Republicans fret about star recruit Josh Hawley as Missouri Senate heats up

WASHINGTON — When Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley agreed to run for the Senate last fall, Republicans crowed that they’d snagged a top recruit and rising GOP star to take on incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

But Republicans now seem to be a bit nervous about Hawley’s campaign.

“If Hawley doesn’t gear it up and get with it, he’ll not beat her,” said former Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, a top Missouri Republican. “I think a lot of people who want to see Hawley elected (are) wishing he’d get to work, doing fundraising and getting out and campaigning actively.”

Kyle Plotkin, Hawley's campaign manager, sharply disputed the suggestion that the attorney general is not mounting a strong Senate challenge.

"Josh raised the most of any Republican challenger to an incumbent across the country this last quarter," Plotkin said, adding that Hawley also had slightly more money in the bank than the average GOP Senate challenger at the end of the last quarter.

Plotkin said Hawley is focused on his job as attorney general and that has put him "front and center" in Missouri, while "Claire campaigns non-stop." He said "no amount of money will help" McCaskill convince Missouri voters to give her another term.

Bond’s comments, made in an interview with USA TODAY, come as Hawley’s campaign hit a rough patch. The Kansas City Star reported last week that Hawley linked the current plague of sex trafficking to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, when women gained new freedoms and wider access to birth control and Americans' attitudes about sex and gender changed.

“The sexual revolution has led to exploitation of women on a scale that we would never have imagined,” Hawley told a group of pastors, according to audio obtained by The Star. In another recent speech, Hawley said the 1960s ushered in a denigration of "the biblical teaching about the sanctity of marriage ... the appropriate place for sexual practice and expression within the family, within marriage, and we're living now with the terrible after-effects of this so-called revolution."

Those remarks made news around the same time that Hawley’s campaign reported raising $958,000 in 2017 and ending the year with about $1.2 million cash in the bank. McCaskill raised nearly $3 million in the 4th quarter of 2017, and she ended the year with a $9 million war chest.

McCaskill raised nearly $3 million in the 4th qtr of 2017, more than $11 million total last year, and ended the year with a $9 million war chest. But outside money will flood #MOSEN so the candidates' totals are just part of the story https://t.co/rIQBml8usJ — Deirdre Shesgreen (@dshesgreen) January 31, 2018

Although outside Republican groups are likely to help make up for any imbalance in the candidates’ fundraising, Hawley’s numbers were perceived by some as sluggish.

The news even led to some speculation that Rep. Ann Wagner, a St. Louis County Republican, was eyeing the Senate race again, after deciding last year not to run when GOP leaders began wooing Hawley.

Bond said he spoke with Wagner on Monday, and she was focused on her House re-election campaign. Asked if he would like to see Wagner get in the race if Hawley doesn’t pick up his pace, Bond said: “Somebody’s got to get in there and win it.”

Read more:

Hawley on defense after linking human trafficking to sexual revolution of 1960s

Hawley makes Senate bid official, jabs McCaskill