Well, this is brutal…
“This newspaper endorses McCaskill, 65, in the Nov. 6 election for U.S. Senate.
We had expected a harder choice, but GOP candidate Josh Hawley, the state attorney general, has made it easier by undermining his own competitiveness with political miscalculations and blunders. He is running his campaign from the gutter and is employing a shameful array of misleading tactics to make Missourians believe he’s someone he clearly is not. GOP dark-money groups are flooding the airwaves with desperate support ads designed to distort McCaskill’s record and distract voters from Hawley’s lack of a record.
Hawley claims to support solid Midwestern family values. He calls himself a dedicated Trump supporter, ignoring the president’s racism, sexism and sympathetic comments toward white supremacists. When Trump stands in support of world dictators and egregious human-rights abusers, Hawley stands with him….
...Hawley stoops to using the image of his young son, who suffers from a chronic disease, to assert his support for mandatory insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions. Yet Hawley is one of 20 GOP attorneys general to have joined a federal lawsuit to overturn the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — including the act’s highly popular mandate for insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions. Hawley would deprive millions of Americans of medical coverage just to score political points against Obamacare. His replacement proposal is laughable — and unworkable.
True leaders don’t allow their core values to be distorted with double-standard hypocrisy. Hawley comes across as a ladder-climbing phony, as Charlie Brennan and conservative radio talk show host Mark Reardon observed last month on KMOX.”
The Dispatch’s endorsement would not normally be expected to change many votes here.
But a major newspaper speaking so boldly about a Senate hopeful’s integrity and qualifications (or lack thereof) may just be enough to turn a close race.
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