ST. LOUIS — For the second consecutive election cycle, former President Donald Trump has chosen to endorse more than one statewide candidate in Missouri ahead of a primary.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, Trump, the Republican nominee for president, announced he is backing Jay Ashcroft, Mike Kehoe and Bill Eigel in the GOP primary for governor.
“All have had excellent careers, and have been with me from the beginning," Trump wrote. "They are MAGA and America First all the way! 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!”
In 2022, on the day before the August U.S. Senate primary election, Trump announced “ERIC” had his “Complete and Total Endorsement,” without clarifying if he was supporting then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt or Eric Greitens, the former governor. Schmitt won a crowded primary in a runaway.
Within an hour of Saturday’s statement, all three candidates were touting the “endorsement” on social media without mentioning that others also got the nod.
Ashcroft, the secretary of state, and Eigel, a state senator from St. Charles County, were both delegates at the just-concluded Republican National Convention in Milwaukee that nominated Trump. The endorsement would appear to officially put to bed any concerns Trump had with an Eigel fundraising strategy in recent months that made donors think they were giving to the former president when the money was really going to support the senator.
The triple endorsement could stand to help Kehoe, the lieutenant governor, the most, if it blunts some of the criticism he’s faced in recent weeks over skipping debate invitations. Kehoe’s main rivals have also been trying to cast him as part of the Jefferson City “swamp," echoing Trump’s rhetoric about Washington, D.C.
Still, the timing of the announcement gives each of the campaigns space to claim late momentum in the last 10 or so days of the campaign.