After a heated debate with Sen. Claire McCaskill, Republican challenger Josh Hawley said Friday that her beef wasn’t with him but with Missouri voters.
“Her argument and frustration isn’t with me, it is with the voters of the state of Missouri. It’s with the fact that she is not where they want her to be. She’s not doing what they want her to do. That’s her problem,” Mr. Hawley, the state attorney general, said on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
Mrs. McCaskill and Mr. Hawley clashed in a debate Thursday over health care, immigration, taxes and tariffs. But the bottom line of most exchanges was who’s on board with President Trump in a state that backed him by nearly 19 points in 2016.
“She’s a liberal Democrat. She just does not vote with this state,” said Mr. Hawley on the TV show, pointing to her votes against confirming Mr. Trump’s picks of Supreme Court Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.
“She voted no on middle class tax cuts. She is sponsoring an open borders bill,” he said. “You couldn’t get farther away from what the people of this state want. That’s her problem.”
Mrs. McCaskill declined an invitation to appear on the show, according to Fox News.
Recent polls by news organizations show a virtual tie in the Missouri race that has become the front line in the battle for control of the Senate.
However, Hawley campaign internal polls that have been touted by the national Republican Party show him with a 7-point lead.
In the debate, Mrs. McCaskill insisted she was a bipartisan dealmaker.
“I am more likely than all but 95 senators to break with my party when I think it’s the right thing to do. I’m not afraid of anybody,” she said in the debate hosted by KMBC-TV in Kansas City.
Mr. Hawley responded: “She seems frustrated with the fact that people are unhappy with her voting record and a little defensive about it.”
Mrs. McCaksill began airing a radio ad in central Missouri last week in which the voices of two men discuss the Senate race, defending her as “not one of those crazy Democrats.”
It was the most aggressive move yet by Mrs. McCaskill to distance herself from her Democratic Party.
On the TV show, Mr. Hawley said that the two-term incumbent still can’t distance herself form her record.
“I don’t know who Sen. McCaskill is trying to distance herself from when she says that she is not a crazy Democrat. But I’ll tell you this, she’s a liberal Democrat, and her record shows it,” he said.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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