Campaigns make late St. Louis area pitch ahead of Tuesday's primary (2024)

ST. LOUIS—The sprint to the finish line of Missouri’s primary election campaign includes plenty of last-minute canvassing and “Get out the vote” events in the St. Louis region as candidates make their closing arguments to voters.

Monday night, the GOP campaign for governor neared its end as Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe rallied with firefighters in St. Peters, less than five miles away from where one of his rivals, State Sen. Bill Eigel, closed out his primary campaign at his headquarters in St. Charles.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft closed out his primary campaign with a rally in Greene County.

St. Charles County is a key battleground for any statewide Repubilcan campaign and is Eigel's home turf. He's previously said if he can win St. Charles County he'll win the primary, but Monday night claimed his campaign is seeing momentum across the state.

It's been a bruising GOP primary, despite the fact that all three of the leading Republican candidates were endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

The winner of the Republican primary will face House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, or Springfield businessman Mike Hamra. Quade spent time in the St. Louis area on Saturday but had no public events on her schedule. Hamra was not in the area over the weekend. Hamra announced his father’s passing over the weekend.

In the race Democratic party race to face incumbent U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, Lucas Kunce, a lawyer and Marine veteran who ran for the Senate in 2022, spent the last weekend of the primary campaign in North St. Louis County, with a town hall in Florissant Sunday.

“We’ve spent four years working towards this moment. We’ve built out a campaign with grass roots supporters. We’ve raised money the right way. No money from corporate PACs, no money from federal lobbyists, no money from Big Pharma execs…it’s a beautiful thing to see.

“We’ve spent the last year and a half literally going everywhere in this state……we’ve done the work, we’ve put in the work, we’ve met the people, we have a real movement, we have a donation from every single county in this state, all 114 and the city of St. Louis. I’m just excited about where we are right now and that momentum’s going to carry all the way through to November.”

Kunce’s chief opponent, State Sen. Karla May, did not have any public events in the St. Louis area on her schedule in the campaign’s final days. May is already a known political commodity in the St. Louis region, as she represents parts of the city and St. Louis County in Jefferson City, in addition to being Chair of the city’s Democratic Central committee.

All hands have been on deck for weeks in a race that has national implications–the Democratic primary for Missouri’s first congressional district. The winner of the three-way contest between incumbent Rep. Cori Bush, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell and former State Sen. Maria Chappelle Nadal will be heavily favored to win the seat in November. The race is one of the most expensive congressional primaries in history with roughly $18 million on the books, and approximately half of that coming from pro-Israel groups which have attacked Bush, a sharp critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza and U.S. support for it.

The ads have not mentioned Israel but have instead focused on Bush’s vote against the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill, which she’s said she opposed because of elements that were stripped out of the legislation in the Senate.

“We won’t let the lies on television on radio….on digital….we won’t let that deter us…we won’t let that sway us, because we know who we are, we know what we bring to the table, we know who we’re working for, we know who we want to represent, we know who we serve, and we also know that this is what the people want. The people want integrity, the people want character and the people want results,” Bush told supporters, including St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, Aldermanic Board President Megan Green and others before they canvassed neighborhoods in North St. Louis County Sunday.

Bush was not available for an interview Sunday.

“It’s not enough just to go up and make speeches and get on Twitter but not get anything done,” Bell said in an interview with Spectrum News after a get out the vote rally with supporters in St. Louis Sunday night.

Bell downplayed Bush’s specific role in how more than $500 million dollars in American Rescue Plan Act funds made their way to the St. Louis area, and also criticized Bush’s boast of bringing $2 billion in federal resources to the region, a claim that KSDK reported included taking credit for disaster relief funds as well as grant programs that started well before she took office.

He cited a need to address public safety, infrastructure and other challenges that are leading to population losses in the area.

Bush has decried the massive amount being spent against her in the race by AIPAC–the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. While AIPAC donors do include supporters of Republicans, the organization has Democratic backers as well, and has supported Democratic candidates, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has endorsed Bush’s re-election.

“I don’t like the negative ads. I think ‘Citizens United’ is one of the worst decisions that the Supreme Court has made but it’s the sandbox we play in and it was it is and until we do have campaign finance reform, which I am a supporter of, this is what we deal with,” Bell said.

The result of the race won’t just be watched around the country, but around the world. A reporter from a Japanese media outlet was following both Bush and Bell on Sunday.

Polls open at 6 a.m. Tuesday and close at 7 p.m.