling a gun while blindfolded.
By 2017, Kander was addressing groups from Iowa to New Hampshire, appearing on CNN, and being touted as a presidential candidate. He lost a Senate race, but parlayed it into celebrity status.
Eric Greitens demonstrates the opposite side of that coin.
A decorated veteran, Rhodes Scholar, successful author and motivational speaker, and one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World Greitens would still be cashing in on the speaker’s circuit and writing best sellers today had he remained a private citizen.
But he won the 2016 race for Missouri governor, and within 18 months of taking office his public and private life was in tatters as he was forced to resign to avoid impeachment. An extramarital affair was exposed that included allegations of violent sexual assault, and he was charged (though never convicted) with two felonies and a litany of campaign finance violations.
He won, but wouldn’t he have been better off if he lost?
But the rarest category of all is when just entering a race makes you a winner.
Occasionally, by merely launching an effective campaign, candidates can have an impact on public officials and public policy regardless of the outcome of the election.
In other words, they impact an incumbent’s policy positions long before they know if they will win electorally. And paradoxically, the early win probably makes an actual electoral win marginally less likely – because the subtle policy shifts are typically designed to appeal to median primary (or general) election voters.
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The race for Missouri’s 1st Congressional District was static for the first nine months of 2023.
U.S. Rep. Cori Bush raised little money and failed to replenish a treasury depleted last cycle in part by nearly $500,000 of payments to her security detail. She coasted to 43- and 49-point victories in the primary and general elections, respectively, yet finished the 2022 cycle with just $10,000 cash on hand and over $35,000 of debt.
St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell wasn’t even in the 1st District conversation until a month ago — he’d made a relatively late entrance to the U.S. Senate Democratic primary after Lucas Kunce had already raised over a million dollars working a list he’d spent the 2022 cycle building.
But after Oct. 7, everything changed.
There aren’t many U.S. House districts where the massacre in Southern Israel along the Gaza border could affect the outcome, but this is one.
Bush’s statement about the slaughter, in which she called for an immediate ceasefire and equated the actions of Hamas terrorists with the Israeli government’s response, generated anger among pro-Israel activists in St. Louis and nationally. In the eyes of some pro-Israel organizations, she seemed to blame Israel for the initial Hamas attack.
“Violations of human rights do not justify more violations of human rights, and a military response will only exacerbate the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis alike,” Bush said. “As part of achieving a just and lasting peace, we must do our part to stop this violence and trauma by ending U.S. government support for Israeli military occupation and apartheid.”
Then, when Congress considered a resolution condemning the Hamas attack, Bush was one of just 10 House members to vote against it.
Three weeks after the Hamas attack, Bell decided to jump in the race. Within days of his entrance and publication of a strong list of endorsers, Bush changed her tune a bit, issuing a new statement calling the Hamas attack “horrific” and specifically labeling that attack as the catalyst for the subsequent violence and deaths.
“One month ago Hamas’s horrific attack stole lives & served as a catalyst to unspeakable violence & more loss of life,” she said in a social media post on the one-month anniversary of the initial attack. A few days later she specifically took care to “denounce every instance of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia,” notably including the former after spending the first month after 10/7 focused on the latter.
Just by announcing and building a strong foundation, Bell seemed to move the needle on Bush’s public rhetoric regarding the Middle East conflict.
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The Republican primary for attorney general reveals a similar dynamic.
Will Scharf, currently an attorney on Donald Trump’s legal team and formerly policy director in the Greitens administration, announced his candidacy in December 2022, shortly after Gov. Mike Parson appointed Andrew Bailey to the office.
Scharf’s family wealth, plus his extensive connections in national conservative legal-political circles, made it clear from the outset that his challenge would be well-funded. And Scharf’s substantial intellect and sharply conservative policy orientation suggested that he would be probing for soft spots in Bailey’s record, perhaps assuming that Bailey — who had previously been a quiet staffer — would be a relatively passive, establishment officeholder.
But understanding that incumbent Republicans don’t lose primaries by appearing too conservative, Bailey moved quickly to stake out far-right positions on various issues.
In early 2023, he took the lead in trying to force the ouster of St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, filing a quo warranto lawsuit alleging severe and sustained negligence in her fulfillment of basic duties and seeking her removal from office. Some believe it contributed to Gardner’s l resignation.
Bailey also seized on hot-button cultural issues and initiated high-profile legal battles to position himself as a conservative firebrand, the most prominent being his probe of transgender care at Washington University and his efforts to ban gender-affirming care for adults.
Then he came out against a proposed federal rule that requires states to place LGBTQ foster children with providers who are trained about the child’s sexual orientation or gender identity, which would supplement existing state guidance ensuring that providers provide supportive care and resources regardless of their personal beliefs.
Last, Bailey tussled with State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick related to cost estimates on the initiative petitions to codify reproductive rights. Fitzpatrick pegged the proposed constitutional amendment as essentially cost-neutral, while Bailey claimed it would cost the state $12 billion.
The Missouri Supreme Court sided unanimously with Fitzpatrick, but anti-abortion groups seem to have appreciated the quixotic battle, and Bailey quickly followed it up by suing the FDA over its new plan to facilitate consumer access to abortion pills via the mail.
Would Bailey have been this aggressive absent a primary challenge? It’s impossible to say for sure, but his vigorous efforts to guard his conservative flank are certainly not leaving much terrain on his right.
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The Lucas Kunce candidacy against Josh Hawley is a third example of scoring policy wins just by launching an effective campaign.
Kunce has articulated a hard-edged populist message rooted in his own humble origins, a message unlike the standard Democratic message that has been unsuccessful in Missouri lately. Kunce spent 2023 effectively expanding the fundraising lists he built last cycle, and working to try to coalesce Missouri Democrats behind him.
Heading into the 2024 election cycle, Hawley was best known among voters for raising his fist to fire up those rallying just outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 — not a winning issue among general election swing voters.
Hawley determined that the time was ripe to lean further into economic populism, railing against the loss of American manufacturing jobs, co-sponsoring a resolution supporting striking UAW workers alongside labor champion Sen. Bernie Sanders and even walking a UAW picket line.
Labor leaders (who have endorsed Kunce) point out that Hawley voted against a bill aimed at boosting domestic manufacturing, note his failing grade on the AFL-CIO’s legislative scorecard and cite a (since-deleted) 2015 Twitter post in which Hawley celebrated the passage of a bill that forbids mandatory union membership and called for “an end to union-backed GOP candidates.”
And cynics have noted that Hawley’s shift coincides with his post-Jan. 6 h loss of financial backing from former Missouri megadonor David Humphreys, a major supporter of so-called “right-to-work” laws who donated $4.4 million to Hawley’s campaign for attorney general and over $2 million to support his U.S. Senate campaign.
While that may be more than coincidental, it seems clear that Kunce’s hard-hitting anti-corporate messaging has pushed Hawley further in that direction as he seeks to neutralize the electoral threat — rendering Kunce one more example of candidates notching their first policy wins a year before the votes are actually counted.
