On Sunday, former President Donald Trump wrote on his social media platform that it was “interesting” Democrats were investing in the senate races in Missouri and Texas, where Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz are running for reelection next year, respectively.
“Josh and Ted must be very careful, stranger things have happened!” the 2024 GOP presidential primary frontrunner wrote of the two men who had yet to endorse his own reelection bid.
By Tuesday, Hawley had offered his endorsement publicly, telling Politico “President Trump doesn’t need to worry. I’m with him.”
“It's no change of position for me. My position has been for, gosh, maybe more than a year now that President Trump, former President Trump, is the only person who's going to win this primary,” Hawley told Spectrum News in an interview on Wednesday. “You can attach whatever word you want to that: support, endorse, stand with, you know, it doesn't matter to me. Whatever.”
Hawley dismissed any notion that he made the endorsement in response to Trump’s social media post.
“I've talked to him about this, you know. He's called and asked me to support him, not just recently, but months and months ago, and he and I've talked directly and I've said listen, ‘I'm with you,’” Hawley said. “So I stand with him. He doesn’t need to worry about it.”
Cruz’s campaign and Senate office did not immediately return requests for comment. In the 2016 primary, Cruz was Trump’s main competition for the nomination, but ultimately endorsed and campaigned for him after an ugly, insult-laden primary. During Trump’s administration, and through his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Cruz remained a loyal ally, but he has yet to endorse in the 2024 cycle.
Hawley had long said Trump was very likely going to be his party’s nominee in 2024; he told Spectrum News in April that Trump’s victory was “inevitable” and that he would support whoever emerged from the primary. But Tuesday was his first public, full-throated endorsement of the former president, who is dominating his rivals in the polls and highlighting the potential weaknesses of party members who have yet to get in line.
Trump has secured the endorsements of 18 of the 49 Republican senators, including Hawley’s fellow Missourian Eric Schmitt.
Only four senators have endorsed other candidates: both of North Dakota's senators, John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer, backed their state’s Gov. Doug Burgum, while Sens. Mike Rounds and John Thune of South Dakota backed South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. Both Burgum and Scott have since dropped out of the race; Hoeven and Cramer have moved to the Trump camp.
In December alone, Trump has picked up five U.S. Senate endorsements: Cramer, Hawley, Hoeven, Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker and Alabama Sen. Katie Britt. Britt’s endorsement gave Trump the complete backing of Alabama’s entire GOP congressional delegation.
None of the remaining GOP contenders -- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, as well as long-shots Ryan Binkley and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson -- have secured a single U.S. senator's endorsement. Trump also dominates in endorsements among Republican governors and House members, including the backing of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.
Hawley beat an incumbent Democrat, Claire McCaskill, by around six percentage points in 2018. Since then, Trump won the state by 15 percentage points in 2020 and Schmitt won his seat by around 13 points in 2022. But in a year with virtually no favorable pickup opportunities for Democrats, Missouri and Texas are the closest they may get.
A recent Morning Consult poll found Hawley was the least popular Republican senator up for reelection among voters in their states, with 40% disapproving of his job performance and just 43% approving.
“While the state has shifted solidly red in presidential preferences since 2012, Democrats have won a half-dozen statewide campaigns, even as recently as 2018,” former Missouri secretary of state Jason Kander, a Democrat, argued in a Kansas City Star op-ed this week. “Hawley is vulnerable, and he knows it.”
Democrat Lucas Kunce, a Marine veteran who lost the Democratic primary to Anheuser-Busch heir Trudy Busch Valentine in 2022, is considered a favorite for his party’s nomination, racking up millions in campaign cash while earning the support of labor unions and “Mad Men” actor Jon Hamm, a Missouri native. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has said that “Kunce is a good candidate and we can beat Josh Hawley.”
A poll last month from a left-leaning, St. Louis-based political strategy firm found that Hawley leads Kunce 46% to 42%, but the survey of 407 registered voters had a margin of error of 4.9%.
“Donald Trump is right. Josh Hawley should be very careful,” Kunce wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “He's a fraud and a coward.”