Before leaving the country a few weeks ago, I checked the polls to see which of the candidates in the Missouri U.S. Senate primary had the best chance of beating disgraced former 
Gov. Eric Greitens. My homework done, I proceeded to vote absentee for Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt. In the waning weeks of the election, many other Missourians made the same decision for much the same reason. What had been a tight race suddenly became a blowout.
Schmitt more than doubled the vote of his nearest challenger, Rep. Vicky Hartzler, and left Greitens behind in third-place dust. The wild card throughout the election cycle had been the Donald Trump endorsement. Greitens was banking on it. His selection of Trump’s daughter-in-law Kimberly Guilfoyle as co-chair of his campaign would seem to have given him the inside track. In the weeks leading up to the election, Trump’s continued silence diminished the value of an endorsement should one be forthcoming. His ringing non-endorsement of Hartzler on July 10, however, did shake up the race.
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