CRESTWOOD • Eric Greitens’ campaign office in a strip mall in this southwest St. Louis County suburb is the same glass-walled room where dozens of his supporters stood at attention six months ago.
Most of them then were veterans, some wearing camouflage. They barked out their allegiance to him in martial unison, multiple American flags crowded behind them.
On a recent Saturday morning, Greitens and his supporters again packed into the room — but the room and the crowd looked very different. There were notably more women and children, with little if any camouflage in sight. There was a flag, but not a forest of them. There was a sign-up sheet for volunteers. There were pastries.
In the earlier gathering, Greitens, a former Navy SEAL then seeking the Republican nomination for Missouri governor, gave a seething speech in which he accused opponents in the GOP primary of lying about his military record. “I am proud of every day that I served, and every veteran should be proud of every day that they wore the uniform of the United States of America,” he declared, to a chorus approving shouts from the assembled veterans.
Now battling Democratic Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster for the governor’s office in the Nov. 8 general election, Greitens’ more recent message was kinder, gentler and aimed right at the moms in the room: “We are committed to serving you as a family,” he said, after referencing his wife, Sheena, and their two young sons. “We recognize that this is a family endeavor.”
Greitens — who made national news during the primary for a campaign commercial in which he fired a semi-automatic rifle to set off an explosion — has disarmed since winning the GOP nomination Aug. 2. His first post-primary commercial traded in the weaponry for stirring music and an into-the-camera explanation of how he founded the philanthropic organization the Mission Continues to help returning veterans help their communities.
It is the textbook definition of a general election pivot. While “former Navy SEAL” remains at the top of his résumé, Greitens now is as likely to mention his humanitarian work in Calcutta, India, as his military record in Iraq.
He hasn’t changed his standard conservative positions on “right to work,” gun rights or abortion. But his speeches now focus more heavily on political reform, economic growth and other issues that resonate with the center.
“I’m telling you,” he told the Crestwood gathering last month, emotionally bemoaning the unemployment rate, “people are hurting in the state of Missouri.”
Broadening the base
Even when he mentions bedrock conservative themes such as welfare reform, he tends to put a human spin on it these days: “We’re going to reform welfare so that more people can step out of poverty and into the middle class and live lives of purpose and dignity and meaning.”
Kenneth Warren, political science professor at St. Louis University, called Greitens’ pivot “Politics 101.”
“Winning the primary is different than winning the general election. He’s got to appeal to a much broader base. He’s got to go after independents … and moderate his pitch,” Warren said.
He noted that a majority of Missouri’s general-election voters live in urban areas, while a majority of Republican primary voters don’t — a factor that, in itself, necessitates a change in focus and tone. “You’re not going to see any of those sorts of ‘gun ads’” from the primary in Greitens’ general election campaign, Warren predicted.
Such thematic flexibility may come easily to someone of Greitens’ wide-ranging résumé: The 42-year-old Maryland Heights native and Parkway North graduate is a former soldier, Rhodes scholar, White House Fellow, author and Democrat-turned-Republican nonprofit founder.
“I’m a political scientist, I look objectively at these things, and when I first read his résumé, I thought, ‘My God,’” said Warren. “He’s got an incredible résumé, an almost a too-good-to-be-true résumé.”
What Greitens’ résumé doesn’t include is even one minute in elective office. He has sought to turn that lack of political experience to his advantage with his“political outsider” mantra, focusing heavily on political ethics reform.
Despite a generally more positive general election persona, there have been recent reminders that Greitens still has the combat veteran’s willingness to attack.
For example, Greitens’ campaign has taken to regularly blaming Koster for violent crime in Missouri — a tactic that appears based in either misunderstanding the attorney general’s duties or in hoping that the public will.
“Chris Koster is the chief law enforcement officer of the state of Missouri, and do you know what his legacy is? Murders are up 30 percent. Rapes are up 60 percent,” Greitens told the crowd in Crestwood, repeating a common talking point he employs on the trail. “We’re talking about lives that are lost, lives that are damaged, because of Chris Koster’s failures.”
The problem with that line of attack is that prosecution of violent crimes is handled by local prosecutors, not the attorney general. Koster’s office can get involved in a criminal case only under special circumstances, at the behest of other officials; it isn’t his regular job. In terms of statutory duties, blaming the attorney general for the violent crime rate makes as little sense as blaming the state treasurer or the lieutenant governor.
When this was pointed out to Greitens recently, he doubled down, using the unrest in Ferguson as an example. “As the chief law enforcement officer, (Koster) should have imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew,” said Greitens. But in fact, the attorney general doesn’t have the lawful authority to do that or anything like it.
Moments like that, indicating lack of governmental knowledge by Greitens, could play into Koster’s campaign strategy of painting his opponent as too inexperienced to be Missouri’s chief executive.
Mending fences
Another lingering concern for Republicans is whether Greitens will be able to unite a Republican Party that was badly fractured by a brutal four-way primary, which he won with less than 35 percent of the vote. He won in part by attacking political “insiders,” including the lobbying industry, political donors and the Republican-controlled Legislature, as corrupt.
“It’s a different race, but the message and the strategy isn’t changing that much,” maintained Austin Chambers, Greitens’ 21-year-old campaign manager: “He’s going to come in and shake up Jefferson City.”
It’s a strategy that in some ways has been as divisive as it is successful. Some key traditional Republican-leaning groups in agriculture, law enforcement and gun rights have opted to endorse the Democrat, as have some key GOP donors. In Jefferson City, some Republican lawmakers haven’t gotten over their friendly-fire injuries from Greitens during the primary campaign.
“He definitely has a lot of fences to mend,” state Rep. Dave Hinson, R-St. Clair, told The (Washington) Missourian last month. “It’s all right to say you’re an outsider, but you can’t criticize everyone you have to work with now as a career politician.”
A planned party unity event the morning after the election had to be canceled because one Greitens’ GOP opponent, businessman John Brunner, refused to attend. Brunner has since disappeared from the political radar. Fellow primary candidate Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder has endorsed Greitens but has yet to campaign with him.
Of his primary opponents, only former Missouri House Speaker Catherine Hanaway has stumped with him. “Of course, I was hoping I’d be standing here advocating for myself,” Hanaway told the crowd in Crestwood, drawing a big laugh.
She touted Greitens’ familiar primary-campaign persona as “an American patriot.”
But she ultimately rested her argument for him in civilian territory: “Eric and Sheena have a beautiful family, and they understand what all of us understand: that all the effort that we put forth isn’t to serve ourselves, it’s to make a better Missouri to pass on to the next generation.”
Election 2016 from St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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Kevin McDermott • 314-340-8268
@kevinmcdermott on Twitter
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