COTTLEVILLE, Mo.—This week, the St. Charles Election Authority announced a milestone less than one month before the Nov. 5 election and less than two weeks before no-excuse absentee voting begins.
For the first time, there are more than 300,000 registered voters in what has long been of the fastest-growing counties in the state. In 2001, there weren’t that many people living in the county. Today, there are roughly 419,000. Election Director Kurt Bahr says that registration number puts the county in the top 1% nationally. He’s expecting turnout to be at 75%, which would be down from 2020, when it was 76.32.
St. Louis County elections officials say there are 744,070 registered voters, down about 20,000 since 2020, and they’re also predicting turnout at 75% which would be up from 70.66 four years ago.
Senate campaign returns to the St. Louis area
Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley’s re-election campaign returned to the St. Louis region Thursday with a stop in Cottleville, in St. Charles County. He was accompanied by Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker. Butker and Hawley have been friends for several years, but Hawley’s is the first political campaign where Butker has made a public endorsement. Hawley came to Butker’s defense last spring after the kicker’s comments at a college commencement address implored women to embrace the role of homemaking, and railed against abortion and Pride celebrations.
Hawley’s stump speech sought to attach his Democratic opponent, Lucas Kunce, to Biden-Harris administration policies on the border, energy and transgender athletes.
“For four years, they have shoved this nutty agenda down our throats. We didn’t vote for it, we didn’t want it. It’s been terrible for us in our state. In 26 days, we get to go and say, no more,” Hawley told the crowd at Frankie Martin’s Garden.
Kunce, for his part, has not actively embraced the top of the Democratic ticket. His campaign ads point to the fact that he served in the Marines during the Trump administration, that he’ll work to secure the border regardless of who is president, and has declined in local and national interviews to say categorically that he supports Vice President Kamala Harris’s bid for the White House.
While Kunce has outraised Hawley, his bid has not attracted national Democratic party support, which has instead poured millions into Senate campaigns in battleground states and other contests featuring vulnerable incumbents. Democrats have focused more resources going on "offense" this cycle in Texas, where they're hoping to unseat Republican Ted Cruz.
Abortion debate
One of the big issues in the Missouri race will likely come on the issue of abortion, as voters will also decide the fate of Amendment 3, a statewide ballot question that would restore abortion rights. The procedure has largely been illegal here since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, with exceptions only for emergencies.
After an extensive legal fight over getting the question on the ballot, opponents have largely shifted their messaging, claiming that the amendment would lead to codifying access to transgender surgeries for minors without parental consent.
There is no explicit language in the proposed amendment that mandates such an outcome, but Hawley has embraced it as a talking point on the campaign trail and did so again on Thursday. He said he otherwise supports exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.
Kunce has fully embraced Amendment 3 on the campaign trail, making it a key feature of his stump speech.
If Kunce’s path to victory in what looks like a solid “red” state requires some split-ticket voting up and down the ballot, at least some polling suggests that may be the case for Hawley too.
A SLU/YouGov poll taken in August shows that 32.26% of voters who support Hawley also said they would vote for Amendment 3, as opposed to the 86.90% of Kunce voters who said they would support the ballot question.
RECA latest
Congress isn’t scheduled to return until after the November election, with a lame duck session that will need to include another vote to extend funding for the federal government to avoid a partial shutdown.
Hawley reiterated the need for House Speaker Mike Johnson to allow for a vote on a bill to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, and expand it to include portions of the St. Louis region and elsewhere that have been left uncovered. The existing program lapsed in June, despite passing twice in the Senate.
Johnson and Hawley have met in recent weeks to discuss a path forward, although sources familiar with the negotiations haven’t said if it involves a smaller amount of money, down from the $50-60 billion projected over a five year period.
Johnson has publicly resisted a House vote in recent months, pointing to a lack of GOP support even when it passed in the Senate.
Hawley said Thursday the House hasn’t had a “great track record of getting stuff done the last year,” but that he thinks he’s got every House Democrat on board and more to get two-thirds of the entire House behind it.
“If he (Johnson) put it on the floor today, we have the votes in the House, I’m confident of it. We have the votes in the house.
Spectrum News asked if it would be better for RECA if the House were under Democratic party control?
“I don’t want to say that…..I hope not. I hope my Republican colleagues will show that the answer to that question is no,” he said. “My message to my fellow Republicans is guys, this is the right thing to do and you’ve got to deliver.”
