Happy election week Show Mo Facts readers! Election Day is TOMORROW! Be sure to make your plan to vote using the steps above! Your vote matters and Missouri needs to hear your voice! Check out the video below to see why the midterm elections are so important! This week our posts will look a little different than our previous ones. In this post, each of us is going to give you a preview of some of the Missouri races that we will be watching on election night. In our Wednesday post, we will provide you with the results of those races and what they mean for the country. Friday will be our last post and we will be wrapping up with any more election results as well as letting you know what we learned from this project.
Jack
On Election Night the first race I will be watching is the Missouri Senate race. Republican nominee Eric Schmitt has been featured eleven times on our blog. He has earned six EXTREME ratings and two HIGH ratings on our Pants On Fire O-Meter since it was introduced. His Democratic opponent Trudy Busch Valentine has been featured on our classmate’s blog fact-checking Missouri Democrat ads seven times (check it out here). Schmitt has consistently led in the polls and most political forecasters expect him to win tomorrow night. However, Busch Valentine has vastly outspent Schmitt ($11,629,007 to $5,447,776). Because of this, I’ll be interested to see what the final margin is in the race and how the vast amount of money will influence the result.
The other race that I will be watching tomorrow is the Congressional race in Missouri’s 4th Congressional District. Republican nominee Mark Alford, who is vying to replace Vicky Hartzler, has been featured on our blog three times before, earning two HIGH ratings on our Pants On Fire O-Meter for his ad appealing to his conservative base and a tweet about the border. Alford also received a CATASTROPHIC rating for his lies about religion in school. Alford is running against Democrat Jack Truman. While there have been no polls released from this race, all election forecasters rate this race as Solid Republican. Check out the map below to see if this is your district!
Megan
This Tuesday, I’ll be focusing on Missouri's Second Congressional District, the Democratic nominee is Trish Gunby who’s running against the Republican incumbent Ann Wagner. This race is extremely close to home for me, as I live in this district! Wagner has held this seat since the 2012 election. Wagner has also gotten a lot of support from the Republican party for her message opposing President Joe Biden’s agenda. However, don’t count Gunby out just yet. Gunby entered the Missouri political scene in 2019 when she won a state representative seat in western St. Louis County. That district was previously held by Republicans. One of the biggest dividing factors in this race is the candidates’ stance on abortion. Wagner voted against the 'Right to Contraception Act,' while Gunby is outspokenly pro-choice. While we haven’t covered this race on our blog, our classmates running the Gateway to Facts blog have one post about Gunby, where they found what she said in a Tweet regarding her opponent was ‘mostly true. Politico has it likely that Wagner will win this election, as you can see below. However, they haven’t updated their forecast since August. I think the odds might have gone more in Gunby’s favor after the tragic CVPA school shooting that happened in St. Louis in October. Wagner is adamantly against gun control while Gunby supports it. With a shooting happening so close to home, District 2 might be looking for a change.
The other race I’m focusing on is Missouri State Senate District 18, with the incumbent being Republican Cindy O'Laughlin against Democrat candidate Ayanna Shivers. This race is also pretty close to home, as Truman State is located in this district. Shiver has previously run for the Missouri State Senate when she ran in 2018 in District 10. Shiver lost this previous race to Jeanie Riddle, with Riddle getting 70.3% of the vote. In the primaries for this election, bother Shivers and O’Laughlin ran unopposed, however, O’Laughlin got 100% of the vote out of 19,720 voters. Shivers also got 100% of the vote, but only 3,850 people voted. Due to the lack of Democrat voters in District 18 and there being a Republican incumbent, it’s very unlikely that Shivers will win this election. Since 2010, District 18 has been bright red. In 2018, O’Laughlin won every county in the 18th District by landslide margins. O’Laughlin even said, “It’s going to be very difficult for a Democrat in a rural area... Very difficult, if not impossible”. Due to O’Laughlin’s lack of political advertisements, this race has yet to be featured on our blog. With all this information, I would be shocked if Shivers won. However, I won’t count her out yet!
Zoie
Tomorrow, the first race I will be watching is Missouri’s 7th Congressional District, where Republican nominee, Eric Burlison, is going up against Democratic nominee, Kristen Radaker-Sheafer, and Libertarian nominee, Kevin Craig. Burlison was featured on our blog twice and earned EXTREME ratings on his claims regarding the “invasion of illegal aliens” and Critical Race Theory. While there have been no polls released from this race, this district has continuously elected Republican representatives since 1961 making it likely that this race remains solid Republican. Politico has also rated this race to be solidly Republican. Check out the map below to see if you will be voting in this district!
Politico's Rating of Missouri's 7th Congressional District
The other race that I will be watching tomorrow is Missouri’s State Senate Race for the 34th District, including Platte and Buchanan counties. In this race, incumbent and Republican nominee, Tony Luetkemeyer, is going up against Democratic nominee, Sarah Shorter. Luetkemeyer was featured on our blog twice and earned a HIGH rating for his misrepresentation of the effects of the 2022 Missouri Tax Cut on low and middle-class Missourians and an EXTREME rating for his use of doctored video, audio, and images in his attack ad against Shorter. Luetkemeyer has raised around $400,000 for this election while Shorter has only raised $7,000 giving Shorter a significant disadvantage in campaign funding. Additionally, Luetkemeyer’s incumbent advantage and history as Majority Whip in the State Senate since 2018 makes his re-election likely. Check out the map below to see if you will be voting in this district!
Thank you for reading Show Mo Facts! Be sure to follow us on Twitter as well as like and comment on this post. If you’d like to check out another blog from our class, we recommend Gateway To Facts. They are fact-checking the MO DNC. Find them here!
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