If Sen. Claire McCaskill's reelection bid gets grounded by her flights, it won't be the first time air travel has plagued her. | AP Photo McCaskill used private plane on campaign RV tour It’s the second time in two election cycles that her family aircraft has dogged the Missouri Democrat as she’s up for reelection.

Sen. Claire McCaskill confirmed Tuesday that she used her private plane during a three-day RV tour of her state last month, an admission that promises to become a political headache for the Missouri Democrat in her reelection bid.

McCaskill claimed that a report on her air travel in The Washington Free Beacon, which used aircraft tracking data to map the plane's path following her RV tour for two of its three days, was "not accurate." However, she went further than the publication did in confirming that she did use a plane for part of the tour.


"I added some stops with the use of the plane, but I was on the RV so much that the broken drawer drove me crazy," McCaskill said in a brief Tuesday interview in the Capitol, adding that "I even lost an iPad around a corner on the RV."

She disputed the notion that the use of the plane allowed her to "pretend" that she was using an RV rather than the multi-million-dollar plane, reportedly purchased by her husband's company in 2013.

"I spent two-plus days on the RV," McCaskill said, and the plane "picked me up at the end of one day, after I spent all day on the RV" before being used to add "some stops." The RV wasn't used during that added portion of the tour, she said.

"Anybody could have followed me. They could have seen when I got off the RV and when I went and got on the airplane," she continued, describing the report as "election-year silliness."

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However, McCaskill's use of the plane is already becoming fodder for Republicans who are eager to topple her in November.

McCaskill's GOP challenger, Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, slammed McCaskill as "out of touch" after the report on her travel in the conservative Free Beacon.

“She has completely lost touch with reality,“ Hawley said in an interview, adding that McCaskill “has lived in the DC corridor“ for long enough to have “no inkling“ of how her state operates. He described himself as someone who “loves our way of life“in Missouri “and isn't complaining about it,“ a reference to McCaskill‘s lament about the broken drawer.

“Claire McCaskill is desperate to put on a folksy act when she’s back in Missouri, but she’s too much of an elitist to even stick to a three-day RV tour without hopping on her private plane," National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Bob Salera said in an email.

.@clairecmc’s definition of being “the hardest working Democrat in the Party.” Skipping out on her luxury RV to fly in her luxury jet. It must be good to be rich and liberal. #MOSen https://t.co/IvjlSx6VxN — Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) June 12, 2018

If McCaskill's reelection bid gets grounded by her flights, it won't be the first time air travel has plagued her. She sold a private plane in 2011 after acknowledging a failure to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of property taxes on the aircraft.

And McCaskill's comment that the plane picked her up for one day of the RV tour before being used to add stops did not fully account for the extent that she used the aircraft. A campaign source said the plane was used during two of the three days of the tour to transport the senator to overnight stays, in addition to the added stop, and that McCaskill used the plane for travel that the RV could not accomplish in that time frame.

During the 2011 controversy over her plane use, McCaskill reimbursed the Treasury Department for more than $88,000 after POLITICO reported on dozens of flights she had chartered using her Senate office budget, employing a company incorporated by her husband.

McCaskill's office stated at the time that the flights complied with Senate ethics rules, but her reimbursement and later sale of the plane appeared to be a nod to the political pickle that lavish modes of travel might present in a working-class state such as Missouri. But she now finds herself facing another plane-induced political problem.

"It must be good to be rich and liberal," Hawley tweeted after the initial report on his opponent's travel during a tour dubbed "Veterans for Claire," highlighting McCaskill's support from veterans.

The setback for McCaskill comes after weeks of mounting GOP worry about Hawley, whom Republicans have fretted isn't ready to work as hard as he needs to in one of the midterm election's most hotly contested races. McCaskill's win in another hard-fought race against Republican Todd Akin in 2012, in which she used hardball tactics to ensure he would be her general election opponent, has burnished her reputation as tenacious on the trail. But it also hardened the GOP resolve to finally unseat her this year.

McCaskill pushed back on Tuesday at the GOP's suggestion that she was unprepared to spend the entire tour on an RV, saying she remained "totally" on board the vehicle for "two of the three days I was out."

McCaskill reported on her most recent Senate financial disclosure form that her spouse independently held an investment valued at more than $1 million in an aircraft leasing company, TLG Aviation. The single-engine Pilatus PC 12/47E plane bought by McCaskill's husband's company in 2013 — when the senator's office stated that she would pay personally for any trip she took on it — cost more than $3 million, according to the Springfield News-Leader.