(C) Missouri Independent
This story was originally published by Missouri Independent and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Missouri’s GOP gubernatorial primary as a hand of Texas Hold ‘Em, part three: The river • Missouri Independent [1]
['Jeff Smith', 'Wendy Doyle', 'Barbara Shelly', 'Alliyah Lusuegro', 'More From Author', 'July', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline']
Date: 2024-07-31
It’s time for the final card in the poker hand that is the Missouri governor’s race.
Quick review for poker neophytes: In Texas Hold ‘Em, two cards are dealt face down to each player, while five “community cards” are dealt face up in three rounds – first, a group of three cards (“the flop”), then a single card (“the turn”) and a final card (“the river”).
Each player seeks the best five-card poker hand from any combination of the seven cards (their two hole cards plus five community cards). Players may bet after each round, and the best live hand wins the pot.
During the legislative session, I outlined the race, giving starting hands to Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (pocket Jacks), Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe (Ace-Queen off-suit) and state Sen. Bill Eigel (3-5 of diamonds) and a flop of K-10-6 rainbow (King of clubs, 10 of diamonds, 6 of hearts).
The turn was a Jack of diamonds, giving Kehoe the straight (10-J-Q-K-A) and catapulting him ahead of Ashcroft’s also-improved hand of JJJ, but also giving Eigel 3-5-10-J of diamonds, such that a fifth diamond on the river would give him a flush, edging out Kehoe’s straight for the win.
The river card is a 4 of clubs, helping no one.
It leaves Eigel just short of a straight (3-4-5-6, but no fifth card), and just short of a flush (four diamonds, but not the fifth one that could catapult him to victory).
By the rules of the game, with all the cards dealt, Kehoe is in the lead. But as a wiser fella than myself once said, you don’t play the cards in front of you, you play the man across from you. So Kehoe’s hand will win only if he plays it right — because the cards themselves are only half the game.
What the river means
These three high-stakes poker players spent more time at the table the past 18 months plotting and scheming to snag former President Donald Trump’s endorsement — or block their opponents from garnering it — than on any other strategic initiative.
Why?
A generation ago, the state party was almost evenly split between two wings — a suburban-dominated John Danforth wing that espoused low taxes, limited government and social moderation versus an exurban and rural-dominated John Ashcroft wing that espoused evangelical, “family values”-focused conservatism.
Today, there is only one wing. Trumpism reigns supreme.
Polling repeatedly shows that when asked how they identify, dwindling numbers of Missouri Republican primary voters identify primarily as Danforth-style “traditional Republicans” or as Ashcroft-style evangelical Republicans. Roughly half self-identify as “Trump Republicans,” over three times as high a percentage as those who self-identify with any other Republican faction.
And the issue that is trumping all others in polls of primary voters is the one with which Trump is most closely identified: immigration.
That’s why we see the absurd spectacle of the three leading candidates to run a state whose Capitol is 1,000 miles from any international border making pilgrimages to Laredo. One could conceivably make the argument that a governor can at least mobilize the Missouri National Guard to assist Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in his border patrol campaign. But even down ballot candidates are performing hajj as they struggle to show fealty to Trump.
Accordingly, Trump’s endorsement was the long-awaited river card.
But it turned out to be what poker veterans call a “blank”.
Trump, whose primary endorsements consistently follow the polls, couldn’t decide who to endorse: the candidate who had universal name ID and had led the polls for 18 months; the candidate who would spend twice the other two combined and was now tied for the lead; or the surging candidate whose provocative message was most in sync with Trump’s own.
And so the guy whose self-defined political brand is strength wimped out and endorsed…all three of them, rendering the endorsement a meaningless “nothingburger.”
Of course, that didn’t stop each of the three from attempting to claim the endorsement as their own. Each headed to X (nee Twitter) to proclaim his support within minutes of Trump’s Truth Social post announcing his tripartite nod, three grown men seeking to run a state of six million behaving like the Botanical Gardens koi carp when a toddler drops bread crumbs into the pond.
Theories of the case and broad challenges
Each of the three candidates has a theory of how the final week plays out. Kehoe believes that his financial advantage will continue to accumulate and allow him to sustain the edge in advertising buys that he has maintained for six months.
Ashcroft’s team crows that he’s still standing (and tied for the lead!) after sustaining body blows continuously for six months — and thanks to a mysterious last-minute infusion of $1.5 million to his affiliated PAC, will for the first time approach parity with Kehoe’s media buy for the final week.
Eigel stalwarts claim that the grassroots momentum which has powered his campaign from low single digits to around 20% cannot be stopped by his better-financed opponents’ television ads.
Personally I’m skeptical that millions more dollars accusing the other guy of selling farmland to China will cut through the clutter. But I don’t know a backhoe from a baler, so I may not be the best judge.
Eigel’s overarching challenge is simple: As a state senator who started the race well behind the two statewide officials in name recognition, he must become known by enough people, and become known as the most bombastic conservative in the race.
Ashcroft’s overarching challenge is to kill off Eigel so that he can vacuum up the non-Kehoe vote.
Kehoe’s broad challenge is that, given some of his positions over the last 15 years and his general “let’s-figure-this-out” persona, it was always going to be difficult for him to win a majority of Republican primary votes. And despite being a businessman for most of his life, his demeanor didn’t scream “outsider” in the way most Republican primary voters demand these days.
That self-awareness informed a strategy that was never as much about getting to 50%+1 as it was about getting a plurality by any means necessary.
And so when Ashcroft was riding high in the polls, a Kehoe-affiliated PAC’s internal polling suggesting that Eigel could become a contender found its way to the media.
Once that eventuality came to pass with Eigel’s early July rise, Kehoe’s PAC shifted its resources to attacking Eigel in some markets, hoping to buoy Ashcroft.
These machinations were rooted in a very delicate calculation: since there are probably not enough Kehoe-style voters — i.e., those whose instincts are not to “blow it all up” — to reach a majority, Kehoe’s well-funded PAC will spend the final week hitting Ashcroft in some markets and Eigel in others.
Kehoe allies assume that since Eigel and Ashcroft are largely competing with each other for votes, they each need to end up between 25-30% for Kehoe to pull through with a plurality. If the bottom falls out for either Ashcroft or Eigel and the other receives most of the support from the imploding candidate, Kehoe will lose.
Which leaves the race in a very unusual position: the candidate with the best chance to win has the most complicated strategic path to get there.
Kehoe has executed from day one of this race, building the thickest web of statewide relationships of any candidate of his generation, raising big money consistently, and drawing real crowds even in smaller counties.
But now – since most of his money goes to the PAC operating without contribution limits as opposed to his campaign, and since candidates whose campaigns coordinate with independent expenditure efforts can get into real trouble – he must rely on a team with whom he can’t discuss strategy to execute the race’s most sensitive operation.
Can those allies execute as well as he has and effectively play the winning cards? Or might they, for instance, fall prey to a Eigel bluff, spend too much money attacking him, and inadvertently enable Ashcroft to squeak through thanks to residual family name ID among late-to-engage voters?
We shall see.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://missouriindependent.com/2024/07/31/missouris-gop-gubernatorial-primary-as-a-hand-of-texas-hold-em-part-three-the-river/
Published and (C) by Missouri Independent
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/missouriindependent/
