With GOP primary looming in Missouri, Trump endorses multiple candidates for governor’s race

On Tuesday, Missouri residents will vote in primaries for the upcoming state elections, and multiple contests will feature a heavy dose of MAGA-aligned candidates. And now, the Republican contest for the governor's race will feature three candidates backed by former President Donald Trump. 

From his Truth Social platform, Trump announced that rather than choosing between them, he would back Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel to man the executive branch of Missouri. 

“All have had excellent careers, and have been with me from the beginning. They are MAGA and America First all the way!” Trump wrote in a post. “I can’t hurt two of them by Endorsing one so, therefore, I’m going to Endorse, for Governor of the Great State of Missouri, Jay Ashcroft, Mike Kehoe, and Bill Eigel. Choose any one of them - You can’t go wrong!”

A Trump endorsement usually offers movement supporters a clear path on Election Day. But without signaling a favorite, all three candidates will have to prove that they’re truly committed to the “America First” ideology. Take the race’s most recent debate, where both Eigel and Ashcroft signaled their support for Christian nationalism. 

And Eigel in particular has ramped up his racist, xenophobic rhetoric as the primary comes into focus. In a recent ad, Eigel says that he has a “message for illegal immigrants” in the state: He will be “throwing them in jail” and “sending them back where they came from” should his campaign prove successful. 

With the attorney general’s race, Trump has been silent — despite his former lawyer Will Scharf being one of the candidates. Scharf will face off against the incumbent Andrew Bailey, who has the backing of current Gov. Mike Parsons (R). This has allowed Scharf to paint himself as the insurgent option. 

“Friends of mine approached me about running, said that they thought it was really time to shake up Jefferson City and get more conservative outsiders, as opposed to establishment politicians and establishment people in the office,” Scharf told NPR’s St. Louis affiliate last week.

The contest has been heating up in recent weeks as various PACs have poured millions of dollars into the race. 

And much like the governor's race, Missouri’s secretary of state race features a strong dose of anti-migrant rhetoric — as well as conspiracies surrounding election integrity. The favorite in the contest, Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher, has vowed to crack down on the supposed prevalence of voting by undocumented residents—an almost non-existent phenomenon. 

’I am very concerned that the thousands of illegals pouring into the state will attempt to register and displace Missouri citizens’ voter rights,” Plocher said when he announced his intention to run. “We must protect the integrity of our elections and only allow those that are legal residents of this state and citizens of this country to participate in Missouri elections.” 

There is no evidence of Plocher’s claim that thousands of undocumented immigrants are registering to vote and voting in state elections.

Other candidates, like state Sen. Denny Hoskins (R-Warrensburg), have voiced concerns about the integrity of voting machines and have proposed installing security cameras at polling sites to prevent supposed fraud. 

“We talk about a lady named Wanda in Connecticut who works at (a) clerk’s office in Connecticut. She was seen on video – security footage – stuffing ballots in one of the ballot drop boxes,” Hoskins said. “We wouldn’t know about many of those cases of election fraud if we didn’t have security footage of that.” Hoskins is referring to a rare controversy surrounding a 2019 Democratic primary in Bridgeport, CT. 

The most viral candidate, the right-wing social media influencer Valentina Gomez, will also hypothetically have a shot at the secretary of state, though her campaign has relied solely on shock value and has little chance of succeeding. For example, the 25-year-old published a video to X that showed her using a flamethrower to incinerate books with LGBTQ content. 

But Gomez became especially notorious earlier this year when she released an ad where she stated, “In America, you can be anything you want, so don't be weak and gay."