Josh Haw­ley turns once-blue Mis­souri Sen­ate seat into ruby-red refuge

For more than a decade, for­mer Mis­souri Sen. Claire McCaskill held a cru­cial seat for Democ­rats in a state oth­er­wise dom­i­nat­ed by Repub­li­cans.
But in his first reelec­tion since unseat­ing two-term McCaskill in 2018, Sen. Josh Haw­ley (R‑MO) has turned the once-com­pet­i­tive Show-Me State seat into a GOP sanc­tu­ary that’s out of reach for Democ­rats and an after­thought for elec­tion fore­cast­ers.
“Claire McCaskill was the most tal­ent­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Mis­souri politi­cian of her gen­er­a­tion,” said Gregg Kel­ly, a Mis­souri GOP strate­gist and for­mer Haw­ley cam­paign polit­i­cal advis­er. “She won elec­tions she had no busi­ness win­ning for years in the state based on how pro­gres­sive she was and yet how good of a politi­cian she was.”
Haw­ley was unop­posed in his pri­ma­ry on Tues­day. He’ll now face Demo­c­rat Lucas Kunce, who ran unsuc­cess­ful­ly for his party’s Sen­ate nom­i­na­tion in 2022, in the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion. The out­come is all but p …